Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago
    1. The syntax of linking to users, posts, communities etc. is hard to keep a mental grip on. I know they couldn’t exactly copy reddit’s u/ for users and r/ for subreddits, but ! for communities and @ for users isn’t as schematic. I think it’s why you see it used less than on Reddit. And if you start to type a username, and an autocomplete window pops up, it inserts that format in brackets followed by a URL in parenthesis. To the right of the text box I’m typing in, I see, and I’ll approximate this as best I can:

    Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world

    asklemmy@lemmy.world

    Neither has the exclamation point reminding you how to use that feature. My bipolar ex girlfriend had a more consistent UI than that.

    1. Linking to posts and comments is just pure moon logic. Follow me here:

    This Post is stored on lemmy.world, right? Where is the comment I’m currently writing stored? on lemmy.world, or sh.itjust.works?

    @kibiz0r@midwest.social commented on this post, I’m going to use it as an example. There are two buttons next to their username. Both have the hover over tooltip “link”.

    The chain looking one gives me this URL: https://sh.itjust.works/post/27359355/14761082

    The…fedigon? What’s the name of the 5-pointed rainbow fediverse icon? looking one gives me this URL: https://midwest.social/comment/13230476

    If I wanted to refer to kibiz0r’s comment in some other thread somewhere else, which of those links should I use? I figure in most cases I’m addressing an audience of the entire fediverse not just my fellow sh.itheads, so why would I ever use the first link? What does someone from lemm.ee see when they click on either of those links? Do they get to see it through their own account on their instance, or do they get linked directly to another instance? This really breaks the idea of “one account, whole fediverse.”

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.eeEnglish
    85·
    8 days ago

    It’s too fractured, posts in one community on one instance have separate comments and interaction to the same post in the same community on another instance, even if you use crossposts properly, and it clutters up your feed with multiple of the same post

    • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      8 days ago

      This is a big one. Its probably doomed to imperfection and hold out Mods who don’t want to do it but I think some kind of Community Sync option would be huge.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      16·
      8 days ago

      One problem is that the API call that returns the feed doesn’t provide crosspost information (unless that’s changed in 0.19.4+ since i’m still developing against 0.19.3).

      Crossposts in the feed have to be done client side, and you can only “roll up” ones that have the same URL (Tesseract can optionally roll up on identical titles if there’s no URL). However, that’s limited to just the ones that come through in the same fetch (unless you store all posts locally, which is something I’m considering in the future for offline support; most apps don’t).

      The API call that populates the /post page does provide that crosspost data, and I’ve thought about making an option to combine the comments from each into one “megapost”. But there are a few problems with that:

      1. Officially, crossposts are only compared against the URL. The crossposts may have different titles, and one or both may have different text in the post bodies. Which do you display?

      2. Culture clashes. Let’s say there’s an article posted called “Ford Releases Their New Monstrosity 5000”. It gets posted to c/cars and c/fuckcars by different people with different intentions.

      The tone of the comments would be wildly different since the two communities are basically ideologically opposites. The replies to comments that came in from c/fuckcars would be responding to car enthusiasts from c/cars and vice-versa. It would basically be a form of soft brigading.

      1. It would be confusing for moderators to have multiple communities’ comments in the same post. What flies in one may violate a rule in another. Mods would only be able to take action against those in their community and not all.

      I’ve wanted to do a feature like that for a while now, but every time I’ve tried to plan it out, it always seems like it would just make things worse. Even with indicators as to which community the comment came from, it’s still not ideal.

    • RagnarokOnline@programming.dev
      81·
      8 days ago

      …is it weird that I actually like this part of it? It feels like it allows there to be different “flavors” of communities, and I can decide which flavor I like and which one I don’t.

      I can see how it would get frustrating as a poster trying to figure out which community will get the most reach.

      • Paradachshund@lemmy.today
        6·
        8 days ago

        I don’t think it’s weird. Right now it probably isn’t great cause the pool of commenters is already small, and this dilutes it further, but I think in a world where we had plenty of people in all those communities it would be fine.

        It does suck on the posting aide, though, and it also seems like there might be some use to a tool/feature that merges them somehow so you’re viewing it all together and respond to whoever you like in one place.

    • kozy138@lemm.ee
      5·
      8 days ago

      Reddit has the same issue. People will post an article in like 6, somewhat related subreddits and the feed would be quite repetitive.

    • bullshitter@lemmy.ml
      3·
      8 days ago

      What the hell I didn’t even know this existed. I just chose all posts and thought I was seeing the aggregate content from every instance. Also, Seeing the usernames (with different instances on it), it made me believe everyone’s interactions are saved and visible.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      That usually happens when there’s a LW world community and then the alternative

      Not sure why the posters on LW want to keep those active when the alternatives are more popular (e.g. !showsandmovies@lemm.ee has 2.4k monthly active users, !television@lemmy.world has 1k), and LW centralization is causing federation issues with aussie.zone but that’s why they are both kept alive.

  • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    38·
    8 days ago

    If a post is deleted for any reason it nukes everything, even the comments.

    I can’t go back and view any comments that I was replying to or that I had saved, I can only see my own comment.

  • rovingnothing29@lemmy.world
    362·
    8 days ago

    Its always about one of two things:

    1. Instances going down forever. - kbin, even though its not lemmy, had a more appealing UI to me and my little brother. We’re on fedia now, but I only really use it to lurk when Lemmy.world won’t load randomly. I don’t think he even uses it at all anymore.

    2. De-federation. - Beehaw caused several other people I know IRL to go back to reddit within a week. The timing was so perfect to wreck the API boycott that I’m almost convinced the Beehaw mods work for reddit. “Everything was broken” and now lemmy is dead and gone forever in their eyes, some even assuming the whole thing is literally gone now. They’re not willing to try again.

    • glimse@lemmy.world
      10·
      8 days ago

      Nah, I have a different gripe:

      When the reddit exodus happened, Lemmy was flooded with copycat communities for every popular subreddit. That’s fine with me. But what’s not fine is that very few of these communities use the same posting rules (if any at all) so they’re homogenized. Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?

      I have another one that’s not specific to Lemmy but absolutely applies: meme “communities” where it’s all reposted content. I used community in quotes because these communities/subreddits/Instagram accounts are just…meme archives. You’ll find the same shit in every single meme archive on the internet. It feels like it’s less about sharing and more about having the biggest bucket.

      • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?

        On Reddit at least, NSQ was supposed to have a “well, that might seem a stupid question” gist to it. But I agree that nowadays on Lemmy they are the same.

      • rovingnothing29@lemmy.world
        11·
        8 days ago

        Reddit means pointless or stupid repetition (I forget which). I guess that whole homogenized thing is baked in if they were to migrate.

        • glimse@lemmy.world
          4·
          8 days ago

          As much as I hate what reddit has become, it was a LOT less of a problem over there. And despite its reputation for having power tripping mods, the communities with strictest rules were almost always the best ones

          A well-moderated community is a good community online. Self policing doesn’t work when it’s thousands of strangers

  • LouNeko@lemmy.world
    31·
    8 days ago

    Not enough video game communities. I think that was a huge part of Reddits initial success. Even to this day I still search “Problem + /reddit” on google whenever I have issues in a game. Reddit often holds the core community off a video game. It’s often detrimental to a games success to have a Reddit community. Lemmy has communities for some games, but they are mostly inactive or have only 10-60 users. So don’t even have the latest patch notes posted.

  • Nytixus@kbin.melroy.org
    26·
    8 days ago

    When you block someone, you can still see that they replied to you. I don’t want to know of their existence period, that’s why I’m blocking them and they shouldn’t have a chance to respond to me period. It’s not blocking if they can reply to me and I still see a notification that they did.

  • bluGill@fedia.io
    3210·
    8 days ago

    The politics is very left wing and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

  • Pechente@feddit.orgEnglish
    19·
    8 days ago

    The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting. Sure, there are great alternative interfaces but people will be turned off before they could check them out. Also, it’s usually the first thing you see when someone’s sharing a link.

    There not being an official app is also something that will confuse non-tech users.

  • Sunshine @lemmy.caOPEnglish
    171·
    8 days ago

    The fact that many on the internet haven’t gotten past the largest hurdle, creating a Lemmy account.

    We’re currently at 462k created accounts.

    • Paradachshund@lemmy.today
      6·
      8 days ago

      I said this a while ago on another thread, but if I was a Dev on the project I would be working to create a website that automatically signs you up for an instance. The high level concept is instances would opt into this pool, the user would simply put in their username like any regular website, and then the system would create them an account on whichever instance was best for them (maybe based on ping/trying to spread population around).

      This would majorly reduce the barrier to entry in my opinion, because a lot of people just want to browse, and don’t care about the federation aspect at all.

      • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        Which instances would you put into this pool besides lemm.ee and lemmy.zip?

        • lemmy.world is too large
        • sh.itjust.works is a non neutral name (most people probably won’t mind, but some others might be deterred)
        • beehaw.org is behind and deferated
        • lemmy.dbzer0.com andn discuss.tchncs.de have a name that can be hard to remember
        • programming.dev is topic-oriented
        • lemmy.ca, feddit.nl, feddit.org and sopuli.xyz are country/language-oriented
        • lemmy.blahaj.zone is queer-oriented, not sure they want people who don’t support queer people to join
        • other instances are probably not busy enough to have all the communities subscribed

        https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/ filtered by MAU

        • jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 days ago

          I guess another problem is, larger instances are more likely to be reliably up, if you randomly signed people up to a smaller instance running in someone’s bedroom thant they switch off at night then that user’s experience is going to be terrible, but if you combat this by only having large instances in that pool then the large instances get larger and smaller instances will essentially freeze at their current size because the main way of signing up would become this portal that assigns you to instances rather than specifically joining an instance. It might encourage the fediverse to become considerably less federated and a lot more centralised.

          • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            There is going to be an equilibrium between the number of users and the number of instances. At the moment, with 22 instances with more than 300 monthly active users, we are doing okay.

    • RagnarokOnline@programming.dev
      5·
      8 days ago

      This one is my biggest challenge too… I wish there was, like, a “trial” instance that folks were automatically signed up for and then after 30 days they had to switch and find another instance.

      Once you’re in the door it’s lovely, but that first barrier to entry scares people off.

  • GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
    16·
    8 days ago

    When you block someone, all the subsequent comments made to that person’s comment are also unable to be viewed.

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
    194·
    8 days ago

    When they post asking for help with Windows and get an entire thread of answers from obnoxious elitist wankers who couldn’t even decide on a distro between them

  • AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
    151·
    8 days ago

    Can’t filter out non-English communities. On any given day, I could scroll through my feed and a third of them would be languages I can’t read. I wish I could, but I can’t.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      8 days ago

      You can set your languages in the settings. As the warning say, make sure to keep “Undetermined” check along English

      • AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 days ago

        I use the Connect app to browse Lemmy and I didn’t see such a setting. I’m guessing I have to do this on desktop. I haven’t logged in through there since I signed up but I’ll check it out, thanks.

    • SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
      5·
      8 days ago

      I have to block the subcommunities one by one, and then block them again and again for every other instance that hosts that sublemmy

    • steeznson@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 days ago

      Personally quite like reading things in other languages, just like a paragraph or so, and then checking my comprehension afterwards with an online translator. Only really partially works for Western European languages though!

  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
    166·
    8 days ago

    Too many terrorist simps, too much mod abuse, too much disinformation, too many Tankies, discovery of communities is hard with how federation works and kinda requires third party apps.

    • Nytixus@kbin.melroy.org
      23·
      8 days ago

      I believe it’s just obnoxious trolling users who’ve been banned multiple times from Reddit now come flooding here to pull their shit again.

  • kalkulat@lemmy.world
    5·
    7 days ago

    It can be hard to find the right community to post a link in. Figuring out the rules and knowing who’s reading them (and sometimes what they’re really about) might cause someone to give up. (Especially when people complain about ‘this isn’t the place for that’ without stating the better alternative.)