I was wondering what the point of lemmy was, if we can’t get a certain number of people, we won’t be able to thrive as a community and I don’t see lots of people joining even though it is an open-source and decentralised forum unlike reddit.

There are many obvious things lemmy could do better, should I make a report about it? I think we are lagging behind and not doing things which are obvious. A better GUI for mobile website would be one of the top suggestions I have. thoughs?

  • @abbenm@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    12 years ago

    I was wondering what the point of lemmy was

    What was great in the early days of Mastodon is that, for those who could remember, it recaptured the feel of the “early” internet. You could feel distinct and interesting voices, patience and willingness to get into deepdives, where the payoff was from one to one interactions with personalities deeply interested in interaction itself and passion projects.

    That made it have a value in and of itself that didn’t depend on competing platforms.

    That said, you can feel echoes of typical internet culture all throughout the fediverse now. I don’ think you should measure success or failure on replacing reddit, but its great to have a place ready and waiting to absorb communities that become (say) disenchanted with bad mods.

    So the model for replacements I think would be looking at how facebook replaced myspace, and how reddit replaced digg. In both cases, there was widespread user disenchantment at substandard designs and redesigns that disregarded interests of users. I think that kind of catastrophic incompetence and disregard for users was unique to a particular era, and there probably have emerged some industry standards and best practices to stop that from happening in our current internet, for better or for worse.

    I think with reddits redesign, it has become increasingly frustrating to the user base, and there is a prospect that user disenchantment with reddit could lead to something, but I think its a long shot. The important thing to remember about reddit is that they caught a wave of exponential growth by not fucking things up, and staying more or less consistent with their product.

    I think the best thing Lemmy can do is be consistent and keep doing what it is doing, and not try and reinvent itself. I actually think the website’s functionality on mobile is truly fantastic, the best I’ve experienced from using a website in place of a dedicated app, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I think so much of Lemmy is right in its current for, and 99% of the issue with fediverse products is that the ui/design is being terrible, and it took Mastodon to kind of teach people that it mattered. So yeah, I think the main thing is to not mess with success.

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -22 years ago

      with due respect to everything you said I don’t think this is a major success, even “our own” people (GNU Linux and FOSS enthusiasts) are in a greater number in Reddit. I think Open-source projects like Lemmy lack the aggressiveness required to make it big.

      • @abbenm@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        I think I explained why I think you can call this successful without having similar numbers to reddit.

        Widespread user adoption is important, but that is being achieved. I don’t think I agree that the specific criteria of “being more used than Reddit by FOSS enthusiasts” is a make or break criteria that decides whether this is a success.

        I think Lemmy is functional, usable on its own terms, and aside from not quite doing enough to ban trolls it’s valuable in its present form.

        I would distinguish it from, say, diaspora, which I don’t believe has reached a critical mass of users and frankly just isn’t designed well enough to really get off the ground.

  • Mad
    link
    fedilink
    02 years ago

    I don’t think there’s a need to replace Reddit, Lemmy just needs to serve as an alternative for those that want it. And I think there’s plenty of people here for a thriving community. I also think it functions perfectly fine for the most part. The mobile website looks great, and we even have a great mobile app. I’m not sure how reports work with Lemmy, but if you do have any gripes then by all means report them. The one major thing I think is wrong with Lemmy (and honestly the Fediverse in general) is how bad federation is. Communication across instances should be straight-forward and seamless, but it’s often just broken.

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -12 years ago

      there aren’t plenty of people here. we need more. we need to be a better alternative.

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -12 years ago

      ok not the GUI but the people without dp it shows a broken pic on their screen, we need something better. maybe like what Reddit does, some default character until you get something else

  • poVoq
    link
    fedilink
    02 years ago

    Will Mastodon ever replace Twitter? Maybe… But probably not. But the Internet is a huge place and there is space for plenty of alternatives.

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -12 years ago

      I love this community but hearing your words I feel like we have collectively given up

  • @uthredii@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    02 years ago

    Reddit is really good for hobby/niche content. Reddit communities have become the largest online communities for quiet a few different interests where previously the largest communities would be independent forums.

    It would be great if some forums decided to use Lemmy. I guess there are barriers to this, e.g. user interface changes might not be wanted and it might be difficult to export/import the forum history.

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -12 years ago

      I dont know if it was even possible to do that. Atleast us gnu Linux users should be here in a larger number I guess

    • JeraldOP
      link
      fedilink
      -12 years ago

      You make a good point. I will start doing that now.