I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?

I’m a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It’s definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it’s great to see something that isn’t Reddit growing in popularity!

  • Banana
    24•1 year ago

    I like the concept
    But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.

    The federated idea can work but it needs to be more seemless than this.

    1. Communities with the same name should be merged when viewing it from any instance, so you can see all the posts from these communities, they can be moderated seperatley and for advanced users you should be able to select which communities make up the merged community.
    2. By default you should see all of the merged communities in a central place and be able to subscribe to them easily, at the moment its handled different per instance but you have to seek out these communities to subscribe or follow them.
    3. I strongly believe there should be a centralised log-in system, so you can log into any instance with an account from another instance, this means if your instance goes down your account is centralised and is safe.
    • @[email protected]
      12•1 year ago

      Regarding point three: I want to be able to migrate my profile to another instance if my current instance has performance issues or admins going rogue.

      • Banana
        6•1 year ago

        I think even better, you should be able to sign into any instance via some type of centralised federated login, though I guess the argument is you can’t do that in multiple email clients as email is the most popular federated example.

        • @[email protected]
          10•1 year ago

          This may unironically be the first time I’ve ever suggested this: this may actually be a use case for the block chain.

          If the user data from all instances was being saved to a distributed and verified ledger, it would fix the problem of one node going down losing all of those users, and would be a decentralized yet centralized way to go about it.

          … I feel dirty, I swear I’m not a cryptobro

          • @[email protected]
            3•1 year ago

            That sounds like a pretty novel way to go about it!

            I wonder how hard it would be to implement in practice?

    • CoachDom
      11•1 year ago

      I like the concept
      But it feels very much like its been designed by nerdy developers and has had little to no-input on user friendly design.

      Pretty much this. I love the idea - it’s like the purest form of Reddit - it’s operated and moderated by community, but nobody’s is taking any profit here.

      The app is a main downside - I’m using Jerboa and I feel like I don’t see a lot of posts I would get on the web. There is quite a few bugs there and there too.

      Community is not as active too. I’m looking for some memes communities like 196, dankmemes and shit posting. Reddit, because it is such a huge audience, I could always find people to help me out with 3D printing or fixin my motorbike.

    • @[email protected]
      3•1 year ago

      Your point #3 is by far my biggest concern with lemmy, and the reason that I made an account on lemmy.ml. It seemed big and populated enough to feel confident it wo t go away. The devs need to find a way to make that happen. Partly because of what you said but also because it’s super confusing to click on a link and suddenly appear to be logged out because it took you to a different instance.

      I fully agree that for more casual users these 3 things are BIG turnoffs.

      • @Doog
        1•1 year ago

        And if someone sends you a link, you can’t comment unless you go find the post from an instance you’re signed up with, which is bad for sharing Lemmy with your friends.