Asklemmy

Confusing. Took me a while to figure out how to reply to this

I'm a bit confused. Like some of the top comments, I've run into problems with how links work when interacting with instances other than my home instance on Mastodon before, and while I haven't been on Lemmy very long, I've already come across that problem but worse. At least on Mastodon, I can just copy/paste the Toot URL into my instance's search box and it comes up. If I get a link to a post on Lemmy I have no idea how to interact with it from my instance.

Some other issues:

At least on my instance, URLs are extremely vague. Reddit makes it easy to glance at the URL to see which subreddit you're on. On Lemmy I would ideally want to be able to see both the home instance of the post and the community within that instance. Instead I get just a single unique ID.

The way that instances sort seems to be different? Or at least there's something going on with sorting that confuses me. When viewing this post on my home instance, the second top comment is by @eldrichhydralisk@lemmy.sdf.org, which is the comment I was referencing earlier. But when I click the little colourful connected graph to go to what I presume is the OP's home instance, that post is way down the list and the second top comment is from "Craving0496". Which is another confusing point. I've noticed both here in this thread, and on the main community of my home instance that I signed up to participate in, some users have an @ at the start of their name, and some don't. I don't know why.

Discoverability is definitely also a big issue for me. On Reddit I could just think of a topic I want to explore and go to old.reddit.com/r/. Or I can try variations of the name of that topic to find more options or if my first search doesn't work. Here I have to think which instance to try for that topic, and between the general-purpose instances and the specific ones, as well as the various different ways of phrasing the topic name, it's a huge space to explore. If I want stuff about programming, I might try /r/programming, /r/programmer, /r/programmers, /r/coding, /r/code, etc. on Reddit. On Lemmy I try all 5 of those community names, multiplied by the 10+ major instances, plus programming.dev and maybe other niche instances. If multiple of those are active, then when I'm searching for specific content, or wanting to start a discussion, I might have to do that multiple times across those communities in different instances.

I definitely want this to work. I love the idea of federated instances, and I want a place where I can go to be part of a great community without the bullshit Reddit is currently doing. And I'm going to give Lemmy a really good try. But if I had to guess, I'd say I'm not confident in its ability to provide that.

I posted a comment, one of my first, about something I think would vastly improve the user experience. I stand by it 100%, what I describe there was by far the most confusing part for me. I think the new user guide in general could use a pass-over by people who aren't tech savvy and are going to be more "casual" users, right now it's quite long and IMO a bit too technical for most people. It's too much all at once.

Now that I'm past that, I'm finding it quite similar to reddit. The biggest "problem" so far is that it's so small, so a lot of the small reddit communities I was in are non existant. I'm not comfortable moderating (I don't really have the time), so I won't make them myself, but I will miss them. Tbh for some things I'll probably still use reddit on desktop (until they kill old reddit) but lemmy on mobile.

My biggest concern from the beginning, and the reason I joined a big and established instance, is what will happen to people's accounts if their instance gets taken down by the creators. To me that seems like a kinda fundamental flaw here. I'm really not sure how or if it could be fixed, either.

I'm loving a the idea and finding a bunch of nice people in communities :) The only thing I'm finding is that things seem to be creaking a lot, as I'm getting a lot of timeouts and such when I'm using Jerboa to upvote and search.

All in all though, it's great :)

It was meh the first ~week that I've mostly been using it anonymously via Jerboa. There just wasn't all that much stuff to read. But once I've spun up my own instance and federated with a few dozen communities - man, it's looking amazing! It's still so much better in a browser to manage everything, but simply lurking is now perfectly viable via the Android app.

In terms of functionality, I'd love to have a search feature such that I can search for individual posts matching my search query. I don't think we can do that currently.

Does the federated structure make this difficult/impossible though?

I’m really enjoying the interface! I browse mobile on Chrome. I hope to see lots of people stick around and build some great communities.

Pleasantly surprised that most people are friendly, polite, and positive here - you never know what to expect when you make the switch.

I’m not very tech-savvy so it took a little bit to find my instance, but now it’s been smooth sailing.

Great so far. I am on .word shit just works and kbin. Trying to decide which one I like more and as a fail safe during downtime of one instance. But getting a hang of lemmy (and kbin) I like it so far after 7 years of daily Reddit.

Out of all the fediverse things, subreddits translate most well to instances, so it's less confusing than say mastadon, I'd say.

If you're interested in reading more thoughts and comments, there was a massive thread on the same subject the other day:

https://sh.itjust.works/post/5137?scrollToComments=true

It's pretty cool so far. Takes some getting used to, little buggy here and there, but nothing intolerable. People are more respectful on here. On reddit and most all other platforms, I just lurked for the most part to avoid getting "aKsHuAlLy'D" by some angry poster. It's chill here and it's got potential ^-^

Just joined Lemmy, logged out of my reddit account last night. I'm done with reddit, they've fucked around for too long. 13 years on that site for them to absolutely fuck us.

I'm very much enjoying it here though, I can lurk (while still upvoting to ensure I participate), I can get a lot of the same stuff here. Less commentary, but that'll change as this place grows. Unless reddit cedes and spez fucks off, I doubt I'll go back. Thanks for accepting me Lemmy, y'all are dope.

I think it's great so far. I'm a reddit refugee who decided to leave that place when I couldn't use my third-party client (Sync). It feels all new in here and I really like it.

I like it, but the Android app (Jerboa) has some annoying bugs.

I'm still very much in the kicking the tires phase but I'm generally liking it. Looking over all the communities is kinda like walking down a busy street full of shops the first time. So many possibilities! Who knows how many will actually become places I use?

Already debating if I start communities I want to see or just give it more time to maybe find it on another instance or wait for someone else.

Oh yeah, also waiting for mobile apps. I feel like that's going to be hugely important given how I tend to consume this type of content.

I personally think that Aaron Schwartz would be happy to know we are here today.

Something that I will call out is that I really appreciate the live changes in the thread on the website itself. Makes interacting with comments and everyone a lot easier.

It's a bit more complicated than what I'm used to but I'm actually really enjoying learning more about how it works. I've been largely checked out of all but a handful of obscure subreddits for a while now

It's turning out confusing. Like I created an account on lemmy.world. Then I saw kbin existed and came over here... or went over there? And created a new account, with the same name. But now I'm seeing that the stuff I comment here... there... on kbin anyway, show up also on lemmy, so now apparently I have two accounts for the same stuff? Except I didn't saw a way from lemmy to log in on kbin with the account from over there. If that's even something that can be done. Kbin looks friendlier. Actually... am I writing this on kbin or on lemmy... what the fuck is going on? Where the hell am I?

Support for GIFs is a bit lacking but otherwise its going great :-)