There have been various posts here in the last days describing how difficult it is for new people to start using Lemmy. In fact they are absolutely correct, it is much easier to get started on Reddit. But what many forget is that Lemmy is not a corporation employing dozens of full-time designers, running A/B-tests and so on. Lemmy is an open source project run by volunteers, with only @dessalines and me working on it full-time. Neither of us is a particularly good designer, and our time is mainly spent working on the backend (database, federation, api), and preparing the upcoming 1.0 release.

If you see anything on join-lemmy.org or in the Lemmy UI itself that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself. Both of them use standard web technologies (nodejs, tailwindcss, inferno etc). The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute. We rarely reject any pull requests as long as they make a real improvement. Though it usually requires a little back and forth to review the changes and then address the review comments.

You can find the source code for join-lemmy.org here and follow development instructions in the readme. Regarding the default Lemmy UI go here and read the documentation with development instructions. If you are not a developer you can still help, for example by improving the documentation. Additionally you can make changes to the texts for joinlemmy and lemmy-ui.

All this said, there have also been some suggestions to make onboarding easier by directing new users to a hardcoded default instance. This may sound like a good idea at first but won’t work well in practice. Running such an instance would take significant time for administration and moderation, but we maintainers are already too busy. Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated. So if you want to get nontechnical users to Lemmy, the solution is to link them directly to a specific instance based on their interests.

  • .Donuts@lemmy.worldEnglish
    109·
    6 days ago

    The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute.

    As a project manager, I can help by ballooning the scope and setting the deadline to yesterday! Doing my part!

  • Kyrgizion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    565·
    6 days ago

    I don’t really agree that it’s much easier to start on Reddit. Especially nowadays.

    -Post from an IP that was once used by a banned account? Also banned (after first being shadowbanned)

    -Try to post in any niche sub of your choosing after making an account? Forget it, wait three weeks and farm 3K karma first (which encourages shitposting and reposting, lowering quality)

    -Deviate a fraction of an inch from whatever sub’s 500-page rulebook? Banned.

    -Try to argue an unbanning? That’s a permanent mute.

    -Post anything - and I do mean anything - in a “wrong” sub, get immediately permabanned by a slew of subs you didn’t even know existed.

    -Some mod doesn’t agree with something you posted? Even if it was 5 years ago in a sub that has since been deleted? Banned and muted.

    Reddit is an absolutely terrible experience for new posters. How they even manage to retain a tenth of them is beyond me. I encourage them to keep it up however, more traffic for Lemmy.

    • Resubscribe@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Another to add: Caught an IP ban for “report abuse” after reporting several bigots. Couldn’t have been more than 5. No warning or previous infractions, just straight up IP banned. Appealing did nothing, of course. Eventually just stopped caring.

      Saw quite a few people saying they had the same thing happen. The general consensus of those threads was just not to report *anything *anymore…

    • Tiger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      6 days ago

      Here’s another for your list:

      • Use a VPN? Blocked from accessing it. (I try to get info from internet searches sometimes and they block me, I have to use a VPN because am in China.)
      • fangleone2526@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        This is only if you aren’t logged in. If you login to reddit you can use a VPN fine. It is still so incredibly annoying though.

  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
    411·
    6 days ago

    I’m the OP of one of the posts that blew up about UX.

    This is great news, I will look into building something like join-lemmy/onboarding that could guide users, or improving join-lemmy

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      39·
      6 days ago

      Its best if you improve the existing site, that way you dont have to worry about hosting, or directing users to your new site.

  • commander@lemmings.worldEnglish
    153·
    5 days ago

    FWIW, I think the design and layout of lemmy is superb. Way better than reddit, old and new.

    You guys made a lot of good decisions.

  • Peasley@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    6 days ago

    Also remember to be nice. I see heated arguments regressing into ad hominems by the third comment pretty regularly. We can be better than Reddit

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      6 days ago

      You and you being so nice made me switch to ad hominem faster than usual! How the person like you can be so terribly pleasant? Treat yourself, you fellow lemming.

  • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    5 days ago

    “Which server do I join?” seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people.

    The “Browse servers” page does say at the top “You can access all content in the lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn’t matter which one you choose”, but on showing this page you immediately scroll that message off the screen. Maybe if you kept that bit visible it would help.

    Also I think comparing it with email servers might be helpful. People already know they can email anyone from any email server, and that signing up to, say, Posteo, doesn’t mean you can only email other Posteo users.

    • 0ops@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      it doesn’t matter which one you choose

      That’s not really true though, every instance has it’s own rules, and it’s own federation policies, not to mention the other instances that don’t federate with it.

      I’m already on lemmy, so it’s not like I haven’t gone through this before, yet I still haven’t made a pixelfed account despite being interested because I don’t want to just go for the biggest instance and I have no idea how to vet the other ones.

      • electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish
        32·
        5 days ago

        I think it’s better to keep it simple for new users. Tell them it doesn’t matter which server since that is theoretically true in a general sense. No need to overwhelm them with all the asterisks. Once they start engaging, they’ll learn the nuances and can change instances.

  • travis-j@rblind.comEnglish
    13·
    6 days ago

    The great thing about Lemmy is that it is an open source project and you can tweak the UI yourself if you have a bit of HTML and CSS knowledge. Do not be put off by fancy words like Bootstrap, Inferno, Tailwind, many are just HTML, CSS, or Javascript under the hood.

    If anyone on here is looking for a more a more accessible Lemmy theme, I helped make one recently for the instance RBlind: RBlind Lemmy Themes (Codeberg repo). I made detailed documentation as well which could be helpful for theme developers or for those interested in helping improve Lemmy’s accessibility.

    Since making the theme, I’ve been making some pull requests (PRs) with lemmy-ui and lemmy-docs to try improve the UI and docs based on some of the things I saw while developing the theme. I hadn’t done anything involving PRs before but the Lemmy team dessalines and nutomic and other contributors have been very receptive so far and offering helpful suggestions. The changes are small but every bit counts, and when they trickle down to all users I am hoping it’ll be a positive change for many users.

  • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.alEnglish
    25·
    6 days ago

    All this said, there have also been some suggestions to make onboarding easier by directing new users to a hardcoded default instance. This may sound like a good idea at first but won’t work well in practice. Running such an instance would take significant time for administration and moderation, but we maintainers are already too busy. Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated. So if you want to get nontechnical users to Lemmy, the solution is to link them directly to a specific instance based on their interests.

    Wholeheartedly agree with this. Also people should get use to taking responsibility for their online experiences. Corporations have made people stupid to the point they reject autonomy.

  • abobla@lemm.eeEnglish
    21·
    6 days ago

    I can confirm. These guys are very open to pull requests that improve the platform.

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      14·
      6 days ago

      I do, although the sections in Mordor are a bit tedious to get through. But its worth it for all the details that were left out of the movies.

        • nutomic@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          I definitely plan to read the Silmarillion, because the history of middle earth sounds so interesting.

          • serfraser@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            5·
            6 days ago

            It’s worth it! I only read it last year and it gave me a whole new level of appreciation for the other stories.

            • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              6 days ago

              Once you’ve read the Silmarillion, there’s also The Children of Húrin. If you start from the Hobbit > LOTR > Silmarillion > CoH, it’s basically a steady progression of increasing epicness and tragedy.

              I suppose the Silmarillion is the most epic, but Children of Húrin is the most intensely tragic.

  • d00phy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    213·
    6 days ago

    This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the effort to make joining Lemmy easier has some downsides. One of the nicest things about these communities is how easy it is to have good conversations with internet strangers. I’ve grown to appreciate and hope for Lemmy not trying to be a Reddit replacement. In fact, I’m totally fine with “the masses” staying in Spez’s data harvesting machine. If, one day, Lemmy gets as popular as Reddit, I think it will inevitably have many of the same problems. It just theoretically won’t be selling your data for profit (one hopes, anyway). My wife isn’t super-techy, and I explained the concept of Lemmy to my wife in about 10 minutes. She set up an account in about 5.

    To me, it’s not that using or joining Lemmy is hard. It’s that a lot of people have come to loathe change. They’re told that Lemmy is “like Reddit,” so why leave Reddit, all their accumulated Internet points, and their familiar communities/echo chambers? Pretty much all of them also use other data-harvesting social media sites, so they mostly don’t care about that aspect. When I tell my friends about Lemmy I talk about how the size of the communities is really conducive to good conversations from wide enough ranges of opinions and experiences, compared to Reddit’s too much of everything including trolls.

    • d00phy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      6 days ago

      Forgot to add that I’m not saying Lemmy is perfect as is. For sure there are things that can be improved and tweaked. And by all means, people who want to contribute should be encouraged and applauded. I’m just saying that the community that’s grown here is pretty great, and growth coming from slow-ish trickle of new users probably wouldn’t threaten that. Right now, Lemmy has a good late-90s, early 00s community feeling, and I really enjoy it.

    • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      One of the nicest things about these communities is how easy it is to have good conversations with internet strangers.

      Maybe at that point people would use the Local feed more when they want to interact with their neighbors?

  • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
    18·
    6 days ago

    My proposal have been a little more complicated, but IMO works well for a BFU:

    • create some set of rules for “default instances” - every instance that wants to be in the list must follow them and will be periodically checked
      • I don’t have any particular rules in mind, but some examples might include active moderation team, obviously registrations being open and if you really want to make it easy, either no application question or having it automatically approved by an automod of some kind
    • on join-lemmy, present a registration form that will create an account on a randomly selected instance from the pool and redirect there afterwards
    • there should be a link somewhere for “experts” where you could link to the current wizard

    I’m willing to work on this if we can sit down and agree on the criteria for the pool. I can also ask my UX guy to help a little.

    Feel free to text me here or on Matrix if this is something you think is worth pursuing. I’d also appreciate if you let me know it’s not the direction you want to go in.

    • turtle [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      create some set of rules for “default instances” - every instance that wants to be in the list must follow them and will be periodically checked

      I don’t have any particular rules in mind, but some examples might include active moderation team, obviously registrations being open and if you really want to make it easy, either no application question or having it automatically approved by an automod of some kind

      The Mastodon Server Covenant is pretty much what you describe here, and could be used as a starting point: https://joinmastodon.org/covenant

  • lgsp@feddit.it@feddit.itEnglish
    182·
    6 days ago

    I don’t think that Reddit is so much better. The interface at the moment is full of ads that make i confusing. The only thing is the community search that is a bit cumbersome, but this is due to federation, and understood. On the other hand the federation with Mastodon/Friendica/whatever is super-powerful, hand honestly enjoyable

    Thank you for all your work

  • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    Let’s all be clear, Reddit is part of the surveillance state.

    You can’t log in without Google and Apple trackers being allowed. New Reddit has recapcha trackers on every page. Only old.reddit doesn’t track what you see, just what you write.

    Your thoughts and content belong to a publicly traded company focused on profits if you use reddit.