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

    • vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      91·
      2 months ago

      Have you tried being more in to US Politics, Linux and Privacy? I’ve found several very vibrant communities for those here.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, I think the main issue with that is both people watching the All feed and then complaining they get to see all the posts about all topics. And also people asking their Linux questions on c/asklemmy and other general purpose communities. I’ve given up on the US politics, though. That’s something we currently all have to go through. Remedy might be a keyword filter or turning off internet and TV for the coming weeks.

  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.eeEnglish
    52·
    2 months 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

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
      13·
      2 months 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
      6·
      2 months 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
        2·
        2 months 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
      3·
      2 months ago

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

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      2 months 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.

    • bullshitter@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 months 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.

      • dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de
        10·
        2 months ago

        Posts within the same community are synced and you can see communities from different instances. The point is that news@instance1 and news@instance2 are different communities even though the names are similar.

        The counter argument is that reddit has the same problem even without federation. /r/games, /r/gaming and /r/gamers are three different subreddits with very similar names and you have no way of knowing which one is the “main” gaming community unless you check each of them. With time, this will probably sort itself out with lemmy as well. It just takes time for one of the similar communities to become the de facto standard.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    41·
    2 months ago

    Too much focus on discussing the news and politics. And rarely is it an inspiring and new perspective. (Sometimes it is, though.)

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
      263·
      2 months ago

      this election is among the most important ones in the history of the country. if not the most. i am also looking forward to it just being fucking done with and having other things on the feed

  • Libb@jlai.lu
    271·
    2 months ago

    As a non-US user myself, beside the lack of participation on Lemmy, I think the kind of replies and the instant escalation to this comment, in this very thread is a great example of why Lemmy can suck, hard.

    The world, exactly like the Internet, does not end at the US borders.

    And yep, even though many US citizens seem to be on the verge of slicing each other throats, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world should behave the same. Lemmy users should still be able to discuss freely even between people of varying opinions, or even of completely opposite opinions.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 months ago

      As a US user, with a bit of an organization compulsion, I do wish it was a little more structured.

      The problem is not that community x is us-centric, but that it’s not called x.us

  • Nytixus@kbin.melroy.org
    19·
    2 months 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.

  • Pechente@feddit.orgEnglish
    151·
    2 months 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.

    • asudox@programming.dev
      16·
      2 months ago

      The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting.

      A redesign is on the way. It will use Leptos with DaisyUI.

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

      Jerboa is official.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
      12·
      2 months ago

      The default web interface is very poorly designed and looks uninviting.

      Disagree. I find it rather clean and functional, even on mobile. Maybe because I liked old reddit. Maybe younger people are used to Instagram-like feeds so they don’t like the compact forum style.

    • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
      3·
      2 months ago

      Indeed an official app would ease the user on-boarding.

      I had to read through some articles first to get the concept of the fediverse first and the look out for my home instance. That’s way too techy

      • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.caOPEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        We need a guide to send perspective users to signup through Lemm.ee and voyager to onboard them.

        Original content could entice them to more willingly join Lemmy.

  • Sunshine (she/her)@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    13·
    2 months 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
      5·
      2 months 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.

    • RagnarokOnline@programming.dev
      3·
      2 months 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.

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
    163·
    2 months 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

  • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
    131·
    2 months ago

    Many instances have domain names that look invalid and/or like scam sites to non-techies. Dot world? Dot social? Dot [obscure country TLD]? There’s also no guarantees that the domain will indicate that it’s a Lemmy site. Both of these become problematic with sharing, as the default (? been a while since I’ve used the web interface) share function links to the poster’s instance and not the community instance. A year and a half ago, the shared links section in my messenger was mostly a Reddit flood. Today, it looks like someone spilled alphabet soup.

  • bluGill@fedia.io
    178·
    2 months ago

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

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
      177·
      2 months ago

      if a “viewpoint” is based on lies coming from a convicted felon rapist traitor to the country, than anyone holding that viewpoint can actually go fuck themselves

      edit: as a reminder, we’re talking about people who cause and advocate for this

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
        186·
        2 months ago

        What a perfect example of what the top comment meant. “You either 100% agree with us or you are a trumpist/fascist/nazi”, no in-between, no nuance, no moderation allowed.

        • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
          135·
          2 months ago

          “You either 100% agree with us or you are a trumpist/fascist/nazi”

          if someone’s voting for trump, then yea. that’s exactly what they are.

          if you sit down to dinner with 8 people and one of them is a nazi, then you’re eating with 8 nazis

          maybe trump voters don’t come to lemmy because they know they’ll get shat on. they’re free to make an instance of their own like hexbear and lemmygrad.

          but the thing about trump voters is that you can’t have a rational discussion with them, because they throw everything they don’t like to hear out the window as “fake news”

          so yea. they can still go fuck themselves

            • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
              41·
              2 months ago

              oh that’s right-- conservatives also push for privatizing and deregulating everything, small government (except when it comes to gay marriage and gay books in the library), mandatory jesus for everyone, no taxes for billionaires, all the taxes for peasants, blaming all the world’s problems on mexicans-- what am i leaving out? oh yea, this

              • bluGill@fedia.io
                31·
                2 months ago

                Let me head over to lemmy.ml and create a list of all the things the left wing stands for too. There is no particular agreement on any side on all issues. Governments have often done a poor job of what they should do, and when they do something you don’t get any options. There are many regulations causing more harm than good. And so on - there is plenty of observation and logic behind the various right wing positions - you don’t have to agree with them, but please start thinking about things from other points of view and understanding instead of attacking someone who makes one point on every possible thing you disagree with assuming they both support that other thing as well, and also that they are evil.

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
            1·
            2 months ago

            My point is that there is a infinity of nuance between the far left and trumpist, but too many extreme leftists tend to consider anything right of them as far right, therefore forbidding discussion that doesn’t 100% go their preferred way. This is part of what makes a big chunk of Lemmy unwelcoming.

            • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
              1·
              2 months ago

              They do the same even if people suggest vote 3p…

              Lemmy.world politics and news subs got deranged kamala zealots and dnc acolytes driving narratives. Peak elections got them spazzing extra hars too

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.ggEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        Staunch Obama and Biden supporter here … I’ve read Obama and Kamala’s most recent books…

        You do not need to be a Trumpie to get annoyed with the “everything is emshittified”, “fuck capitalism”, etc posts and comments.

      • Undearius@lemmy.caEnglish
        116·
        2 months ago

        and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.

        Thank you for providing a great example of this

        • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
          51·
          2 months ago

          i mean, top comment started with a criticism that generalized the entirety of lemmy, so i understood it to be a thing that was totally fine in this thread

      • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
        5·
        2 months ago

        OP never stated what country they’re from, you’ve just gone on some rant about Trump without even thinking that they may not be from the US.

        Classic US defaultism.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
      105·
      2 months ago

      Agreed, basically if you are moderate, you have to block 2 or 3 major instances to escape from extremist content. That’s very unwelcoming for new users.

  • ddplf@szmer.info
    8·
    2 months ago

    Generally mods of the communities still suck to an absolute extent, not as bad as reddit but still nowhere near acceptable.

    I hate not being informed of bans, and I think they are all permanent.

    • Hubi@feddit.org
      7·
      2 months ago

      They’re not all permanent, Lemmy displays the duration in the mod log. I agree that there should be some kind of notification though.

  • AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 months 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·
      2 months 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·
        2 months 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.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    2 months 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.”