I'm worried this will not be enough in the long run.
Imagine Meta provides more original content, a higher user base, more engagement, more activity. That alone would make it interesting for many other users, further increasing their relative attractivity.
Additionally, they could invest in the codebase, and implement some of the community's dream features, some nice mod tools, search engine discoverability and whatnot. On a fork which lives on their instances, of course. Services which work if you federate with them.
They have the resources to rase the stakes higher and higher. The incentives are objective, real, advantages for users, communitites, mods and admins. Isn't it only a question of time / stake height until significant parts of the fediverse choose to cooperate for various reasons?
If they have any ability to post to the Fediverse or to track things they’ll do it all over again.
They have that ability, and always will have. They can create as many accounts as they like on as many instances as they like, or run as many instances as they like themselves, use incentivized individuals, or employees, or bots, or any combination of all of the above. No one can stop them, maybe even no one can spot them.
The only thing which is holding them back right now is lemmy/kbin still being too insignificant. If the network continues to grow, more and more big corps will see it as a market and an opportunity, and they will have plenty of ways to interact with it.
Once a project is forked away, you no longer have any control at all.
What does that mean in the context of lemmy's license? As I understand it, everyone is allowed to fork it away, but not allowed to change the license. Which allows everyone to fork it further away or back.
I don't understand what control means in this context. Isn't it a thing people can just modify and use, now and for all future?
Compare it to e-mail. If you want to switch provider you have to backup and restore your emails if you want to.
When moving to another mail provider, I can forward mails going to the old address to the new one.
When moving to another lemmy account (technically creating an unconnected second one), I have no way to be notified of replies to posts or comments I made with the old account.
There are a couple other use cases where the comparison doesn't really hold. My hopes are on Moving user profile to a new instance #1985, but it probably won't be implemented any time soon.
And there is another issue related to the first one. Not exactly the same, but being able to truly move to another home instance would do it for me.
or what I see are kbin users subscribed to technology on beehaw while you quote directly beehaw users?
I think so, yes (though still learning). From my point of view (lemmy.click, just 83 users):
- https://lemmy.click/c/technology@lemmy.ml - 19 subscribers
- https://lemmy.click/c/technology@beehaw.org - 17 subscribers
- https://lemmy.click/c/technology@slrpnk.net - 1 subscriber
I think this shows the number of lemmy.click accounts subscribed to these remote communities.
But when I open the communities in their home instances, I get a different picture:
- https://lemmy.ml/c/technology@lemmy.ml - 15.5k subscribers
- https://beehaw.org/c/technology@beehaw.org - 19.1k subscribers
- https://slrpnk.net/c/technology@slrpnk.net - 370 subscribers
I also have a couple of subscriptions pending to lemmy.ml communities for a few days now.
Thanks! If lemmy wants to grow (and I do want that), it better listens to people who share their struggle.
It is irrelevant wether we find that struggle justified, wether we deem him worthy of joining, wether his assessment of the situation is correct. Even an ill informed rejection can help us improve.
Most users who face similar problems will just go away, never come back and not share anything to learn from. This person shares their point of view, and that's a great resource to improve the user experience right from the welcome page.
This perspective is especially valuable, since once you managed to get through that process and familiarized yourself with the system, your view has changed. It can be hard to assume an uninformed perspective again. But we need to make lemmy accessible especially for this audience, because they are the only ones who can make it grow by joining.
So, what did we get?
- "The homepage is literally some bs about servers."
- "Where are all the discussions happening?"
- "This federated stuff is all nice and cool technically but what's the product?"
- He's looking for "Discussions. Alternatives for subreddits."
- "How do I search for Formula1 and Tennis?"
- "I created an account and it asks me to login again"
- "A link from search takes me to another server and asks me to login again"
- "If a human needs to explain how to use a platform [...]"
We'll come back to this later.
Let's compare the experience on https://www.reddit.com/ and https://join-lemmy.org/ from the point of view of an unfamiliar user who might want to create an account.
On reddit, without being logged in:
- biggest part of the screen in the middle is occupied by actual posts
- user can scroll for more content and already gets a feeling how the regular experience might be within the first seconds, even before creating an account. Comment section is accessible, posts can even be shared without being logged in.
- top part of the feed is four exemplary posts which draw further attention to actual content
- left panel is categorized subs, which gives an impression what kind of content can be expected, and acts as a search function for those who cannot put into words what they are looking for
- right panel is almost the same, categorized subreddits. It's hard to miss!
- top panel is a huge search box which can be used without leaving/changing the site
- bottom left and top right: Two big, bright orange buttons which start registration.
In short, reddit is filled with what most users come for, right from the start. It takes their wish so serious that there are many ways to check out the core content (center feed, four exemplary posts) or categories (left and right) or search (top, left, right).
This redundancy with slight variations can address different people who are used to different things. A person coming from an image-centered platform like instagram might go for the four exemplary posts which look like image thumbnails, while a person coming from a text-based forum will intuitively go for the center feed. Both ways directly lead to and familiarize with the core content without the need to log in.
The registration process is simple, the buttons are very visible and again redundant in opposing corners of the screen. Everything happens on one page which does not need to explain anything in text, because it is intuitively accessible.
On join-lemmy:
- biggest part of the screen is occupied by a rather technical explanation what lemmy is
- there is a hint of actual content in the background, but it is blurred out and inaccessible
- when I scroll to move the explanation away, I get more technial explanations which seems to address server admins, not users. A regular user might feel unwelcomed at this point. "Is this the right thing for me?"
- Two big buttons at the top: "Join a server" and "Run a server".
- No way to see how content is displayed, how it feels to interact with content.
- No way to search for content or communities. Does lemmy even have what I am seeking?
- When clicking on "Join a Server", a second lengthy, complicated page opens.
- The user is greeted with more explanation, including three links to more explanations.
- There is also a link to https://browse.feddit.de/. This is the first time users can check what content is available. It's a bulky view with roughly 2.4 hits per page. The biggest link in each hit opens an explanation box. The smaller link actually leads to content. This is the fastest way for new users from the welcome page to an experience similar to when they simply open reddit.com.
- Now users have to decide and choose a server and click "Join"
- No registration mask, instead they are redirected to the instance's main page.
- On this third page of their journey, users have to find the Login/Signup buttons again (which look like other buttons and are less visible than other buttons), and click one to start registration.
Let's revisit what your friend said:
- "The homepage is literally some bs about servers."
That is correct. Most of the information on https://join-lemmy.org/ seems to be geared towards people who are interested in running a server. This is not what people expect when they are looking for something like reddit as a user. This will most certainly scare some people away, or cause confusion.
Solution: Hide the tech talk. Address the regular crowd. People who want to run a server can manage to find it somewhere "hidden". People who want to share cat pics cannot.
- "Where are all the discussions happening?"
He shares his interest, and expresses feeling helpless in finding it. Until they discover a specific link on page 2 (and invest a couple more clicks), users cannot see what's going on inside lemmy, or wether there is even anything going on. Things which some newcomers honestly won't know at this point.
Solution: Bring our star, the content, center stage. This is what people come for. Don't make them search for it, we don't have to hide it.
- "This federated stuff is all nice and cool technically but what's the product?"
- He's looking for "Discussions. Alternatives for subreddits."
- "How do I search for Formula1 and Tennis?"
Expressed frustration: "This is not what I was looking for. Where is what I was looking for?" All the technical explanation cannot convey what a direct content presentation conveys in a few seconds. How does lemmy look like, what does it feel like, how can I use it, what people and topics are there?
- "I created an account and it asks me to login again"
He seemed to expect to be logged in after registration. Yeah, why not? Some sites do this, others do not. I also find it mildly annoying to log in after registration, to repeat myself.
- "A link from search takes me to another server and asks me to login again"
I spent 3 days learning lemmy and am still struggling with this. This will trip over so many users. https://midwest.social/c/cats will throw you out, but /c/cats@midwest.social hidden in a link works fine. Would be nice if lemmy could automatically do this for me when clicking on a link to another instance while being logged in.
- "If a human needs to explain how to use a platform [...]"
Absolutely right, that's a UX design smell. Your friend was lucky to have you to ask. Most users will be alone on their journey. A good portion will turn around when they find server talk where they expected a reddit scrolling substitute.
The process of choosing an instance should be simplified, be hidden from users. Advanced users can still have that freedom.
Sorry if I was harsh in my words at some points. It's not because I despise lemmy, but because I love it and want to stay here. But I also loved to have so much people and content around me on reddit, to be part of the one page people turn to when they are unhappy with Google results. I want lemmy to shine, and to grow. To achieve this goal, it is imperative to review how we approach new users, because there is no other way for us to grow but to win them. Let's help them help us. Make joining easy and fun.
It's always better to search first, in my opinion.
If a community is missing, and you don't feel like creating or running it yourself, a next step could be to talk about it. See if others share your interest, and maybe one or more people step up to make it happen.
There are maybe 4 or so ‘crawlers’, and the rest buys access to the part of their data they are willing to sell to others.
And then there is Yep. Just Yep.
You fine? Yep. You prefer being alone? Yep.
The first step is a UX disaster: https://join-lemmy.org/
Only 2 clicks / pages down the road you can start registering an account, and you don't see what the experience might be before that. Instead, you're being presented tech talk about servers.
You might argue it's not actually lemmy but just the landing page. I argue, it's so good at being a scarecrow, most people visiting lemmy haven't seen anything else except for that page.
The inner lemmy is pretty fine, I agree. Some parts are still confusing. For example, most people will not figure out they can search for content from within a specific community by carefully configuring the drop downs in the general search form. Most will look for the search directly attached to the community.