I dont see most less technical users moving at all without some more UI maturity. The whole federated services thing is just a bit too abstract a concept for most. And right now its difficult to find/join communities outside your instance.
Yeah. Best I can describe it is its like email for message boards.
But I can see definate needs for better community discovery, group like communities from other instances, making reccomendations for similar communities etc.
Honestly, there’s a pull request right now on lemmy-ui for instance agnostic linking, that combined with automatically staying on your instance will completely resolve the only issue I see for normal people.
That and a little jank here and there but that’s bound to get buffed out.
Agree those two changes would be good. Along with making the ability to add topic sorting or community grouping where you can view say, all “technology” communities in a url. Or all Linux communities across instances in a big group etc.
Yeah thats my biggest issue so far… I can’t imagine explaining how to get my non tech literate friends on here yet. I kinda wish it was more ready before the reddit api fallout happened.
The confusion seems unwarranted to me, though. It’s literally the same as email. Every time I discuss fediverse with people, all of their confusion stems from presumed complexity that doesn’t actually exist. The server they pick matters just as much as it does for their email. So the process is: create an account somewhere, and start interacting with communities. That’s it.
Right. Agree. But searching for communities, especially those outside your instance can be wonky. Finding communities and grouping like communities across instances is difficult as it currently sits. And it takes a bit of understanding how to search to find things.
I agree. The software needs a good amount of additional features and UI polish - particularly in the onboarding process - to be attractive to the broad masses.
But the user numbers has doubled in the fediverse these last few days. If that translates into activity this could very well push a bunch of communities over the critical mass.
Because most people just don’t understand it. It’s has a high barrier of entry (relatively speaking) and there aren’t really any good mobile apps. While I love the idea of the fed Ivette I just can’t imagine trying to explain it to everyone that’s isn’t tech savvy.
I think what would end up making this a viable platform for the average person is an elegant app (Think Apollo) that initially obfuscates the whole concept of federated servers. One where you create from within it a “Lemmy” account/address and pick what domain you want. Defaulting to lemmy.ml perhaps? Or suggesting a server based on a short questionnaire, like what Twitter does to recommend accounts to follow. Being able to use that same account on various federated platforms would also be pretty cool. Most people will need to have their hand held or they’ll never leave behind what they are accustomed to.
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I dont see most less technical users moving at all without some more UI maturity. The whole federated services thing is just a bit too abstract a concept for most. And right now its difficult to find/join communities outside your instance.
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https://calckey.social/tags/Reddit has the best ui i’ve seen in the fediverse but it’s for mastodon
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Yeah. Best I can describe it is its like email for message boards.
But I can see definate needs for better community discovery, group like communities from other instances, making reccomendations for similar communities etc.
Honestly, there’s a pull request right now on lemmy-ui for instance agnostic linking, that combined with automatically staying on your instance will completely resolve the only issue I see for normal people.
That and a little jank here and there but that’s bound to get buffed out.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1048
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/1156
Agree those two changes would be good. Along with making the ability to add topic sorting or community grouping where you can view say, all “technology” communities in a url. Or all Linux communities across instances in a big group etc.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1113
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818
here’s the issue trackers you’re looking for!
Nice. Thanks!
Thats the beauty, it evolves to meet the needs of the users not some shareholders. FOSS in action , I love to see it
Yeah thats my biggest issue so far… I can’t imagine explaining how to get my non tech literate friends on here yet. I kinda wish it was more ready before the reddit api fallout happened.
The confusion seems unwarranted to me, though. It’s literally the same as email. Every time I discuss fediverse with people, all of their confusion stems from presumed complexity that doesn’t actually exist. The server they pick matters just as much as it does for their email. So the process is: create an account somewhere, and start interacting with communities. That’s it.
Right. Agree. But searching for communities, especially those outside your instance can be wonky. Finding communities and grouping like communities across instances is difficult as it currently sits. And it takes a bit of understanding how to search to find things.
And the app for android doesn’t seem to let you search for and add new communities. It needs to be done from web browser from what I can tell
Jerboa for android let’s you search and subscribe
Yeah it works for me now. Wasn’t searching for any new communities when I had tried it.
Thanks
I’m sure that as more users join it will get easier
I don’t think it’s too abstract for people. I think we’re all just really bad at explaining it to non-techies.
When you move to a city, choosing the neighborhood you want to buy your house in doesn’t stop you from being able to drive around looking at others.
It ain’t rocket science.
That’s a very good way of explaining it.
See my post history if the ui is bothering you. With Sylus browser add on, some very small ui tweaks make the site much easier on the eyes
I agree. The software needs a good amount of additional features and UI polish - particularly in the onboarding process - to be attractive to the broad masses.
But the user numbers has doubled in the fediverse these last few days. If that translates into activity this could very well push a bunch of communities over the critical mass.
after I found out about the fediverse I’ve wondered why not more people use it and why it wasn’t already popular
For most people it’s just a bit too arcane.
I think that’s true for mastodon, but I suspect it’s going to be way less true for Reddit
Twitter’s value proposition is roughly “one big giant conversation with everyone” and the federation stuff adds some complexity to that.
Reddit already acted like a federation. There are ui and discoverability issues but they seem very solvable.
Because most people just don’t understand it. It’s has a high barrier of entry (relatively speaking) and there aren’t really any good mobile apps. While I love the idea of the fed Ivette I just can’t imagine trying to explain it to everyone that’s isn’t tech savvy.
I think what would end up making this a viable platform for the average person is an elegant app (Think Apollo) that initially obfuscates the whole concept of federated servers. One where you create from within it a “Lemmy” account/address and pick what domain you want. Defaulting to lemmy.ml perhaps? Or suggesting a server based on a short questionnaire, like what Twitter does to recommend accounts to follow. Being able to use that same account on various federated platforms would also be pretty cool. Most people will need to have their hand held or they’ll never leave behind what they are accustomed to.