This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.

Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

What can we do?

  • joelghill@lemmy.mlEnglish
    37·
    7 days ago

    For the majority of commenters: UX is not UI.

    The poor UX experience is the research a person has to do before they can even participate. You need to have a basic understanding of how the network works, and then you have to shop around for a server.

    It’s enough friction to prevent people from on-boarding and that’s not good for a platform that needs people to be valuable.

    • Xella@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      Yes. Lemmy is not friendly for the “average” user. We could come up with a list of severs with pros and cons to them and then people would feel more comfortable. I came here the moment reddit killed the API and I was so confused. Federated anything meant nothing to me and I discovered lemmy.world so that’s just what I joined. LOL I still don’t know the difference between servers.

    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      7 days ago

      I disagree. I just found a link to lemmy.world, with no idea of how lemmy worked, and I’m perfectly happy. To me it seems like people’s endless complaints about servers come down to personal issues.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        It’s like politics, hahaha. Those who don’t trouble themselves with too many details remain content with whatever they their emotions dictated while those who do research, sort out real facts, read reviews, understand the platform details live the next four years in constant anxiety

        It’s actually a good point. To scale up we need to reach beyond nerds , find a populist voice

    • dekerta@lemmy.caEnglish
      9·
      7 days ago

      Maybe this is a terrible thing to say, but I actually like that registering for federated sites requires a bit work.

      IMO, the internet was more enjoyable when it was just full of us nerds 😅

      • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        Hmmm. Actually maybe it can be leveraged.

        There should perhaps be a default instance that it funnels everyone into but makes a “power user” option available from a drop down where they can CHOOSE an instance. Make it an opt-in thing instead of a mandatory hurdle.

        If they don’t like the way the default instance is managed (content moderation, defederation) they can think “oh wait, there’s a solution for this! Well, now that I know what I’m getting into it’s not intimidating anymore”

        Mastodon needs this too.

        …

        Mastodon needs this ESPECIALLY.

      • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        But once we need our over whatever we’re overly focussed on, we’re back to being the only ones in the computer lab at 3am

        We need to bring enough nerds together or bridge the airgap, translate the jargon, find our unifying furry identity