this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Iβm enjoying it a lot, but I am concerned about itβs staying power. Systems like Lemmy need continual engagement and growth, and I worry about the complexity being a barrier to entry compared to other services like twitter or Reddit.
God yeah, the complexity. Yesterday late at night I decided to "check out this lemmy thing real quick and make an account". Bad idea. I ended up on some lemmy server (?) that asked me to write a whole application to open an account before I figured out that there are different sites (?) where you can register and it somehow doesn't matter anyway? I am not very tech savvy (I still forget/don't get what a server is although I get a weekly explanation) and I've never really heard of lemmy before so somewhen around 1 am I was about to just give up because I was so confused. And this is just the beginning, I still need to figure out how to adjust everything, follow communities etc.
Someone actually said it spot on on Reddit in a random post saying the problem with Lemmy are Devs, they overcomplicate it to be "different" trying reinvent the wheel when there's no need. Like "Instances" just call them servers.. it's like learning a new language for the sake of being different, it's pointless and confusing for new users.
I like Lemmy but I think it's still too confusing a construct and not enough streamlining of new and different content. Will it change.. time will tell but I think if it doesn't quickly it will just be a niche thing people use as an alternative but nowhere close to where its trying to be.
Cmon man it takes a few days to get comfortable and another one to learn some details.
I made a post that was similar a week or so back that was fairly controversial where I advocated changing how the federation protocol works. I've been thinking about it more, and I think I have a solution to your concern (and mine) that keeps the admins feelings about federation and not allowing one instance to dominate in mind.
On Reddit, especially old.reddit, when you search at the top you actually get two different search results: subreddits matching %string% at the top, posts matching %string% at the bottom.
We should mirror that. The current search should be modified in the same structure and pump the search string into https://browse.feddit.de/ or implement it's process into the server code.
I think when someone types in android, getting a list of currently existing Lemmy communities with their respective populations and post counts is probably the easiest way to smooth out the learning curve.