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.
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I don’t have much to say, but thank you for working on lemmy all these years.
I can complain about it a lot sometimes, but I’m very grateful for both the communities and the developers that kickstarted the fediverse, and for free too! So, thank you ❤️
If you or other people want to discuss the development of fedisoftware for beginners, or just growing as a whole you and everyone else are more than welcome at [email protected]!
“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.
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.
Hey if an old guy like me can figure it out its not hard .
They are entitled and don’t want to expend effort
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.
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!
Don’t forget about asking how the project is going too!
If you see anything…that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself.
Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated.
If I may make a proposition: You can look at how Pixelfed allows certain instances that meet certain standards to opt into being listed in the app for discovery, all electronically. My recommendation would be to have 2 choices for users on sign-up:
- A random choice from the list of approved instances, that’s rotated periodically to prevent any particular instance from being inundated with new signups
- “Choose a different instance” where users can enter their preferred one manually.
People can’t seem to make up their minds if it matters which instance you join. I really don’t think it does.
Are you under the impression that just everyone is a web developer?
The Lemmy documentation is just text
I dont know. Not sure what can be improved, because that site keeps sending the majority of users to the large instances. Its against everything the fediverse was supposed to be. Decentralized. Not 5 instances having all users.
But whatever. Im happy on my smaller instance. :)
Are you referring to join-lemmy.org? It has a randomized order for the instances, so usually smaller ones are near the top.
I guess I need to check it out again. If that is true, its amazing.
Unfortunately the people advertising lemmy on reddit and elsewhere rarely link join-lemmy.org, and direct people to join a few large instances. So we’ll likely keep having centralization problems for the forseeable future.
Join-lemmy.org can provide a subpar experience: https://lemmy.ml/post/24730483?scrollToComments=true
If something’s subpar about it, then do what’s recommended in this post. Open an issue on the repo, or contribute to a fix. It’s open source software.
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
Thank you for this post and encouragement. I am open to volunteering my time and talents to help people find Lemmy.
However, after the work is done, it would be fantastic if you all could invest in advertising. I know that Google and Bing aren’t great but if I had to guess, search trend for “reddit alternatives” is probably rising and Lemmy is in a great spot to provide reddit refuges a life raft.
Can start with people not directing anyone to the .ml, or .ml like instances for starters. Maybe even sticky that the top.
