Let’s compose a list of the all shortcomings so that we can address them and eventually hit 100k mau.
- 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.
- 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.”
If you complain about a technical thing, you’ll end up having to justify every square inch of your existence in order to prove your complaint isn’t just user error.
Two examples from yesterday:
It can be hard to find the right community to post a link in. Figuring out the rules and knowing who’s reading them (and sometimes what they’re really about) might cause someone to give up. (Especially when people complain about ‘this isn’t the place for that’ without stating the better alternative.)
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.
Not enough people around to discuss some more niche topics and hobbies.
Have you tried being more in to US Politics, Linux and Privacy? I’ve found several very vibrant communities for those here.
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.
Specific video game subs are what I miss the most. I used to be very active in r/stalker and r/teslore, r/trueSTL. There is nothing like that here that sees more than one post per month, and I’m not sure that I have the energy to commit to reviving it myself.
Same, same. I miss hobby electronics projects. And some of the communities about AI topics (and more detailed descussion than just the hype) really lost momentum.
I keep hearing this. And I get it. But I think as a community our interests are so niche that we also miss out on more mainstream content I would like to see. For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.
Sure. This wasn’t meant to take away from anything else. I think at least theoretically, both can go along. It’s just that it’s more obvious with the niche things. But probably applies to all of the topics. And there is a demand to discuss all kinds of things and I think we have the potential to let the user decide what they’re interested in… Whether that’s popular/mainstream or not. It just takes people to talk to to be present… somehow.
Oh I am absolutely not saying you are wrong. I completely agree with you. I’m just saying while there is a lack of niche content there is also a lack of mainstream content. Which might sound contradictory, but I think both can be true at the same time.
For example there’s some prime time network TV shows I watch, there’s comms for them with subscribers but they are not active.
Feel free to open threads on !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, we are the most active TV shows community
If a post is deleted for any reason it nukes everything, even the comments.
I can’t go back and view any comments that I was replying to or that I had saved, I can only see my own comment.
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.
This is comedy gold 🤣. Things get political so fast on here
It’s funny, cuz i remember tons of responses like that when i used Reddit, too. But the onslaught was often worse cuz the larger user base had more power to bombard you with insults about how wrong you are, and give you 49 downvotes in 10 minutes just cuz you give some criticisms about a popular game you didn’t happen to enjoy and forgot to add reluctant praise to (“i recognize it’s a great game and well made, but its just not for me sad face.”)
I think this is just a bad part of the internet, in general. Similar things would even happen in AOL chatrooms if someone voiced a disliked opinion, I remember Diamond chat would get crazy
To be fair it kinda is a bad part of even real world communities. Try going to a biker bar, animecon or any other community and saying “Gosh darn I don’t like ____”. Best case people would look at you funny and leave, worst - you getting a knuckle sandwich
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
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
This is a big one. Its probably doomed to imperfection and hold out Mods who don’t want to do it but I think some kind of Community Sync option would be huge.
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
/postpage 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:-
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?
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Culture clashes. Let’s say there’s an article posted called “Ford Releases Their New Monstrosity 5000”. It gets posted to
c/carsandc/fuckcarsby 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/fuckcarswould be responding to car enthusiasts fromc/carsand vice-versa. It would basically be a form of soft brigading.- 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.
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…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.
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.
Reddit has the same issue. People will post an article in like 6, somewhat related subreddits and the feed would be quite repetitive.
That usually happens when there’s a LW world community and then the alternative
- !android@lemmy.world vs !android@lemdro.id
- !movies@lemm.ee vs !movies@lemmy.world
- !showsandmovies@lemm.ee vs !television@lemmy.world
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.
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.
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.
Not enough video game communities. I think that was a huge part of Reddits initial success. Even to this day I still search “Problem + /reddit” on google whenever I have issues in a game. Reddit often holds the core community off a video game. It’s often detrimental to a games success to have a Reddit community. Lemmy has communities for some games, but they are mostly inactive or have only 10-60 users. So don’t even have the latest patch notes posted.
There was this post 2 months ago on !newcommunities@lemmy.world to list all the video games communities: https://lemmy.world/post/19252451
Maybe you could start another one?
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I meant community’s for specific games, rather than gaming communities in general.
Did you open the thread?
Briefly, just skimmed through it. Should’ve paid more attention. Thanks.
No worries. Feel free to start a new thread there if you feel so, there might have been new communities in the meantime, and it’s always good to have a refresher once in a while
Too much focus on discussing the news and politics. And rarely is it an inspiring and new perspective. (Sometimes it is, though.)
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
Aside from being important for the US, it could easily impact relations with other countries.
I hope it turns out well for the people living in the country. We’re going to find out soon…
either way there will be violence. the question is how long the violence goes on
I don’t live there, so it’s kind of none of my business… I just always hope people don’t need to reach rock bottom to find out what’s important and how to proceed…
One thing I’ve learned is that voting is a lot like breathing.
Every time you do it, it’s the most important one of your life time.
I remember 2008. McCain vs Obama. I preferred Obama but honestly I wouldn’t have minded too much if McCain won, it was just Sarah Palin that was crazy.
Contrast that with Jan 6th, 2021. The loser of the election incited a riot and attack on the US capitol and democracy. This individual is running again.
I remember 2008.
And that’s the thing lol, all these fucking “nothing matters” teenagers do not. They only know a political climate where democracy is on the line.
2020 was the most important. Before that it was 2012. Then 2008. 2004 no more war!
So yea. This is the one. The one election to vote them all for something.
They say this every time lol. Its all bullshit.
I recall another thread a few weeks ago where someone suggested a no political discussion day, and everyone down-voted him and gave them angry responses. I recall one up-voted response saying “everything is political”.
This place has become an echo chamber for cranky old Linux users and is really uninviting to anyone else.
One of the things I miss about Reddit is the diversity of opinions and viewpoints on the platform. (I didn’t love the insane amount of reposts and bot traffic)
I ultimately believe “everything is political” is true in the sense that everything interfaces with and influences the political system…but some people just use it to devalue any discussion that does not mention governorship, and any stories that are not propaganda.
Hehe, btw, I’m one of the cranky Linux users slowly growing old…
I can tell you this isn’t really an echo chamber for people like me. I’d say the majority of people here are more “normal” people. My take on things often gets opposed. And it feels quite different to the old school places where Linux users and admins mingle. Often times the mob mentality (if there is underneath a post) is against me. A Linux forum feels very different. Especially the way they talk to each other. Here, people argue about opinions, while the “proper” nerds discuss technical facts and then something is objectively right or wrong (or solves something). Which I don’t see happening here that often. So I’d say it’s not it.
You’re right. Everything is kind of political. And arguing about politic sometimes is stupid and tiresome. And I also like diversity of perspectives and opinions. I wouldn’t need to talk to other people if I wasn’t interested to hear what they got to say…
(And the downvoting here is just silly. I also think it’s way more pronounced than on Reddit. I regularly see urban legends getting upvoted. While nuanced and longer perspectives get punished. And being human surely includes ignorance. It just doesn’t help anything once it gets part of the dynamics.)
Ha that was my shower thought post. I was not expecting to be hated on so much for a little idea.
I don’t see how you would Escape that especially this week
Politics is big on instances like ‘world’ (which, despite the name, seems very US-centric), but others I have an account on its less of a thing.
I have a mostly politics free feed that I’ve cultivated. Some always leaks in here and there, but if it’s an account that only posts that kind of content I just block them.
I definitely can see how relentless the politics posting is when I go to all, though.
At least I feel like I’m heard here. I posted comments so many times on Reddit and I rarely get any engagement. It feels like talking to yourself among an absurdly large and loud crowd.
It’s my own observation, but a lot of people on Lemmy are smug assholes, including many mods.
Shockingly familiar to early days Reddit. There was a sweet spot before Reddit got as big as it is today. I can’t tell you when it was but it was there somewhere.
How did someone describe it? Like 14y/o 4chan users with the cynicism of a 45y/o?
Hey wait a minute I resemble this strawman
That feels shockingly accurate
Yeah well that’s just, like, your opinion man.
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.
Personally quite like reading things in other languages, just like a paragraph or so, and then checking my comprehension afterwards with an online translator. Only really partially works for Western European languages though!
I have to block the subcommunities one by one, and then block them again and again for every other instance that hosts that sublemmy
You can set your languages in the settings. As the warning say, make sure to keep “Undetermined” check along English
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.
Its always about one of two things:
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Instances going down forever. - kbin, even though its not lemmy, had a more appealing UI to me and my little brother. We’re on fedia now, but I only really use it to lurk when Lemmy.world won’t load randomly. I don’t think he even uses it at all anymore.
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De-federation. - Beehaw caused several other people I know IRL to go back to reddit within a week. The timing was so perfect to wreck the API boycott that I’m almost convinced the Beehaw mods work for reddit. “Everything was broken” and now lemmy is dead and gone forever in their eyes, some even assuming the whole thing is literally gone now. They’re not willing to try again.
Nah, I have a different gripe:
When the reddit exodus happened, Lemmy was flooded with copycat communities for every popular subreddit. That’s fine with me. But what’s not fine is that very few of these communities use the same posting rules (if any at all) so they’re homogenized. Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?
I have another one that’s not specific to Lemmy but absolutely applies: meme “communities” where it’s all reposted content. I used community in quotes because these communities/subreddits/Instagram accounts are just…meme archives. You’ll find the same shit in every single meme archive on the internet. It feels like it’s less about sharing and more about having the biggest bucket.
Like what is the difference between nostupidquestions and asklemmy?
On Reddit at least, NSQ was supposed to have a “well, that might seem a stupid question” gist to it. But I agree that nowadays on Lemmy they are the same.
Reddit means pointless or stupid repetition (I forget which). I guess that whole homogenized thing is baked in if they were to migrate.
As much as I hate what reddit has become, it was a LOT less of a problem over there. And despite its reputation for having power tripping mods, the communities with strictest rules were almost always the best ones
A well-moderated community is a good community online. Self policing doesn’t work when it’s thousands of strangers
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When you block someone, all the subsequent comments made to that person’s comment are also unable to be viewed.
The politics is very left wing and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.
deleted by creator
Tankies gonna tankie
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.
Extremist…lol. Please continue to feel unwelcome.
If you don’t see grad as extreme you are lost in the sauce
They’re extremist and openly advocate murder. Hexbear users threatened to kill me.
Some Hexbear users wished to some French instances users to get more Charlie Hebdo events.
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
edit: as a reminder, we’re talking about people who cause and advocate for this
Are we though?
Where did we start talking about “this”?
You decided to make it about “this”.
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.
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.
“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
But nobody talked about Trump, did they?
You assumed and started that.
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.
Not everyone who is right wing is voting for trump.
Are you seeing Lemmy being intolerant of all right wing discussion, or just Maga bullshit like sol is railing against
No need to go right actually, even defending social democrate values may attract intolerant leftists on some instances.
I see both. Even moderate conservative view point tend to get straw manned as being MAGA. Heck I see left leaning people who just didn’t like that Biden was running get bashed for suggesting the Democrats run a different candidate. Now I see the same on anything less the pro Kamala.
If Harris anonymously posted a self criticism on here I wouldn’t be surprised if people called her MAGA. That’s not to say everyone here acts that way but a vocal percentage does.
Anytime you mention anything right wing you get a lot of downvotes and a lot of railing against MAGA. It is almost enough to make me vote for Trump just out of spite. There might be a “silent majority” that doesn’t do that, but the evidence that anyone can see: comments and votes are clearly intolerant of all right wing discussion.
Just look at all the different replies I’ve got - most of them instead of looking at Lemmy in the mirror proved the point by jumping onto railing against MAGA.
I absolutely 100% get what you mean.
But I’d implore you to wait a Moment and think about it. Voting for Trump isn’t only going to “own the Tankies”, It will also damage everyone else, including you. Don’t let others bully you into voting for someone that doesn’t help you. Be egoistic, vote for someone who actually cares about you.
To me, voting for Trump “out of spite” doesn’t sound like something a person would do if they cared about others. I hope you won’t do that.
I think the problem is more that maga has taken over the right wing, and instead of distancing themselves from maga, a lot of conservatives end up defending it. Which should not be tolerated imo.
If someone is intolerant of maga, what is so hard about saying “I don’t like them either”
That’s because all of right wing politics is hurting people for no good reason.
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
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.
a vote for R is objectively the wrong vote
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.
I put a little flag in my username and still get us defaultism. So i guess the Americans are just morons.
I don’t see a flag, just ‘muntedcrocodile’
What client u using ima make an issue on github. Depends on language if i can make a pull request.
Voyager on Android. I had no idea you could change display names
Not every method of viewing Lemmy shows things like that… all I see is “muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee,” no flags or whatever. Thankfully, I have a good memory - so I’ll be able to remember that you’re an international twat.
Well stop using a shit client that doesnt support displaynames.
true, there are non-US right-wingers. but in this case the commenter mentioned he might just vote for trump “out of spite” LOL
so my “US defaultism” was correct
and very unwelcoming to any other viewpoint.
Thank you for providing a great example of this
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
I’m pretty sure Lemmy has a right wing bloc of instances.
Maybe but they are not in my feeds.
Hmmm interesting, I should search for them.
I could see libertarians starting up their own instances.
Ive had a look af them and most are filled with posts that have 80% dislikes on them.
