There have been various posts here in the last days describing how difficult it is for new people to start using Lemmy. In fact they are absolutely correct, it is much easier to get started on Reddit. But what many forget is that Lemmy is not a corporation employing dozens of full-time designers, running A/B-tests and so on. Lemmy is an open source project run by volunteers, with only @dessalines and me working on it full-time. Neither of us is a particularly good designer, and our time is mainly spent working on the backend (database, federation, api), and preparing the upcoming 1.0 release.

If you see anything on join-lemmy.org or in the Lemmy UI itself that could be improved, the best option is to make that improvement yourself. Both of them use standard web technologies (nodejs, tailwindcss, inferno etc). The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute. We rarely reject any pull requests as long as they make a real improvement. Though it usually requires a little back and forth to review the changes and then address the review comments.

You can find the source code for join-lemmy.org here and follow development instructions in the readme. Regarding the default Lemmy UI go here and read the documentation with development instructions. If you are not a developer you can still help, for example by improving the documentation. Additionally you can make changes to the texts for joinlemmy and lemmy-ui.

All this said, there have also been some suggestions to make onboarding easier by directing new users to a hardcoded default instance. This may sound like a good idea at first but won't work well in practice. Running such an instance would take significant time for administration and moderation, but we maintainers are already too busy. Besides it would be impossible to reach an agreement who this default instance should federate with or how exactly it should be moderated. So if you want to get nontechnical users to Lemmy, the solution is to link them directly to a specific instance based on their interests.

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[–] StormMission907@lemmy.world 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hey if an old guy like me can figure it out its not hard .

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 1 points 6 days ago

They are entitled and don't want to expend effort

[–] commander@lemmings.world 13 points 6 days ago

FWIW, I think the design and layout of lemmy is superb. Way better than reddit, old and new.

You guys made a lot of good decisions.

[–] cygnusx01@rblind.com 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The great thing about Lemmy is that it is an open source project and you can tweak the UI yourself if you have a bit of HTML and CSS knowledge. Do not be put off by fancy words like Bootstrap, Inferno, Tailwind, many are just HTML, CSS, or Javascript under the hood.

If anyone on here is looking for a more a more accessible Lemmy theme, I helped make one recently for the instance RBlind: RBlind Lemmy Themes (Codeberg repo). I made detailed documentation as well which could be helpful for theme developers or for those interested in helping improve Lemmy's accessibility.

Since making the theme, I've been making some pull requests (PRs) with lemmy-ui and lemmy-docs to try improve the UI and docs based on some of the things I saw while developing the theme. I hadn't done anything involving PRs before but the Lemmy team dessalines and nutomic and other contributors have been very receptive so far and offering helpful suggestions. The changes are small but every bit counts, and when they trickle down to all users I am hoping it'll be a positive change for many users.

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"Which server do I join?" seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people.

The "Browse servers" page does say at the top "You can access all content in the lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn't matter which one you choose", but on showing this page you immediately scroll that message off the screen. Maybe if you kept that bit visible it would help.

Also I think comparing it with email servers might be helpful. People already know they can email anyone from any email server, and that signing up to, say, Posteo, doesn't mean you can only email other Posteo users.

[–] 0ops@lemm.ee 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

it doesn't matter which one you choose

That's not really true though, every instance has it's own rules, and it's own federation policies, not to mention the other instances that don't federate with it.

I'm already on lemmy, so it's not like I haven't gone through this before, yet I still haven't made a pixelfed account despite being interested because I don't want to just go for the biggest instance and I have no idea how to vet the other ones.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

I think it's better to keep it simple for new users. Tell them it doesn't matter which server since that is theoretically true in a general sense. No need to overwhelm them with all the asterisks. Once they start engaging, they'll learn the nuances and can change instances.

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Easier

If choosing a server and signing up is too "hard" for someone, then I'd rather they stay on Reddit.

Can Lemmy benefit from your suggestions, definitely. But the easy vs hard structure to these types of conversations feel a lot like the shopping cart dilemma.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's not that it's "too hard", it's that even a tiny set back for something that someone is already hesitant to do can be enough to make them not do it. It's just easier to call that "hard" or "confusing" than say "even a tiny set back for something that someone is already hesitant to do can be enough to make them not do it."

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then they don't want to be here. Part of the reason this community is so great is because it's fueled by those who actively want to participate in a place like this. It doesn't have to be a place for everyone to be the best place for those here.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago

You can actively want to do something but be bombarded with minute ultimately irrelevant details and still get frustrated.

[–] mrodri89@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 days ago

I honestly think most people will figure it out. I did. :)

[–] rowanthorpe@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

In terms of the "default instance" suggestion, I have an interesting hybrid suggestion. What about having an "easy on-ramp" instance where you get registered for one month with a hard-exit (auto-migrate to other instance, perhaps using some kind of federated-auth/token system for the migration, and forced password-setup on first use of the new instance). At any point during on-ramp the user could configure destination-instance from a list in the settings (or configure auto-export for manual import to any other "auto-migrate-unsupported" instance), with optional early-migration if the user has decided before the end of the month. Optionally a recommendation engine could iteratively curate a list of suggested instances based on usage during on-ramp (admins of those instances could provide - limited number of - tags of their choosing for the engine to use for matching). That part could be opt-in because probably a lot of users would find it creepy. The UX would need to be very user-friendly "pointy clicky" because that would be the overwhelming target demographic of such an instance. I think "on-boarding and educating" is better than "gatekeeping" (which feels like the "if you need to ask the price you can't afford it" shopping trope). A nice side-effect is it already painlessly introduces users to the killer-feature "easy migration" between instances due to data-portability.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

That would take a significant amount of work to implement, and we dont have the resources for it. But all the code is open source, so youre welcome to give it a try yourself.

[–] nthavoc@lemmy.today -3 points 6 days ago

Can start with people not directing anyone to the .ml, or .ml like instances for starters. Maybe even sticky that the top.

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 119 points 1 week ago (8 children)

The userbase here is quite technical so there are many of you able to contribute.

As a project manager, I can help by ballooning the scope and setting the deadline to yesterday! Doing my part!

[–] Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I got you guys, lets start with daily standup to get everyone on the same page.

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

Oh, I can do project management too!

Your next task is waves hands around ... the thing ... waves hands around some more ... like the other thing ... but different.

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[–] Shortstack@reddthat.com 104 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I'm doing my small part.

Went from 100% lurker on Reddit to regularly active lemmy commenter

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago

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[–] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 58 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

I don't really agree that it's much easier to start on Reddit. Especially nowadays.

-Post from an IP that was once used by a banned account? Also banned (after first being shadowbanned)

-Try to post in any niche sub of your choosing after making an account? Forget it, wait three weeks and farm 3K karma first (which encourages shitposting and reposting, lowering quality)

-Deviate a fraction of an inch from whatever sub's 500-page rulebook? Banned.

-Try to argue an unbanning? That's a permanent mute.

-Post anything - and I do mean anything - in a "wrong" sub, get immediately permabanned by a slew of subs you didn't even know existed.

-Some mod doesn't agree with something you posted? Even if it was 5 years ago in a sub that has since been deleted? Banned and muted.

Reddit is an absolutely terrible experience for new posters. How they even manage to retain a tenth of them is beyond me. I encourage them to keep it up however, more traffic for Lemmy.

[–] Resubscribe@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

Another to add: Caught an IP ban for "report abuse" after reporting several bigots. Couldn't have been more than 5. No warning or previous infractions, just straight up IP banned. Appealing did nothing, of course. Eventually just stopped caring.

Saw quite a few people saying they had the same thing happen. The general consensus of those threads was just not to report *anything *anymore...

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[–] AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee 46 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm the OP of one of the posts that blew up about UX.

This is great news, I will look into building something like join-lemmy/onboarding that could guide users, or improving join-lemmy

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 41 points 1 week ago

Its best if you improve the existing site, that way you dont have to worry about hosting, or directing users to your new site.

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[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 36 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Good post

Also, !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com for people who want to help promoting Lemmy Mbin Piefed

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also remember to be nice. I see heated arguments regressing into ad hominems by the third comment pretty regularly. We can be better than Reddit

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