I told somebody I know who knew about Reddit’s API changes about Lemmy. He has a master’s degree in Computer Science and works as a software engineer. But then, he told me that it’s too confusing to get into, even for someone like him. This is great feedback and I hope that these issues will be fixed in the coming months.
It’s weird to me that so many people have a hard time figuring out Lemmy; honestly for the average user, the process is:
- Join big instance
- Browse and search from there
Searching for communities could use a bit of work to make it easier (for example, I shouldn’t have to have the full community link to search for one from a federated instance if nobody on my instance has subscribed; why aren’t community lists updated automatically?) but the basic experience is pretty easy to get into
@fediverse
@rozno @SuperSpruce
Choosing a server is often the hardest step. That’s why you should send the signup page of your fav instance to your friends and not the official lemmy page.
I think your friend just doesn’t want to put in 5 minutes of effort. And honestly, that’s fine. I think the average reddittor has been kind of trending that way for a while, and I wish him the best of luck hanging out with people who can’t be assed to put in 5 minutes to figure anything out. I might be wrong, but especially for technical content I think the mean will drop much further on reddit.
I agree that it sounds like your friend doesn’t want to put in the effort. But he’s right on a couple points. Lemmy is easy to learn and use, but that fact that you have to learn at all will scare most people away. People are used to immediate gratification. Sign up, maybe fill out a 2 sec questionnaire for your interests, enjoy. Lemmy isn’t streamlined to that level yet.
Just to get it out of the way: there are obviously some issues with lemmy discoverability and quantity of content
But to be blunt: this is not the kind of user lemmy needs right now, he won’t be missed. He doesn’t want to join a community, he wants to scroll a feed that is pre-curated for him. And to be honest, that is most redditors, for better or for worse, but the core of the site, what gives it most of its value besides just scale, is powerusers and mods who will see: “oh there isn’t a formula1 comm yet? I’ll make one”. Boom. Problem solved. among a userbase of thousands there will be other people who want to talk about F1, but you need at least one person to be engaged enough to create the community and post to it once in a while.
This perspective is fundamentally self-defeating if you want to get an alternative off the ground. It will take off if people get into it, and it won’t if they don’t
Yeah, this site is in early stages and if someone just wants to be babysat… we literally don’t have the manpower for that yet! A smaller dedicated userbase is more important at this stage than mindless growth.
It took me five minutes to find an instance and sign in. I figured out (mostly) how instances work over the course of a couple of days. I dont have a degree. Sounds like youre friend just doesnt want to give it a shot
I agree it’s not user friendly (at least not as userfriendly as centralized platforms are) but I’m sorry I really doubt he has master’s in CS and if he does he bullshitted his way through to get it
He has a master’s degree in Computer Science and works as a software engineer.
:O
