this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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I really want to like lemmy, but it's difficult. I'm new to all this fediverse thingy, and I might just have old habits and perceptions how things should work but... I keep seeing the same posts more than once, iOS experience is not that good really, sometimes I see dead posts from 2 years ago for some reason, despite having subscribed to like 30 communities there aren't that many new posts to read.

Part of it probably that subreddits had millions of people so a lot of posts every minute, but it still feels underwhelming.

It's not as doomscrolly. Maybe I should find something else to waste my time on haha

What is your experience with lemmy? Maybe I just do things wrong. Let me know

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[–] zombiepete@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I definitely am having a tough time making the transition. It still feels a bit chaotic to me.

[–] pampoon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I was the same way the first couple of days after starting, but I can tell you that after a week into using the platform it has gotten a lot less chaotic. I have learned most of the basics and figured out what are the features and what are the bugs, so I’m not so lost all the time trying to figure out how it all is supposed to work.

And I’m really enjoying it! It feels like a fresh start, and it keeps me engaged in the community and helping to build a better place for anyone else who is looking for alternatives. It gets better!

[–] tRFRmrNe8Nj2Kimc@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I know what you mean. The biggest issue I'm having is finding and subscribing to communities that are not a part of the instance I joined with.

I kept seeing links that listed communities I was interested in subscribing to, but then it would ask me to log in, I'd put in my credentials, only for the log in to not work. I finally realized I had to make a new account with that instance, and then i could log in and join it. I don't want to have to juggle between 3 or 4 accounts to enjoy content, plus much if it is duplicated as some instance are linked, but others are not.

Also I use Jerboa to browse lemmy, don't have a PC, and would rather use an app than my web browser(Brave).

[–] over_easy@dataterm.digital 3 points 2 years ago

You don’t have to create an account for each instance. You hsve to get the link for the specific community you want to subscribe to/interact with and search for it within your home instance.

[–] arin@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

yeah seriously

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[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I just love it, but you have to make sure to subscribe to a lot of communities from lots of different instances.

Im also on Android which I think has a better mobile client.

Beehaw is very chatty, join their popular communities. :)

[–] CleanDefinition@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example. Lemmy should prevent this, community names should be unique, it should have an index of all the Lemmy Fediverse where instances can lookup if a community exists instead of waiting for a user to import that community to his instance. Something similar to what BTC does with the decentralized ledger.

[–] dogmuffins@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

The biggest problem I see is fragmentation, people are creating the same community in different instaces, /c/Piracy for example.

I agree, to an extent. You're right in that if you were part of the vibrant community of /r/piracy then it's miserable to see it shatter here on lemmy. That said, this only applies if you're expecting lemmy to be a 1 for 1 reddit replacement. For this type of community to remain cohesive, /r/piracy would have had to spin up their own instance and in /r/piracy direct everyone to lemmy.piracyinstance.whatever.

You can't really "fix" this in a central way because even if you did, it would be trivial to create an instance that would allow duplicate community names. Also, I can see a lot of use cases for lemmy which do not intend to be federated.

That said, it's not necessarily as big a problem as it appears, if you just accept that this is how the fediverse works. There's no single source of control, so of course people can create 147 different /c/piracy communities if they wish to. Once you accept that, then it's not really that difficult to subscribe to all the /c/piracy communities you can find.

The problem itself could be diminished by a few new features which I feel certain will emerge in the future:

  • linked communities, where one communities content is syndicated to another. So if you post in !selfhosted@lemmy.world then you also post in !selfhosted@lemmy.ml. This would work differently to cross-posting, all comments would be reflected on both instances.
  • grouped communities, where you can subscribe to a group of /c/selfhosted communities with one click, so you see them all in your feed.
[–] Ghast@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Having 'no single source of truth' is part of the joy.

If you're not happy with /r/cars moderators banning everyone who drives a Skoda, then you're out of luck. Here in federation land, you can just go to a different lemmy.something/c/cars place.

Of course you can still follow and interact with all the /c/cars communities from any Lemmy instance (and interact a little from Mastodon).

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[–] TeddE@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

In my opinion, were in the 'keep swimming' fishing boat scene from Nemo.

Reddit wants to stay the 'homepage of the internet' but also force everyone to go through their tools for ad bucks.

If we succeed, we can bust our communities out of the centralized net and reform on the other side.

We fail by not working together here today in this moment, we have to use this event to convince the average person to switch now, we might not get another opportunity like this.

[–] YahahaYouFoundMe@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree, I think it has a lot of potential, but the difficulty in discovering other communities is a barrier that most won't want to cross. Having to manually search a specific string in order to subscribe is just too cumbersome. I hope that improves. I think if discoverability was better, everyone would be here and interacting. But it's too different that I could see most giving it a quick try and then giving up. Im an addict though so I'm muddling through it. I think people here don't really realize what the average user is like, and how most don't even know that third party apps exist.

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[–] arthur@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 years ago

Any new platform will have far less content to begin with. And far less tools. I hope that people do create apps like Infinity, Relay and Apollo for Lemmy soon (or that Jerboa grows to that quality level).

The content will come, as Reddit becomes a shell of it's former self to satisfy the VCs.

[–] Noedel@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Does anyone know why so many subs I've subscribed to say pending? Does a mod need to approve it?

[–] jcb2016@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I Think its a bug. if you subscribe to lemmy.ml communities it will say waiting or something else. but if you actually check your communities, you are actually subscribed to them. It's happening to me as well.

[–] candyman337@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

Give it some time, you'll start to see more and a bigger variety of posts. Additionally, change your sort of posts once in awhile, and enable the "all" selection and you'll see a bigger variety of posts

[–] Awoo@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

One of your issues is probably sorting by Active instead of sorting by Hot. A major difference in the experience on Lemmy is the "Active" sort method being the default.

[–] Brad_Brace@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The mobile browser version is pretty much unusable for me. I select view All, then organize by either Hot or Active, and what I get is an endless stream of posts, but newly made and from two years ago (so, neither Hot not Active). And the page becomes unresponsive because of the endless stream.

The app works better but kept timing out when trying to upvoted stuff. Just updated to see if that fixes it.

So far, I gotta say squabbles is working better for me as a reddit alternative.

[–] pfannkuchen_gesicht@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago

I hope they disable the live-update stuff soon.

[–] manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Its hard for readers early on. You need lots of people to fill the feed. Get busy or wait for people to get things addressed and pipelines running.

Its mainly UX, it will come in time.

important to note, none of this made itself (even reddit); it took people using and contributing.

[–] Potato_in_my_anus@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Yes, you' re right, I've been a Redditor for more than 16 years and have seen many subreddits come and go. Even today, there are subreddits like Android that only get 200 or 300 upvotes on a good day.

[–] Dewie99@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I had the same problem of seeing posts more than once or consistently when viewing the site.

I had to dig under the Menu, click onto my profile name, select Settings, and make some changes.

Under that page I changed “Type” to “Subscribed” (Default was Local) and “Sort Type” to “Top Day” rather than “Hot”. Then make sure to click “Save”

This seems to have improved for me a bit.

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[–] gravalicious@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Be the change you want to see. Start posting in the communities you enjoy for others to check out. If you're here just to scroll and not contribute, Lemmy won't improve quickly. If you wait until it gets to be another Reddit, you're not helping out the community.

[–] Azzu@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 years ago

I mean the user base is less than 1% of reddits. So of course you're going to have less posts. You're relying on people for browsing, you either can chose to be content with how much people are posting, or get to posting yourself.

[–] motcho@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I mean having 1 less thing to doomscroll on is good innit

[–] liontigerwings@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

The long and short of it is that it is rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation that can get better over time. It definitely needs some UI improvements and better onboarding

[–] BromSwolligans@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I'm warming up to it. Actually, I was never not warm to it, but the learning curve is real. I am on the website right now because the iOS app MLem, which is in beta, doesn't (as far as I can tell) have a way to search for other communities. But I want to shout that creator out, because I think it's difficult, thankless work, and I really appreciate their effort. The fact there is an app for iOS at all is a wonderful start. Who knows how solid it will be a year from now?

[–] legion@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

It's not going to replace Reddit overnight. Those communities have to be built here. If people stick around, it will happen.

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