this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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I really like it. The platform itself is great. The main thing that needs improvement is the onboarding experience. It seems really confusing at first, but I think that's mainly because it's not explained well.
For example, the first step of the onboarding process is choosing which server to join, which I think is kind of a misleading decision. It seems like you're choosing what community you're going to interact with, but that's not really the case. You're mainly just choosing who's going to foot the bill for your network traffic. The decision seems important but it's really not IMO, at least not for someone who's just trying to jump in and see what Lemmy is all about.
Also, community discoverability is a problem, but I think that could easily be solved with better UX on the community page. (For example I think there should be a message that says "Looking for more communities? Try doing {insert instructions here} to find them."
When choosing a server isn't it also important to pick one you think will be around for a while? I'd hate to lose my history if my server went offline
Maybe there needs to be a way to set up regular auto-backups to your local machine (or regular prompts for manual backup), then import history into your new accounts on other servers.
Edit: also there should be a way to change which instance is your "local" for the homepage, irrespective of which one you actually log in to.
Yes. My first Mastodon account was on a server which no longer exists. Unless you are hosting a personal instance, it takes commitment to keep one going, or to at least give your users adequate warning that it is shutting down. Although you could just run a script on a VPS, forget about it for 5 years and let Jesus take the wheel, that's not a nice thing to do.
Sometimes though, the candle which burns twice as bright, burns half as long.
Yes it's a meaningful decision, I'm just saying that prospective new users don't necessarily understand what the decision means or why they should make it. I'm not really sure how to solve this issue though, since it's part of a larger question of why should anyone pay to host a server to begin with. I mean currently nobody is incentivized to maintain a server that costs a significant amount of money, so why should anyone try to attract new users?