As an outsider, please take these helpful suggestions:
The logging-in process is messed up. For the longest time I couldn’t log into any of the mobile apps (even though on the desktop it worked fine). The error messages were mostly not helpful.
Even now, I still get error messages that ask me to pick a language for some reason. This is after I’ve already typed up a comment and I am trying to post it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, but you could see how it would be a PITA when on mobile and all you wanted to do was write a short response.
Still no real idea what “instances” are and no idea if I am missing out on entire subs because I am on .world. No clue. Do people on .world only see this? 🤷
The layout on the website is barely passable. The link to go see a comment that was posted for you is just in an awkward location. I’m almost never sure what sub a post is coming from because the name of the person, the language it is in, and some other stuff is all fairly indistinguishable. Like seriously, there has to be someone on the Lemmy team that has some kind of graphic design background who could pipe in and spice up the UI a little.
There are random hangouts for seemingly no reason. Is it because of how much the Lemmy population has exploded over the last few weeks or problems with a link or what? Some feedback would be super helpful.
Why so many subs (are they called subs here?) with zero content. Not even like old content… literally go there and nothing is posted. At all. That is not conducive to growing a sub. If there are squatters who came here and loaded up on a bunch of sub names just to say they have them, and are not doing anything with those subs, then take the name back. No one is going to post a comment to a sub with zero threads. This is only hurting the community.
Still no real idea what “instances” are and no idea if I am missing out on entire subs because I am on .world. No clue. Do people on .world only see this?
‘Communities’ are akin to subreddits. ‘Instances’ are akin to reddit allowing other people to spin up their own version of reddit with their own ruleset, but still under the reddit umbrella; with other reddit-users being able to access other reddits. But, those ‘other reddits’ might decide hey we don’t like clowns so we are blocking clown reddit; clown reddit can no longer access the other reddits, without directly registering on them.
If you want to expand your lemmy experience, when you fire up lemmy.world, there is a setting at the top which defaults to subscribed (iirc), change this to ‘All’ and it will show posts from all other instances that aren’t defederated.
Also, you can see what instances lemmy.world blocks/federates by going to lemmy.world/instances . You can check if an instance blocks/federates lemmy.world by going to thatinstance.ml/instances
There are a few instances that try to avoid defederating except as a last resort. vlemmy.net was one but that went offline unceremoniously last week.
But there is no place to change it. And when you are trying to post, you’re not sure what to do. If you cancel, you lose what you wrote (obviously can save to clipboard), but even then in the app, I haven’t seen a place to change the language even if I wanted to. It’s one of those quirks that can turn lots of people off and want to go back to Reddit.
It’s in your settings. If you’re using an app that may be the problem. For sure, the first day or two I was confused by it. I have mine set to undetermined & English. The list is kind of odd how to select them. It’s been set it and forget it. Definitely a barrier to entry because it doesn’t really have an obvious purpose when onboarding.
As an outsider, please take these helpful suggestions:
The logging-in process is messed up. For the longest time I couldn’t log into any of the mobile apps (even though on the desktop it worked fine). The error messages were mostly not helpful.
Even now, I still get error messages that ask me to pick a language for some reason. This is after I’ve already typed up a comment and I am trying to post it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, but you could see how it would be a PITA when on mobile and all you wanted to do was write a short response.
Still no real idea what “instances” are and no idea if I am missing out on entire subs because I am on .world. No clue. Do people on .world only see this? 🤷
The layout on the website is barely passable. The link to go see a comment that was posted for you is just in an awkward location. I’m almost never sure what sub a post is coming from because the name of the person, the language it is in, and some other stuff is all fairly indistinguishable. Like seriously, there has to be someone on the Lemmy team that has some kind of graphic design background who could pipe in and spice up the UI a little.
There are random hangouts for seemingly no reason. Is it because of how much the Lemmy population has exploded over the last few weeks or problems with a link or what? Some feedback would be super helpful.
Why so many subs (are they called subs here?) with zero content. Not even like old content… literally go there and nothing is posted. At all. That is not conducive to growing a sub. If there are squatters who came here and loaded up on a bunch of sub names just to say they have them, and are not doing anything with those subs, then take the name back. No one is going to post a comment to a sub with zero threads. This is only hurting the community.
‘Communities’ are akin to subreddits. ‘Instances’ are akin to reddit allowing other people to spin up their own version of reddit with their own ruleset, but still under the reddit umbrella; with other reddit-users being able to access other reddits. But, those ‘other reddits’ might decide hey we don’t like clowns so we are blocking clown reddit; clown reddit can no longer access the other reddits, without directly registering on them.
If you want to expand your lemmy experience, when you fire up lemmy.world, there is a setting at the top which defaults to subscribed (iirc), change this to ‘All’ and it will show posts from all other instances that aren’t defederated.
Thanks probably the best explanation I’ve ever gotten. Thanks for that.
Also, you can see what instances lemmy.world blocks/federates by going to lemmy.world/instances . You can check if an instance blocks/federates lemmy.world by going to thatinstance.ml/instances
There are a few instances that try to avoid defederating except as a last resort. vlemmy.net was one but that went offline unceremoniously last week.
Admittedly the language thing is the most confusing thing for new users. Just leave it at undetermined.
But there is no place to change it. And when you are trying to post, you’re not sure what to do. If you cancel, you lose what you wrote (obviously can save to clipboard), but even then in the app, I haven’t seen a place to change the language even if I wanted to. It’s one of those quirks that can turn lots of people off and want to go back to Reddit.
It’s in your settings. If you’re using an app that may be the problem. For sure, the first day or two I was confused by it. I have mine set to undetermined & English. The list is kind of odd how to select them. It’s been set it and forget it. Definitely a barrier to entry because it doesn’t really have an obvious purpose when onboarding.
I use lemmy.world and wefwef on mobile, none of these problems
Android or Apple?
iOS