Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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Discussion of language about Lemmy. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by C4Phoenix@lemmy.world to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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I feel like a much talked about criticism of getting started with Lemmy is that the 'average person' doesn't understand it. I see a lot of technical people, myself included, use words that the 'average person' shies away from. Mentioning concepts like servers and Fediverse requires some background knowledge. I propose we start using 'providers' instead of servers, as it helps understand the function of it instead of the implementation. There might be more words that could be confusing, so let's have a conversation about them. Are there any you recognize as being able to be simplified, or is this a non issue?

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[–] RandomUser@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a reddit refugee, this is my first post and it's taken a few hours to get to this point. My work involves getting non technical users to use high end tech and agree that language and terminology can make or break a deployment. Reddit is easy, sign in here and away you go, not quite so with Lemmy. I have learned that if a system isn't explained as simply as possible, in terms that your grandmother (or boss) can understand, adoption will be harder.

I'm not saying dumb it down entirely, but nobody cares about servers. Providers may be too abstract. Maybe go as far as calling them 'Homes' - or something else real world tangible. Once a user gets that on board they can then understand that different homes can talk to each other to form a village or community.

I enjoyed the 'thing explainer' books... Cut out all the technical jargon, focus on the user experience and save the detail for those who want to know.

As I say, I'm new here so apologise if I have spoken out of turn out caused offence, I'm watching and learning, and thought my fresh first hand experience may be of use.

[–] C4Phoenix@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I like the word 'Home' gives me old school internet vibes. But I fear it too would be abstract if providers is abstract. But home sounds exciting in the way that you could explore the 'not home' instances.