this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy

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How has ur lemmy experience been so far? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Im joining in on the reddit ditching thing, and was kinda worried at first that i wouldnt be able to like use it the way i did reddit as it feels like a whole new place, but after engaging with posts and people and actually being a part of lemmy rather than being lurk mode all the time i was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to become a member of the community, theres a reasonable amount of subs (or whatever the other word for em is) that fit my interests, enough linux content and shitposting for my liking, and the overall random posts made by people equally fed up with Leddit. (also i admit i used reddit a little cus there was this post on the fedora sub showing how to fix a sound issue i been having after a recent update)

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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I had a bit of a rocky start, but I picked up the concepts fairly quickly.

The Good:

  • The discussion threads here remind me of what Reddit's discussions were like about five years ago.
  • Comments feel more meaningful and thought-provoking as opposed to a race to "craft the wittiest meme."
  • The community here seems to be relatively friendly and welcoming.

The Less Good:

  • I find the mobile experience quite clunky at the moment. For the site, there seem to be some random overflow issues, and the interface and UI elements feel a bit too small for a mobile experience. The lack of polished, dedicated apps is somewhat of a bummer, but I'm hopeful the community will fill these gaps over time with dedicated applications.
  • The onboarding process is somewhat lackluster. It seems more geared towards an audience that is already familiar with federated services. I feel most new users will default to lemmy.ml out of an unwarranted sense of FOMO for not being a direct member of the largest instance, simply due to a lack of understanding of how federated apps work.
  • Redundant communities across multiple instances could become problematic over time. Personally, I would like to see something like user (or even mod) specified mono-communities, grouping multiple communities across multiple instances into a single thread. For example, if a user went to m/movies, whoever runs that mono could add movie-specific feeds from places like lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc.
  • We need to have a serious discussion about generating funds for instances. Dedicated servers with high traffic can get incredibly expensive. I fear that many smaller instances will eventually go dark due to escalating operational costs. Ko-Fi donations will only go so far. We, as a community, need to start thinking of more sustainable alternatives that align with the community's core values.
  • The documentation for the JS SDK could use some TLC. Thankfully, it's fully typed with Typescript โค๏ธ, so it's not too cumbersome to work out what everything does, but more code examples and descriptions for all the various methods would be a welcome change.

All in all, I'm happy with my decision to check this place out and am hopeful more people will come aboard in time. It's already become a part of my daily routine.

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (3 children)

About the costs - someone else said this is a feature, not a bug. :)

The idea is that the costs will keep most instances small, which is great. We dont want big instances. Thats the point of being distributed. Its just a mindset that people need to learn. Pick smaller instances you trust for better performance. You can still subscribe to anything you want from other instances.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ultimately I agree with you. It's mostly going to come down to getting more people acquainted to this mindset.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yeah I agree, and i think it will come naturally. When lemmy.ml starts to get slow due to thousands of users, then some of them will switch to a small instance and just subscribe to lemmy.ml communities from there.

Its pretty brilliant in its design, all of this.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's taken me a week to figure all that out, but I think if someone explained it correctly in an infographic, that would make it much easier for people to understand.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or a short like 5 minute video explaining the whole process that's easily digestible, post that shit to reddit and see how it goes.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, that would definitely help. It needs to be visual/infographic style. Or that guy who writes with a marker on the whiteboard and draws the infographic as the narration happens.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

MinutePhysics? I think they're a whole animation company that does work like that on comission, might be getting them confused with another group though.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I think this idea is great but the discovery of instances for a new user is "what is the Lemmy site showing me" which is almost all larger instances.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm kind of confused by this, to be honest, because wouldn't there being a cost of entry specifically limit the amount of people who are able to create an instance, combined with the fact that the small few who can run an instance, and see it grow, would then decrease more and more over time?

Then wouldn't people find the main instances with the largest numbers and, with smaller communities unable to afford the minimal traffic, see the instances start to combine into the larger community where it'd be mutually affordable?

I mean, early on you might get people wanting to make an instance and learning they can't commit to it any longer and breaking apart, but I'd imagine any barrier that doesn't have to do with a barrier for discovery/reducing the barrier for cross-navigation (e.g. fediverse) would eventually lead to filtering a select few. I'm not 100% or anything, but ya know, seems like it'd go that way.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How much does it cost to run large instances? Do you have an estimate of how much it costs to run lemmy.ml?

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Currently its running on a vps with 8 vcpu for 30 euros per month.