Asklemmy

Liking it a bunch! Chief complaint is how sometimes posting is instantaneous and sometimes it's a 45 second lag. Same with subscribing to communities. Seems to be the various *.ml communities.

I definitely do agree with the old school vibes, I wasn't really born in that era of the internet, but it really is giving me those vibes.

Overall though, I'm finding it pretty intuitive. Certainly better than other social medias. I've tried tumblr and Twitter, just can't get the hang of them yknow?

I definitely prefer reddits app ui though. But I might just be so used to it anything else just feels weird.

not great. reaching my feed or finding communities requires multiple clicks, like why is the local community selection the default in the community tab, it's just stupid. collapsing comments requires more mouse movement and clicking in a different location every comment because of name length, very dumb. communities are too small and not reliable news aggregators yet, not sure why we couldnt just have subreddits move their culture over and agree of a server, or at least set up bots with RSS feeds from news sites or popular stuff in the mean time. lacks customizability for visuals and usage in general. i'd like to have it autocollapse or autohide posts i've already seen, but now i just see the same threads from 2 days ago. user and community pictures in every post on my frontpage are visually noisy. and more and more issues. the devs definitely need help with creating a reasonable browing experience.

I'm so confused!! Still trying to figure out how to tell jerboa to show me communities that aren't local (and aren't showing in all - I did find memes and other juicy numbers there!)...

I might have made the mistake of trying to pick a server that wasn't struggling under the load of the Reddit refugees, but I still don't think it was a bad idea...

Quite a learning curve though. Some cheat sheets or heaven forbid, starter packs would be snazzy :)

I like that it’s still so small. None of this karma farming just diluting from high quality content and conversations

I think it does federation better than Mastodon. I think confusion comes from the way ActivityPub decides to do things

It's been very nice both on mobile (Jerboa) & on PC. One thing that has been bothering me as a person that cares about my privacy is what some people are saying on the privacy subreddit on reddit about lemmy.

It’s like eating something extremely good, best way to put it. It’s amazing, everything reddit did wrong doesn’t exist here. It’s like a utopia.

I find the new layout to be confusing, no doubt I'll get used to it, but the hardest part was creating an account. I had no idea what "server" to make my account on, had no idea i had to choose one, thought it was exclusive and couldn't interact with other ones, etc.

Also, the only Lemmy app I saw on Google play was Jerboa for Lemmy. I got that, and I can't really make an account on the app so I had to go to the website. I eventually decided on lemmy.world or something. Overall, the app feels a bit unpolished and the Reddit app seems more welcoming, even though most of the subs are dark now.

One thing I do enjoy is the formating at the bottom. I do like that. And I have high hopes for my future using Lemmy as an alternative to Reddit.

Very confused.. I have a direct link to a Linux community and can't figure out how to open it, or join it, or whatever I'm supposed to do with it in Jerboa. Discovery seems severely limited.

It's not bad, but there are a couple of issues that concern me. One is that communities are fractured - that is, that communities about the same topics exist on different instances and don't connect with each other.

So I'm subscribed to a Books community on one instance, but that doesn't mean I'll see any of the posts on the same topic on other instances unless I subscribe to each of them. The total community of users on Lemmy who are interested in books are split up into small groups on different instances.

That's very limiting.

Of course there's also the issue of the relatively small user base overall. For some purposes a small community may be preferable, but for many others you really need a large user base. Looking for gamers for a face to face tabletop RPG, for example. Without a large user base, the odds of finding people within a reasonable real world distance of you is virtually nil.

So far I like it. It was a little odd signing up because I would find an instance to sign up on and kept scrolling until I found a join button which looped me back to the list of instances. Or I would click on the "you must log in or sign up to comment " message on a thread hoping I could sign up that way and getting sent to the instance lists. I didn't understand to join the instance I needed to hit join from a drop down menu at the top of the page, until I tried looking there since the other options didn't work.

I was doing that through the website on mobile browser. Now that I have an account I am running it through Jerboa. It works well so far, I'm just learning how to find communities to subscribe to, and I'm not sure if when I search from the search options in Jerboa if I'm getting all possible results or just certain ones my instance is somehow connected to? From other comments it sounds like it's the latter and I'm not sure how to get around that.

Other than the learning curve I like it so far. I'm trying to migrate here from Reddit and someone there recommended I try this.

It’s welcoming but confusing. I think there’s two reasons for the latter:

1- Many of us forget how basic Reddit was when we first started using it, and the features we all know and love got added over time and repeatedly refined based on use.

2- Most of us here are because we have been users of incredibly well designed apps crafted by developers with a passion for great UI. If I try using the (new) Reddit site or their default app, I find myself equally confused.

There are still so many changes happening in Lemmy functionality, and as we’ve seen with Mastodon, we will hopefully soon be overwhelmed with great apps.

In the meantime there’s the great community already here and growing. I saw a comment that you can estimate that Reddit has 90% lurkers, 9% commenters, 0.9% posters, and 0.1% “community builders” I think it’s those latter groups who are leading the exodus, which is great news for us and terrible news for whoever ends up owning Reddit.

I think I'm getting the hang of it, I'm just concerned it won't ever get to the point of having as many in depth communities as Reddit, because that's what I like most about Reddit

Couple of nit-picky things that I'd love to see changed.

This comment box. There's nothing to visually divide it from the original post. I got it figured out, but my brain is still resisting it as bad UX.

On the home feed, the group an article comes from is tiny and not obvious. My eye is constantly jumping back and forth from subject to group, group to subject, and it's fatiguing. The subject is only half of what describes the post: what group that subject belongs to is the other.

On the home feed, I have to click Subscribed for my feed. Setting and getting a cookie is at most two lines of code each in vanilla javascript, seems to me that'd be an easy choice to remember.

I don't really know whats going on the whole instance thing confuses me. Whats it's pros? Why use it

There's not a single middle eastern sub, and I doubt there ever will be😞

I'm still a little confused but it's sinking in. The difference between an instance and a "sub", as well as how to join or interact with other "subs" without having to join each individual instance, was the part that was toughest to adapt to. I love it, though. Lemmy is giving me the feeling Reddit did when I first joined it a long, long time ago on my first ever account. It feels organic.

Enjoyable so far. Feel a bit mystified, but it always takes me ages to figure out how to use new things.

Currently messing around with a browser extension to change the appearance and layout, as I had been finding that a bit of a hurdle.

I miss more intuitive comment collapsing, I used it a lot to skip conversations faster than scrolling through them.

The whole federation thing is not intuitive for new folks. Although watching the lemmy.ml bubble is pretty funny.

I'm interested in reading more about Lenny's privacy and internal workings, ~~but this information is pretty hard to find.~~

Docs for anyone interested

I'm concerned about a reliable deletion mechanism Lemmy doesn't care about your privacy

Reddit thread of the same story

I'm also concerned by some posts which I hope are not true:

Lemmy's creator banned from r/socialism for posting neo nazi literature

here's a cohertly sound Answer.

1. What happens to the communities/comments/accounts if a Lemmy instance goes down? Do they just disappear?
   When a specific Lemmy instance goes down, local users won't access their accounts, communities, or comments until it's restored. The data seems to "disappear" but it's not lost if the instance comes back online. Content copies exist in other federated instances but the original data is tied to the creating instance. BTW, you can backup your toots, comments and anything else on your account on your current instance and start again

2. Can people on other instances use your username? Could others tell which is which in comments/posts?
   Yes, usernames are instance-specific, so the same username can be used across different instances. However, usernames include the instance, making identification clear. For instance, 'username@instance1' and 'username@instance2' indicate different users.

3. How can people afford to host an instance? Aren't there costs to hosting a server?
   Indeed, hosting an instance involves costs for server, bandwidth, and potentially maintenance. Individuals hosting instances usually cover these costs themselves or use donations or sponsorships.

4. Is there anything stopping corporate interests from hosting a Lemmy? I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we're just back to Reddit.
   Theoretically, a corporation can host a Lemmy instance. But federated platforms like Lemmy ensure that no single instance controls the entire network. Even with a popular corporate instance, users can choose other instances or create their own, allowing diverse moderation policies and community norms.

5. Can an instance go from fully federated to partially without telling its users? How would they know?
   An instance changing its federation policy can impact the available content and the reach of users' posts. Although there's no built-in notification system for such changes, a responsible administrator should inform the community, potentially using the instance rules listed in the sidebar or other official communication channels. Users may notice a change if they stop seeing content from certain instances, or if their posts aren't visible on instances they used to federate with. Such a shift in federation policy could also alter the dynamics of moderation and community interaction on the instance. you can see what instances is blocked on /instances. and /modlog shows all moderations.

It works nicley for me but a lot of stuff could need QoL updates. Honestly my biggest concern is that this instance (lemmy.ml) will dominate everything else and host every good Community. From what I heard, the old guard on lemmy.ml has certain political believes that I don't share and I have a lot of negative expierence with this kind of people, back on reddit. A little concerned about powermods on lemmy.ml.

The app I'm using (Jerboa) is a bit lacking, but I'm sure it'll improve. I'm unsure about how accounts work with the servers, can I migrate my account if the server I am using shuts down? Communities are tiny and a lot are missing, but I'm sure those will grow and fill in as more people join.