In this post I will list the known issues or possible improvements for Lemmy.world.

Please comment with any issue or area for improvement you see and I will add it here.

Remember: this instance was only started June 1st so a lot of troubleshooting and tweaking to be done.

Issues can be:

  • Local (lemmy.world) (also performance issues)
  • Lemmy software issues
  • Other software related (apps/Fediverse platforms etc)
  • Remote server related
  • (User error? …)

Known issues

Websockets issues

There are some issues with the Websockets implementation used in Lemmy, which handles the streaming. Websockets will be removed in version 0.18 so let’s hope these issues will be all gone then!

  • Top posts page gets a stream of new posts ? Websockets issue
  • You’re suddenly in another post than you were before > Websockets issue
  • Your profile will briefly display another name/avatar in the top right corner

Spinning wheel issues

Error handling is not one of Lemmy’s strongpoints. Sometimes something goes wrong, but instead of getting an error, the button will have a ‘spinning wheel’ that lasts until eternity. These are some of the known cases:

  • You want to create an account but the username is already taken
  • You want to create an account but the username is too long (>20 characters)
  • You want to create an account but the password is too long
  • You want to create a community but the name is already taken
  • You want to create a community but the name is not in all lowercase letters
  • You want to create a post over 2000 characters
  • You want to post something in a language that isn’t allowed in the community

Other issues

  • Federation not always working; Apparently not everything gets synced all the time. This needs troubleshooting.
  • “404: FetchError: invalid json response body at http://lemmy:8536/api/v3/site” This sometimes happens when the Lemmy app container is very busy. Needs troubleshooting

Enhancement requests

  • Can themes be added? > To be checked if this can be done without changing code.

For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.

  • fubo
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    2 years ago

    It surprised me that the communities list can’t be sorted by clicking on column headers; especially because the mouse cursor becomes a pointing-finger when hovering over them.

  • Phil
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    2 years ago

    Can I just quickly mention that I for one really appreciate the work done by @ruul to keep this instance working as well as it does , thank you.

  • cameron_
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    2 years ago

    On the homepage lemmy.world, new posts keep appearing at the top even when not sorting by new. This causes annoying layout shift, especially when browsing all communities, not just local ones. (I use Firefox / Win 10)

    • nova
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      2 years ago

      I have the same issue. Makes the front page unusable with the flood of posts pushing everything down. Firefox / Win 11

      • tolkeylime
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        2 years ago

        do you know when the next release is? the feed shifting around is getting annoying on desktop.

    • mxh
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      2 years ago

      This seems like a really big problem to me. I tried searching lemmy for it, but have not found anything conclusive.

      I found a post or two claiming that the issue is that the API is implemented using websockets only, so it’s not as simple as just turning it off. I really hope that is not the case, since I currently can’t read anything on the frontpage that takes more than a few seconds!

  • PlutoniumAcid
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    2 years ago

    In the comment listing, each comment first has an avatar, then the username, then the [—] button to collapse the comment thread. Observation: Because username length varies from comment to comment, the [—] button is in a different horizontal position. Consequence: As a user, it is tedious to collapse several comment threads because I have to search for that [—] button.

    Request: put the [—] button as first item, to the left of the avatar and username.

    • andobando
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      2 years ago

      I like this about the reddit UI where you can click anywhere on the vertical bar to collapse them. Collapse should be easier than the tiny button imo

      • Dougas
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        2 years ago

        Btw this also works on Jerboa, the Android app for Lemmy. You can basically tap anywhere in the message and it collapses.

  • alomex21
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    2 years ago

    Just joined! Thanks!

    One small thing i would add for sign up is giving a message about waiting for being approved for the community, i was confused that it sent me back to the homepage until reading the docs.

    • AustralianSimon
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      2 years ago

      Yeah it is a bit hard to know if your account was approved or not as you get wheel of doom

    • BOMBS
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      2 years ago

      oh nooooo…I may have tried to sign up over 20 times not knowing if it went through or not. sorry @[email protected] if I clogged your sign up list with my requests 😬

  • functor
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    2 years ago

    New posts appear “live” at the top of the frontpage regardless of what sorting method is chosen. This disrupts the reading process and minimizes any expanded image view. Is there any way to disable this “live feed” behavior?

    Also, the “sorting help” button points to a dead link.

    • felixwhynot
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      2 years ago

      Big +1 here. Mastodon provides a button to click to show new posts, maybe Lemmy could do the same

    • sake
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      2 years ago

      This is such a big issue for me I currently don’t really want to use Lemmy.

  • Nerdlinger
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    2 years ago

    I scanned through the comments here and I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, but I would love, love, love to have an option added to settings to open links in a new tab (or possibly windows if some people would prefer that). The current behavior is to open in the current tab, which I am so unaccustomed to I keep closing the tab when I’m done with it rather than hitting the back arrow.

    It’s quite jarring to not open in a new tab these days, especially for external links.

  • solrize
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    2 years ago

    There should be a way to set “my posting language is English” in my profile settings, so that it’s automatically set to English when I post, evern single time, unless I go out of my way to choose something different for a particular post.

    • maj4short
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      2 years ago

      I’m trying to upvote this but it doesn’t seem to stick…

    • OBI
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      2 years ago

      Same here. Upvotes never seem to work for me on either the app or web.

    • A_A
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      2 years ago

      I get these random votes whenever I sort comments with anything else than the default sorting : it shows for it’s post’s votes.

  • RuudOPMA
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    2 years ago

    Personally I think when clicking ‘Post’ it takes too long for it to be posted. I will see what I can do about this.

    • ericjmorey
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      2 years ago

      Also, there’s no local saving of the data in the post submition, so if there’s a server or connection error, you lose whatever you typed.

    • Dream_state
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      2 years ago

      I’ve had multiple times where posting has just timed out

  • Interesting_Test_814
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    2 years ago

    I noticed upvotes are behaving weirdly sometimes, like the upvote count of a post will shuffle between random numbers like 55 then 735 then 345 then 56 then 902 then 736 then 4 then 57 then 346 then 251 then 58. (Yeah, I noticed some of these are counsecutive which makes me think we’re somehow upvoting on different counts and it shows the most recently upvoted.) Also sometimes when I upvote a comment my upvote disappears and sometimes it reappears later… why ?

    • Infernal_pizza
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      2 years ago

      Yeah I’m having lots of issues upvoting as well, I seem to be able to comment and post fine if I just wait a minute or so but upvoting doesn’t seem to work

    • Axurite
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      2 years ago

      Me too, it happened to me a few times already. Also, sometimes it changes the whole post I’m looking at entirely but comments stay the same, wild. (This happens while looking at a post that I’ve clicked on.)

  • luds
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    2 years ago

    If I do Posts -> All -> Top Week (or any other Top) it will show the top posts at first, but after waiting a minute or so the page will update with new posts at the top. This is usually how I browse and it makes it unusable.

    Another thing is when I tried to login after signing up, the loading wheel just spun forever without any error messages. Turns out I needed to verify my email.

  • DRx
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    2 years ago

    An Improvement I would like to see:

    When scrolling my front page, I would like to be able to click the thread picture to a) see the ‘body of the post’ prior to entering the thread and b) if it is a picture be able to ‘drag to resize’ prior to entering the thread… I know these would all take a while to do, but it would be what I would like most.

  • Matt
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    2 years ago

    I’ve noticed that despite setting my default view to “All” in the user settings, my default view on the home page appears to be local.

    It’s not the worst thing ever, since hitting All is not a problem, just interesting it doesn’t seem to work, unless I’m missing something!

    Edit: It appears to have fixed itself, so maybe there was some time for the setting to kick in, although the local tab shows highlighted.

    • RuudOPMA
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      2 years ago

      I’ve noticed a bug with that and created an issue for the devs, they will fix it.