I’m curious to get everyone’s thoughts on opportunities to improve!
More comments, in general. Many posts have tons of upvotes but zero comments so it’s hard to engage in a conversation.
Keep in mind that the same article often gets posted to multiple communities on multiple instances, dividing up the comment pool.
I asked someone i know why they didn’t join lemmy, their answer is lemmy is too fractured and they have to sub to multiple same community to get the full thing. I think it’s a quirk of fediverse/ap protocol, where each instance could have and want their own community, and some instance user would like to stay in their own instance as well.
I like this part of lemmy. You can easily toggle whether you want posts/communities from your instance or globally. And I agree that some of the communities are redundant but I’ve found that it is easy enough to follow similar communities so my feed is all content I like.
Yeah, i don’t mind that as well, i browse All instead of Subscribed so i’ll be seeing the same stuff anyway. For people who got really used to reddit though, it’s a challenge.
I view it as a benefit because it encourages a small world, tribal model which works better with human brains.
It’s definitely different however, so I can see some friction if it’s not what people are used to. Frankly I don’t want one topic with thousands of comments, most of which won’t get read.
I think one needs to transition away from the dopamine fueled high and focus more on what brings meaningful discussion and sharing of diverse opinions. With that said, I wouldn’t be opposed to a feature that allows users to quickly jump to the same discussion on other instances or communities.
Maybe there should be an option to join the various conversations together if a user wants to see more content. That sounds pretty difficult to manage, though.
I’d be happy even if it was just Reddit’s “other discussions” tab
A popular suggestion has been to implement the ability for communities across instances to ‘subscribe’ to eachother, which puts the networking of these communities in the hands of the moderators of that community.
I want that feature above all else.
That sounds like a reasonable way to handle it. Federated communities within federated instances.
can’t speak for others, but i’m mostly the quiet/introverted/lurker type…
sometimes i just feel like i have nothing valuable to add to the conversation
i will make an active effort to engage more tho
This is a good start :) thanks for the comment/contribution
If you do decide to engage, keep in mind that you’re speaking into one of several identical breakout rooms rather than a giant auditorium as on Reddit.
In real life meetings I find that smaller groups leads to better discussions.
I save posts to check them the next day for this reason. Sorting by new gets boring pretty quick :/
Sort by top - 6h. That’s where the good stuff is.
I sort by active, that usually helps
Yeah I’ve started to contribute more with comments as well. Sometimes just saying the obvious is a nice way to get the community going!
Agreed! Even a small comment gets the momentum going
That’s fair. I wonder if anyone has looked into the vote to comment ratio compared to other social media platforms. I’m curious how Lemmy compares
I did a little informal comparison between my posts and the ones at r/Superbowl, and whole the ratio was at least decently better at the time, I still get disappointed if I don’t get a few comments on each post.
The likes are great and all, but to me, that just kinda feels like I’m just checking off boxes. It’s the most basic form of approval.
Comments though are what really let me know making the posts are worth my time. It lets me know I’m reaching you guys enough to make you say “hey this is cool.” And actual questions or you sharing something about a life experience, etc is worth way more than a hundred upvotes because it lets me know I’ve triggered good feelings in you from something I posted and it makes me want to post a hundred more things to do that again.
I always make sure to thank my commenters and let them know by replying, they are doing something as important as I am by posting. Without them completing the other side of the equation, it’s just me telling into the void, and it’s boring for me and makes posting a chore. But by you saying literally anything positive, I know I’m having an impact on your day, hopefully in a positive way, and that encourages me to post more, making a positive feedback cycle that will keep this a good place to come.
You are right, upvotes are useless internet points but comments stay for future people looking for info. This was why Reddit was useful, finding an answer to a problem in a 7 years old post.
This is why I sort by new comments
Yeah, thats why i tried to leave as many comment as possible, even the low effort one. Sometime it just depend on the type of post as well.
so it’s hard to engage in a conversation.
Have you tried asking a question related to the original post’s content?
I do my part by providing my two cents fairly frequently. I try to balance it against not talking out of my ass too often.
More fun-type content.
I like Lemmy, but I feel constantly bombarded by depressing content and “comedy” poisoned by irony and sadness.
Yeah, I wish there was a “happy mode” on Lemmy for when I’m already feeling a bit of existential dread. I know it’s not really possible without doing expensive content scanning but I can dream.
Depressing content, and comments full of political extremism where even if you agree in principle, if you don’t take it to quite the extent the rest of them take it, they wanna crucify you.
Like…as much as my political opinions tend toward progressive, my time here has really gotten me to come around on why a lot of people elsewhere on the political spectrum can’t stand progressives.
I’ve never been someone who blocks people and I’ve never been into filtering posts on any site/platform. But there’s no shame in it here. It’s VERY intended for users to have that ability and not just use it when they’re being harassed. For a bit I was even considering using adblock filters to get block some keywords but that hasn’t been as much of a problem lately for me. But just a few communities and accounts are responsible for most of the doom and gloom.
Yeah this place is by far the most negative social media I’ve tried
I still think this is the biggest issue with lemmy right now. There should be a way for communities that are identical across instances that can connect where a post would be cross posted and connected with links to each instance it’s connected with.
I’d like all of the similar communities grouped so I can sub to one. It is annoying seeing the same content posted to multiple communities on different instances. It is also harder for new users to find.
I think we would have more active larger communities if they could all be grouped as one.
For example if we have gaming@domain1 , gaming@domain2 and gaming@domain3
I would prefer it was just gaming and all three synced the content and comments. If one node was to drop all of the content and comments would be there. There would be a larger more active community and less repetition. If a new gaming@domain4 joined it would be seeded with the existing content and sync any new content from that node.
I know it doesnt work like this but I think it would be nice if it did. I know if I go to a steamdeck subreddit I will find all the news related to that. Here I need to check the three or four that I’m subscribed to which is a pain point.
Yeah this is one of the things keeping me from using Lemmy as much. I am subscribed to multiple Steam Deck, Patient Gamer, and technology communities and they all have different levels of activity and I see a lot of duplicate posts.
I believe this would help a lot
Instance owners ought to clean up all the unused communities that were created during the Reddit exodus by inactive users/mods only wanting to hoard the names. They’re basically redirecting traffic from actual communities and into a void.
I wonder how often it happens that some user has a hobby/interest, and go search for a community for this interest. They’ll find an empty community and leave without posting.
My theory is that if the dead communities didn’t exist, people who actually care about the topic would create their own active communities.
When you search for a community in lemmy, by default, the results are ordered by subscribers. If there is an active community on the topic, it will appear above any of the others, so the only way people are finding empty communities is if all of the communities are empty
Users.
I know that it’s a core design feature of Lemmy and the underlying federation, but it’s pretty annoying that multiple communities with the same name can exist on different instances while not necessarily following the same ruleset or even purpose.
The small user base gets even more fractured that way, a lot of posts get reposted to multiple instances as well.
So you either:
- subscribe to one or two communities and miss a lot of potentially interesting conversations
- subscribe to more communities and get flooded with reposts and potentially stuff you don’t want to see due to a different ruleset
You nailed my issue with the fundamental idea of lemmy. It’s like having a party at ten people’s houses with a tenth of the normal amount of guests.
Some sort of user-controllable merging of community views would honestly alleviate most of this:
Adding something like user-specific topics, e.g. allowing the user to consolidate all posts from instanceA.communityA and instanceB.communityA and even instanceA.communityB into a custom community view shouldn’t be all that difficult to implement (he stated naively, having never looked at the codebase).
A great addition would also be to allow the merging of posts, e.g. show all comments of all threads under one post where the post URL matches and/or the title matches.
This isn’t exact, since multiple communities can discuss the same topic from completely opposite viewpoints, but at least allowing the user to consolidate stuff and control it would be huge.
On a user level I agree it’s a very good feature (if configurable, not just an automatic grouping of similarly named communities). For merging post, not sure I want that, perhaps a bit too smart… Now if many users want this why not (as long as there is a setting to turn it off ;)).
Somehow prevent multiple posts with the same content from showing up in my feed consecutively. Some people post to multiple communities (which is fine, if the content is relevant), but sometimes I see 3-4 identical posts by the same person in various communities, one after the other on my feed.
I’ve blocked some accounts who have done this excessively, but in many cases it’s valid.
Now that cross posting directly is getting more support it would be cool for Lemmy to have a setting where it marks ALL cross posts as read as soon as one of them is. That way they would be filtered out by the “show read posts” setting along with the original.
I would love to reduce cross posted dups too
Posts from ultra niche topics I’m interested in that inspire me to do things I would not otherwise. That is what I miss most.
I hope that the new “scaled” search helps solve this very issue
Image galleries in posts. Having multiple images in posts is currently extremely glitchy depending on the client, so having a central solution would be helpful.
Lemmy needs more small communities.
As someone who started and is extremely active in a small community, I find Lemmy actively hostile to the point where I’m considering closing up after less than a month.
The number of indignant replies and comment-free downvotes we get inundated with continually is… disheartening.
People want content, but actively detract from any content that doesn’t cater to them. It’s hard to take.
Lemmy is the small community lmao
That’s not exactly what I meant. Aside from a decent Trekkie presence, I don’t think we’ve seen smaller Reddit communities leave for Lemmy.
Oh sorry, I knew what you meant. I was just being tongue in cheek haha. But you’re right, we don’t have any niche presence and that’s what made reddit what it was.
I recently showed up here from Reddit and it’s pretty disappointing. I found a few interesting-to-me niche communities, but most of them seem to have a dozen or so posts from 8 months ago and then nothing. That timing coincides with Reddit’s API changes, so I’m left to assume there was a burst of activity driven here at that point but that it fizzled out quickly.
The infrastructure and UX here seem ready, but the network effect is very slow for a long time. Without a lot more real users (and diverse niches), it will be difficult to attract and retain a lot more real users. The initial confusion about federation and technical concepts also needs help to get them started, but the niches are needed for retention.
Tldr, I don’t want to read about technology and Star Trek, I need cast iron and Costco, 3D printing and landscaping, cycling and idiots in cars.
Users. Sites like reddit and communities like Lemmy get their strengths (and weaknesses, but that’s ok) from the size and contributions of their populations. Lemmy doesn’t have enough yet.
Searchability. Not that Reddit’s is good, but it’s better especially when using a search engine.
Lemmy search improvements related to the UI or search results themselves?
Different commenter here.
I’d like ‘search by post name’ and ‘search by keyword in discussions’ features added to Jerboa UI.
I have to switch out to Voyager to do these searches.
- I am sticking with Jerboa because it is what I started with and has a cute icon. Also the longest running lemmy-app in the Fdroid repos, The original.
Search results.
More friendliness.
Friendship and happy-ha-ha it’s strictly prohibited!
Sometimes this place makes me wonder about that.
I like to engage in nuanced topics more than I like posting or commenting on random memes. Not necessarily to argue but to learn.
But if you post a comment in a thread that opposes the hive mind - heck even if you suggest the issue might be more complicated - you will accumulate down votes which I presume risks your comment visibility in other threads at a later time.
I wish the voting system could somehow be altered so that there’s a useful/thoughtful indication separate from the “I agree/ I disagree” button.
Oh man… you’re basically speaking directly to why I made our small community (consider this a personal invite). As I said elsewhere, I find Lemmy actively hostile.
The number of indignant replies and comment-free downvotes we get inundated with continually is… disheartening.
People want content, but actively detract from any content that doesn’t explicitly cater to them. It’s hard to take.
Pretty cool idea, just wanted to say I agree that Reddit, most tech site comment sections, and even Lemmy unfortunately really fall into this hive mind mentality. Saw a Reddit post on first time home owner or whatever that community is, people flaming the guy because he had the audacity to have a pickup truck with an American flag decal, just so ingrained in the culture. Truck bad! America bad!
Right on! Subscribed and happy to see the effort
