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> Lemmy is the New Reddit I hope so, but we need a winning instance first. When you search for Lemmy right now you're sent to a page that begins with "Join a S

> Lemmy is the New Reddit I hope so, but we need a winning instance first. When you search for Lemmy right now you're sent to a page that begins with "Join a Server... Run a Server". That kind of first experience will never replace Reddit. Lemmy.world seemed to be winning the SEO battles in my Google search. Is that a good one? Edit: Sorry for changing my entire post; I had incomplete information about Lemmy at the time.

whatshisface 3y ago
You only need to create an account to post... have you ever looked at a post on Lemmy?
- rajamaka 3y ago
  Maybe I'm a better representation of the more casual user, but I googled Lemmy and saw words like "federation" "decentralized" "start server" which are all concepts that are like 50 IQ points more than I generally assign to my Reddit user experience. I just went back to Reddit.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    "decentralized" just means "there's no center, no lemmy.com that's the ultimate authority". "federated" means "servers talk to each other". So, like email. There's only one Reddit, but lots of places where you can get a mail account.
glenstein 3y ago
Huh? My experience consisted of visiting lemmy and signing up. Also, and separately, huh? You can share links on lemmy without logging in. Look, here's one: https://lemmy.ml/post/2069154 https://lemmy.ml/post/2069154 So, you can visit without being prompted to select a server. You can sign up without having to look through servers. And you can share links without logging in. So what am I missing?
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  You're right; I rewrote my post. But you responded too fast for me to keep up!
- dryanau 3y ago
  So I clicked "sign up" and it suggested checking if there might be another instance best suited to my needs, so I followed the proposed link to https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ and got the "join a server"/"run a server" option. After clicking "join a server" and scrolling the list of half added descriptions I just left because it felt like I was supposed to be making a choice about the community I want to join before even checking the damn thing out. Reddit is the opposite, just sign up and explore the subreddits and pick the ones you like. If Lemmy is anything like that, it's not clear at all and my experience turned me away in the exact way the previous poster described. It felt like I had to pick the subreddit first with no idea what was inside. It sucks. It sucks bad and it won't win in its current state.
  - OO000oo 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    Plus even after doing the steps above you may find you get a 500 error on the email activation link like me.
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    Exactly my experience and why I haven't signed up for Lemmy. I don't know what the hell any of those communities are and why/how I should pick one particular one as my home base or whatever, and not getting involved at all seemed like the easiest way forward. I get the sense that there are a lot of competing visions for what Lemmy should be, and I am not interested enough to put myself in the middle of that. There's probably an opportunity to start a modified instance that avoids all this identity stuff and hides the federation aspect as much as possible to make it look like a seamless unified community. That's something I, and I presume many others who were turned off by their first experience with it, might well join.
safety1st 3y ago
What do we need a "winning" instance for? In a federated world what does that even mean? What is this (online? HN?) cultural obsession with winner-take-all? The whole point of federation is that you don't need winner-take-all which is in fact unhealthy. If you have a community on Reddit which you want to migrate you just need to find a stable instance with admin policies you consider reasonable. If it's a big community with really active moderators you might even want to start your own instance. If Lemmy needs anything it's probably a managed hosting provider like masto.host that could make it easy for large communities to run their own servers.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  To me, the crux of it is that identities are not portable. AFAIK, I can't take my identity and posts and move them a different instance if the one I chose happens to become evil or bankrupt. Sure, I could start my own instance, but that's a high bar.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    Identities are also much lower stake. You don't have a giant pile of karma to drag around. You'll lose out on your subs and I guess your personal connection to your comments but that's it.
- oezi 3y ago
  Lemmy needs a better experience for first time users. For instance, one should be forwarded to the front page of a random instance and see r/all type content (and given the ability to sign up).
  - safety1st 3y ago
    Why not create it? Everything is open. Lemmy is not a monolithic entity like Reddit. It would be nice if the developers created something like this but it doesn't have to be them. I thought about creating something like r/all, but you can get something similar on any instance if you filter by posts + All: https://lemmy.sdf.org/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&page=1&sort=Active https://lemmy.sdf.org/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&page=1&... . This will be restricted to whoever that instance federates with of course.
chongli 3y ago
a winning instance That would defeat the purpose. Lemmy is a fediverse application. The whole point is decentralization. A winning instance would concentrate power in the hands of one admin. We don’t want that!
- dryanau 3y ago
  The general public does not care at all about that. It's the experience alone that matters. Lemmy is confusing and weird to the majority who look into it.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  I don't think it would defeat the purpose at all. Even if you have a winner, decentralization ensures there will always be a quick, nearly-equivalent alternative waiting in the wings. And as my sibling poster stated, a winning instance (or a handful of them) is/are necessary for public buy-in.
- LeFantome 3y ago
  Centralization was literally the entire point of Reddit for anybody that visited more than one sub. We already had a decentralized Reddit—-it is called The Internet.
  - dvngnt_ 3y ago
    the internet is a network but reddit and lemmy are services made for creating sub communities
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Lemmy is a fediverse application. The whole point is decentralization. No, that's just a marketing lie. The biggest instances have politically-charged "codes of conduct" that other instances are forced to adopt or be defederated. IIRC, some instances even require those rules to be applied transitively, that is, they will defederate from your instance unless you enforce their rules on all instances that you federate with, and so on. The whole point of Lemmy and Mastodon is political control, while convincing people that it isn't so. I'm honestly astonished to see how many smart folks are falling for their lies; mostly, I suspect, because the Fediverse's political leanings pander to their own biases.
lost_tourist 3y ago
It seems to be growing organically and linearly if not exponentially. Maybe it couldn't have handled that anyway. I hope it continues to grow for sure. It seems to have a bit more of that old reddit energy, depending on which communities you go to.
_hypx 3y ago
Don't forget kbin!
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
> That kind of first experience will never replace Reddit. Good. Let the eternal September remain on Reddit. The rest of us can go back to the roots of what keeps online communities from becoming cesspools like Reddit and Twitter.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  And how will we do that? Where will we go?
  - rakoo 3y ago
    To the fediverse, open to anyone willing to think about what it means to be part of a community and not simply a consumer.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    Wherever we want. There are options, if you don't let the media sell you the narrative that anything that's isn't as big as Twitter was at its peak is a failure. The lessons I've taken away are that it's dangerous to get too invested in any one network, and when network effects get too big they do more harm than good.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      That sounds good. Could you expand on the available options in the context of getting "back to the roots of what keeps online communities from becoming cesspools?"
      - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
        What I meant was smaller communities have a generally higher quality than large ones. All of the alternatives to Twitter and Reddit are smaller.

whatshisface 3y ago

You only need to create an account to post... have you ever looked at a post on Lemmy?

rajamaka 3y ago
Maybe I'm a better representation of the more casual user, but I googled Lemmy and saw words like "federation" "decentralized" "start server" which are all concepts that are like 50 IQ points more than I generally assign to my Reddit user experience. I just went back to Reddit.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  "decentralized" just means "there's no center, no lemmy.com that's the ultimate authority". "federated" means "servers talk to each other". So, like email. There's only one Reddit, but lots of places where you can get a mail account.

glenstein 3y ago

Huh? My experience consisted of visiting lemmy and signing up. Also, and separately, huh? You can share links on lemmy without logging in. Look, here's one: https://lemmy.ml/post/2069154 https://lemmy.ml/post/2069154 So, you can visit without being prompted to select a server. You can sign up without having to look through servers. And you can share links without logging in. So what am I missing?

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
You're right; I rewrote my post. But you responded too fast for me to keep up!
dryanau 3y ago
So I clicked "sign up" and it suggested checking if there might be another instance best suited to my needs, so I followed the proposed link to https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/ and got the "join a server"/"run a server" option. After clicking "join a server" and scrolling the list of half added descriptions I just left because it felt like I was supposed to be making a choice about the community I want to join before even checking the damn thing out. Reddit is the opposite, just sign up and explore the subreddits and pick the ones you like. If Lemmy is anything like that, it's not clear at all and my experience turned me away in the exact way the previous poster described. It felt like I had to pick the subreddit first with no idea what was inside. It sucks. It sucks bad and it won't win in its current state.
- OO000oo 3y ago
  [flagged]
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Plus even after doing the steps above you may find you get a 500 error on the email activation link like me.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Exactly my experience and why I haven't signed up for Lemmy. I don't know what the hell any of those communities are and why/how I should pick one particular one as my home base or whatever, and not getting involved at all seemed like the easiest way forward. I get the sense that there are a lot of competing visions for what Lemmy should be, and I am not interested enough to put myself in the middle of that. There's probably an opportunity to start a modified instance that avoids all this identity stuff and hides the federation aspect as much as possible to make it look like a seamless unified community. That's something I, and I presume many others who were turned off by their first experience with it, might well join.

safety1st 3y ago

What do we need a "winning" instance for? In a federated world what does that even mean? What is this (online? HN?) cultural obsession with winner-take-all? The whole point of federation is that you don't need winner-take-all which is in fact unhealthy. If you have a community on Reddit which you want to migrate you just need to find a stable instance with admin policies you consider reasonable. If it's a big community with really active moderators you might even want to start your own instance. If Lemmy needs anything it's probably a managed hosting provider like masto.host that could make it easy for large communities to run their own servers.

Terr_ 3y ago
To me, the crux of it is that identities are not portable. AFAIK, I can't take my identity and posts and move them a different instance if the one I chose happens to become evil or bankrupt. Sure, I could start my own instance, but that's a high bar.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Identities are also much lower stake. You don't have a giant pile of karma to drag around. You'll lose out on your subs and I guess your personal connection to your comments but that's it.
oezi 3y ago
Lemmy needs a better experience for first time users. For instance, one should be forwarded to the front page of a random instance and see r/all type content (and given the ability to sign up).
- safety1st 3y ago
  Why not create it? Everything is open. Lemmy is not a monolithic entity like Reddit. It would be nice if the developers created something like this but it doesn't have to be them. I thought about creating something like r/all, but you can get something similar on any instance if you filter by posts + All: https://lemmy.sdf.org/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&page=1&sort=Active https://lemmy.sdf.org/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&page=1&... . This will be restricted to whoever that instance federates with of course.

chongli 3y ago

a winning instance That would defeat the purpose. Lemmy is a fediverse application. The whole point is decentralization. A winning instance would concentrate power in the hands of one admin. We don’t want that!

dryanau 3y ago
The general public does not care at all about that. It's the experience alone that matters. Lemmy is confusing and weird to the majority who look into it.
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
I don't think it would defeat the purpose at all. Even if you have a winner, decentralization ensures there will always be a quick, nearly-equivalent alternative waiting in the wings. And as my sibling poster stated, a winning instance (or a handful of them) is/are necessary for public buy-in.
LeFantome 3y ago
Centralization was literally the entire point of Reddit for anybody that visited more than one sub. We already had a decentralized Reddit—-it is called The Internet.
- dvngnt_ 3y ago
  the internet is a network but reddit and lemmy are services made for creating sub communities
p-e-w 3y ago
> Lemmy is a fediverse application. The whole point is decentralization. No, that's just a marketing lie. The biggest instances have politically-charged "codes of conduct" that other instances are forced to adopt or be defederated. IIRC, some instances even require those rules to be applied transitively, that is, they will defederate from your instance unless you enforce their rules on all instances that you federate with, and so on. The whole point of Lemmy and Mastodon is political control, while convincing people that it isn't so. I'm honestly astonished to see how many smart folks are falling for their lies; mostly, I suspect, because the Fediverse's political leanings pander to their own biases.

lost_tourist 3y ago

It seems to be growing organically and linearly if not exponentially. Maybe it couldn't have handled that anyway. I hope it continues to grow for sure. It seems to have a bit more of that old reddit energy, depending on which communities you go to.

_hypx 3y ago

Don't forget kbin!

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

> That kind of first experience will never replace Reddit. Good. Let the eternal September remain on Reddit. The rest of us can go back to the roots of what keeps online communities from becoming cesspools like Reddit and Twitter.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
And how will we do that? Where will we go?
- rakoo 3y ago
  To the fediverse, open to anyone willing to think about what it means to be part of a community and not simply a consumer.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Wherever we want. There are options, if you don't let the media sell you the narrative that anything that's isn't as big as Twitter was at its peak is a failure. The lessons I've taken away are that it's dangerous to get too invested in any one network, and when network effects get too big they do more harm than good.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    That sounds good. Could you expand on the available options in the context of getting "back to the roots of what keeps online communities from becoming cesspools?"
    - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      What I meant was smaller communities have a generally higher quality than large ones. All of the alternatives to Twitter and Reddit are smaller.