we need more users
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
I'm a very new user who wanted to give this a chance, here are the friction points from my point of view:
- The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn't help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.
- Content discovery sucks ass. My feed stayed mostly the same since I started using Lemmy. I'm presented the same shit over and over again. I'm not sure if it's something that I do wrong, if there is just no content or if that's a side effect of 'no tracking at all' but either way the experience is just bad
- Someone in here already said it, but 'Lemmy' is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn't bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I'm not sure I'll stay.
In short the user experience is abysmal.
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
The hurdle of registration and getting into the Fediverse is, in my view, too high for many people.
I had to guide my brother step by step to get him into the Fediverse.
I think that’s where it often fails.
It needs to be much easier to join — then more people would probably come in. -
C) Moderation varies wildly based on the instance, and the community. I wouldn't say Lemmy comment sections are any worse than Reddits though.
reddits is more oppressive, mainly because your dealing with reddits AI moderation filter, which can apply blanket bannings for no reason at all, and thier bot detection is too overly sensitive, and the mods with thier individual sub filters, and the mods meddling too. and the favorite, report abuse, eventhough you wernt spam reporting.
of course anything to do with trump or saying something should happen to[right wing person] usually immediately catches a temp ban, warning.
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i call it the mirror version of conservatives, they talk like right wingers, respond like them, post nonsense like them, and often uses the same BUZZWORDS. they think they are clever buy calling things shitlib, if its not just a shoe-in for libtard, and wokeness.
I gotta say, Xi's version is way more effective than Donald's
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Most people on Reddit avoid the larger subs like the plague though - but then when they come here, they don't know what to avoid or even to pay attention to, e.g. is !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net a lively and fun, exciting place, or a toxic cesspit hellhole?
And at least that one is honest about what it is, whereas lemmy.ml markets itself as a community dedicated to discussing FOSS! (Which, among other things, yes is one of the variety of things discussed there, although somehow that description seems to be missing a fair bit of information that would have REALLY helped out a ton in educating people what communities to participate in).
funything i havnt have that much of interaction with the .ml tankie as much as hexbear, hexbear seemed to be mroe prominent, before i blocked the triad.
i think you got it reversed, people go to reddit to engage in the massive subreddits. ask, politics, videos, fauxmoi,,,,etc are all heavy traffic for the site.
i suspect alot of users who arnt banned on reddit, are waffling between reddit and lemmy, some are even going back there to engage in the subs, and reddit has more content so they probably are spending more time there.
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Oh no. We're scaring off this type of dipshit.
I'm not worried about the line going down.
*They said some homophobic shit, called the lemmy userbase the r slur collectively, and the replying comment was basically 'u snowflakes would rather be an echo chamber than have diverse opinions'. Yep, happy with where our overton window is. au revoir, francophone bigot.
you said that, but then u will complain of the consequence of the line going down. kinda sad that u preffer this place to be dead rather than your worldview not being the majority opinion here. have fun
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they are separate, but not huge
They are separate but they are federated, they can see lemmy's content and viceversa.
Edit: addition: Their success benefits lemmy, this is the beauty of the fediverse, competition is not really competition, we all win.
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The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.
Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.
its also if its new posts, and not just post regurgitated again from reddit. some of the posts here that are new has been on reddit for a while already.
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Honestly fragmentation is what keeps people that I recommend Lemmy away from it. They are used to the UX/UI doing most of the heavy lifting along with the more politically charged posts being there, my coworker who loves self hosting and tinkering tried to join. But was put off with how much more political things are on Lemmy and some Fediverse instances are and how hostile they can be with certain opinions. But I taught them how to curate their feed for more things tailored to their passions. But they've been on and off since there's multiple versions the same community which feeds into the fragmentation issue. That is just a viewpoint from me, I'm still fairly new to the Fediverse and Lemmy. (Which I love how diverse it is and how passionate people are.)
i suspect hes been on tankie triad isntances, before i blocked the triad i found myself accidentally engaged to too many of thier posts.
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I'm a very new user who wanted to give this a chance, here are the friction points from my point of view:
- The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn't help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.
- Content discovery sucks ass. My feed stayed mostly the same since I started using Lemmy. I'm presented the same shit over and over again. I'm not sure if it's something that I do wrong, if there is just no content or if that's a side effect of 'no tracking at all' but either way the experience is just bad
- Someone in here already said it, but 'Lemmy' is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn't bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I'm not sure I'll stay.
In short the user experience is abysmal.
Someone in here already said it, but ‘Lemmy’ is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn’t bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I’m not sure I’ll stay.
You can say that again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LemmyReally muddles up the search results about lemmy.
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That might be an option. I personally would be fine with that but I've noticed that many / most users get very upset about the notion that posts / communities / users are impermanent ?
Another solution is to simply promote these dead communities - if anyone is interested in warming them up then they should do so. If they're consistent then after a few months ask existing mods to add them as mods, or ask admins to do so if the mods are not responsive.
This approach runs the risk that the person doing the work may not become a mod, but honestly I don't think being a mod should be the objective of creating a community.
Yeah, I just thought about my suggestion more and one thing I think that has given reddit so much staying power is the fact content sticks around so long, I'd imagine many of us here would specifically search in reddit for reviews or help with something and found a like 3 year old thread with the answer.
So... Pruning is probably a bad idea lol.
Unfortunately threadiverse searchability is pretty bad, assumedly because of the nature of the fediverse with content being copied across instances essentially I am sure its a little more difficult for an indexer to properly handle it, not to mention somehow deciding which instance to specifically link to for a certain thread. On top of that, it wouldn't surprise me if all the corpo search engines would deprioritize most fediverse sites out of self preservation
On the "warming them up" that makes sense in theory, but usually if I'm making a rare post it's to engage with a group of people, if I don't see the engagement I'm probably not going to go there again to post whatever it is because what's the point if no one sees it anyway?
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I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Maybe everyone should be a literal more willing to discuss things than just dog pile on with downvotes.
This place is mighty insufferable and I say that as one insufferable twat.
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I'm a very new user who wanted to give this a chance, here are the friction points from my point of view:
- The onboarding is way too complicated for the average user. A huge part of this is that there are 100 ways to do it. Before you even can start to do anything you have to investigate and then decide on what and how to do it. And even then there is no guidance at all, you are given options and then you can either go and do some research again or try them one by one. You lose at least 90% of the users here already. It doesn't help that fediverse users try to downplay this issue.
- Content discovery sucks ass. My feed stayed mostly the same since I started using Lemmy. I'm presented the same shit over and over again. I'm not sure if it's something that I do wrong, if there is just no content or if that's a side effect of 'no tracking at all' but either way the experience is just bad
- Someone in here already said it, but 'Lemmy' is a horrendous name. That alone was the reason why I didn't bother to try it at all for a long time. Only recent events pushed me towards it but tbh I'm not sure I'll stay.
In short the user experience is abysmal.
I’m presented the same shit over and over again.
Do you sort by active? Use hot or scaled instead.
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I posted in an ADHD community about how I'm fed up with managing my symptoms and I think I finally need to talk to a professional. Someone tried to blame my symptoms on capitalism.
As someone who simply left Reddit because they took away RIF and only stays here because I'm stubborn, Lemmy is the left wing version of Truth Social. A great deal of the users here are the absolute embodiment of the people from Sanfrancisco in South Park huffing each others farts about how progressive they are.
Like, I get it and I do agree in principle on most things with Lemmy which is the only reason I dont leave, but make no mistake THE FEDIVERSE IS AN ECHO CHAMBER.
Lemmy is the left wing version of Truth Social
I'd say a few instances are indeed, but overall I find it ranges from far left to centerish, where as TS ranges from far right.
but make no mistake THE FEDIVERSE IS AN ECHO CHAMBER.
VERSE IS AN ECHO CHAMBER...
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Would it almost be better to prune old communities? I agree it's off-putting to find community for an interest and seeing last activity like a year ago, doesn't make you want to post since it seems inactive.
One thing about how reddit/lemmy works though is people subscribed (assumedly still active on Lemmy elsewhere) might still see that content vs a forum where no activity means very few visit the site.
Pruning is a bad idea imo. Old communities here (like on reddit) can be great resources for solutions to technical problems, for example. And weird one-off communities that have like 2 memes from a decade ago can be really funny when you get linked to them.
Perhaps a notification-type nag, a tab of "communities you used to use but haven't posted to for a while" but with a snappier title, alongside "local" and "all".
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I send my friends memes. They ask "Muad'dib, where do you get these great memes?" I say I get my great memes from Lemmy. They instantly lose interest, because Lemmy is full of tankies and kinphobes
Have you tried telling them inspiration comes from spice? Want some? First one's on me?
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I’m presented the same shit over and over again.
Do you sort by active? Use hot or scaled instead.
Yeah, no idea why Active is still the default.
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The source data shows that while active users are down, the number of posts and comments are near all-time highs. While you need new users to help counteract churn, I think the higher post/comments count points to what I think a lot of people feel here: that quality seems to keep getting better and better.
Regarding how to bring more people in, I personally like how different lemmy servers have slightly different characteristics but each seems to appeal to larger groups. I see a future where there’s probably a small-ish number of large servers that cover broad groups of people.
that quality seems to keep getting better and better
It doesn't. It's the same people who keep posting the same lame memes as always.
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We have to earn it if we want it. Oftentimes someone will mention some event or trend or something that happened and being only on the Threadiverse, not also Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or X or Bluesky or even Reddit I have no idea what they are talking about - it's not good to be too isolated.
So... bring on the downvoting I suppose, because I started checking some of those places, including Reddit. Not like daily but not never either. That's where the content is, so where else can I go to get at that?
It is so easy to say that "something should happen". It's much harder to MAKE that thing actually happen.
Maybe I should admit defeat and go back to reddit.. Perhaps everyone is supposed to be slaves to the shareholders
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Is this like all Lemmy everywhere or just a selection of large instances? Does it account for people that host their own instances and come into the larger spaces to interact? I feel like there's context missing before jumping to conclusions.
Should be most of the Lemmy instances, but it's missing the 2k monthly active users on PieFed.
