this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/fediverse
 

Please post one top-level comment per complaint about Lemmy. You can reply with ideas or links to existing GitHub issues that could address the complaints. This will help identify both common complaints and potential solutions.

I believe there are a large number of feature requests on Lemmy's GitHub page, making it difficult for developers to prioritize what's truly important to users. I propose creating a periodic post on Lemmy asking users to list their complaints and suggestions. This way, developers can better understand the community's biggest pain points and focus their efforts accordingly. The goal is to provide constructive feedback so developers can prioritize the most pressing issues.

Please keep discussion productive and focused on specific problems you've encountered. Avoid vague complaints or feature wishes without justification for why they are important.

Here is a summary of all the complaints from the previous post from six months ago. It's interesting to see how many issues have been solved and whether or not developers value user feedback.

spoiler• Instance-agnostic links (links that don't pull you into a different instance when clicked) • Ability to group communities into a combined feed, similar to multireddits • Front page algorithm shows too many posts from the same community in a row, including reposts • Need to separate NSFW and NSFL posts • Basic mod tools • Proper cross-posting support • Ability to view upvoted posts • Post tagging/flairs and search by flair • Better permalink handling for long comment chains • Combine duplicate posts from different instances into one • Allow filtering/blocking by regex patterns • Avatar deletions not federating across instances • Option to default to "Top" comment sort in settings • Migration of profile (posts, comments, upvotes, favs, etc.) between instances • Mixed feed combining subscribed/local/all based on custom ratios • Categories of blocklists (language, NSFW, etc) • Group crossposts to same post as one item • Feedback for users waiting for admin approval
• Propose mixed feed merging subscribed/local/all feeds • Ability to subscribe to small/niche communities easier • Reduce duplicate crossposts showing up • Scroll to top when clicking "Next" page • User flair support • Better language detection/defaults for communities • Ability to subscribe to category "bundles" of similar meta-communities • RSS feed support • Option to turn off reply notifications • Easier way to subscribe across instances • Default to "Subscribed" view in community list • Fix inbox permalinks not navigating properly • API documentation in OpenAPI format • Notification badges should update without refresh • Single community mode for instances • Reduce drive-by downvoting in small communities • More powerful front page sorting algorithm

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (10 children)

Probably the userbase so far. Love the platform. The political stuff on here especially seems like it comes from people who've never been laid or been able to hold a serious conversation in public.

[–] yoyolll 47 points 3 months ago (5 children)

I think there’s a lot of self selection going on. Most people who migrated here did it based on principles (or a persecution complex), so of course they will have lots of political opinions, often extreme. Frankly, it’s getting a little tiring seeing it everywhere. Even on gaming subs it seems like every other post results in a discussion about the evils of capitalism.

[–] Graphy 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I’m always glad that certain communities are thriving on here but they tend to bleed over into every single thread.

I find it most annoying when someone’s just casually venting and someone else comes in swinging. I get that it’s especially hard on the internet to tell if someone’s venting or looking for solutions.

Like at this point I think it’s safe to say everyone on Lemmy has seen the same pro Linux, fuck cars, and fuck capitalism posts a million times. I think we do without one post dogpiling on some poor dude if they’re like “man traffic sucked the big one today!”

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[–] QuarterSwede 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

They do seem to be confidently incorrect often.

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[–] Zarxrax 18 points 3 months ago (3 children)

That's the Internet as a whole.

[–] infinitepcg 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The political ideas you can find on Reddit are much more diverse. There is usually at least some pushback against some of the most deranged statements.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Politics is always the worst communities because people are there to be little keyboard warriors and fight for their cause.

Lemmy becomes 100 times better if you don't subscribe to politics.

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[–] ZeroDrek 64 points 3 months ago (6 children)

My only complaint is not enough people commenting on / interacting with posts. I’m guilty of it myself (I was also mostly a lurker on Reddit) so I’m not trying to blame anyone but Lemmy often feels like a ghost town.

[–] QuarterSwede 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I think it’s grown a massive amount in 6 months. Back then I would say that was true. But now? Most posts have plenty of comments. Each month the number of average posts grow. It’s gotten to the point that 50% of the time there are so many comments I don’t read them all. We’re getting there.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

Most of the stuff I'm interested in has either no community or a dead one

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Multi communities. They would be a big deal IMO. If you could have multiple saved into a list so that you could check different feeds depending on what you’re interested in, it would be much better. Combine that with the scaled sort (as well as the others), and you’re managing your feed very well IMO.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

kbin currently has a "collections" feature which does this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

AFAICT, it's been something on lemmy's radar for a long while too. I get the sense the devs never worked out how they wanted to do it or maybe were a bit too ambitious in what they wanted from the feature and so it was kinda left by the way side, unfortunately. If I were to ever start contributing to lemmy it'd probably be the first thing I try to pick up.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Alternatively community federation, such that a community can be spread over multiple servers.

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[–] Fake4000 54 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Lemmy lives to rip reddit to pieces and share any bad news about them.

I didn't leave an ex to keep being reminded a out her. Just move on and share anything new.

[–] laxe 12 points 3 months ago

I notice this much less frequently as time went on. Reddit had the same trend in Digg era.

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[–] TropicalDingdong 51 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Its not really a complaint, but more of a direction I hope we go with this.

I think we can do much MUCH better than reddit in terms of new features, and I don't think 'copying reddit' is the way to go to guide development.

The number one I'm looking for: some kind of dynamic linking that is an improvement to cross posting.

Cross posting or repeated posting of the same news story was already an issue under Reddit, but the nature of the fediverse/ federated platforms is that a lot of the same shit gets posted over and over and over again. So some way to collapse or considate threads/ conversations around this; I think with the RSS feed nature of things it should be possible. Maybe its like a different style view or a bot we could add..

But spreading a conversation that might have generated 120+ comments into 16 threads of like 2-3 comments; it really breaks up the value of those conversations (which is more than the sum of its parts). In this way, the networked/ federated nature of the platform works against us.

So I dont know what the answer is, but in reddit we had megathreads. I think thats over kill. But it might be something to think about and ideate on, because spreading the conversation out inot many small threads really lowers the value of the individual conversations.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (7 children)

This isn't a problem of Lemmy itself in terms of the software, so I'm not sure it qualifies... But, I find that Lemmy still has the same problem of Reddit where if you say something that the majority of users disagree with, prepare to be torn apart in the comments. And I do not just mean by getting corrected on something you said being factually incorrect, I mean more of a "your opinion is wrong because..."

For example, any discussion revolving around Linux (and let me just prepend this by saying I am a Linux user), if you happen to prefer using Windows be prepared to be told all of the reasons why you have to use Linux instead. And that's usually tame compared to what I've seen on other subjects.

Obviously there are cases where yeah, you absolutely deserve to be torn a new one in the extreme cases when someone is actually being truly vile, such as trying to advocate for the harm of someone/a group of people - but the "extremes" are not what I'm really referring to here.

I've blocked a lot of users that while I've had no interaction with them, I see how they are clearly engaging in, let's just say, bad faith with others.

In terms of software-specific issues, I can't say that I really have had a lot of problems with Lemmy itself as of recently. As an instance owner, I used to have a lot of weird (what seemingly appeared to be, at least) random federation issues, but I haven't seen any federation problems in a while now. Though just today I swear I submitted a comment somewhere, and its just poof not there - not even locally, but I'm chalking that one up to something I've done (whether a misclick, or I'm just hallucinating as badly as an LLM) rather than an actual issue.

[–] laxe 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The opinion monoculture is not specific to Lemmy. Most social platforms, and even real life social circles, live in bubbles.

The Internet anonymity combined with the upvote incentives only make the problem worse.

I agree with your complaint but I don’t see it as something that can be fixed. We can all do our part to engage civilly and respectfully with others, but it won’t be enough to change the culture.

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[–] Etterra 39 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not enough people have left Reddit for it, mostly niche hobby groups. Which means sometimes I end up back on Reddit briefly to read something or more rarely post/reply.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Yeah but there's not much you can do other than try to convince them to switch. I don't understand why people still like being fucked by big corps but to each their own I guess

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Ever since the Reddit exodus, so many people joined Lemmy who just assumes everyone lives in the US.

"My rent is only $----/mo". In what currency? A lot of countries use $.

I noticed that sometimes comments asking "What currency?" or "What country?" gets downvoted even though the original post / comment isn't obvious that they are talking specifically about US :(

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

Some of those exist already with 3rd party UIs. I'm the dev of Tesseract, and it supports these, specifically:

  • Instance-agnostic links (links that don't pull you into a different instance when clicked)
  • Ability to group communities into a combined feed
  • Basic mod tools (as good as they can get with the current limitations of the API)
  • Better permalink handling for long comment chains (Takes you right to the comment vs parent)
  • Combine duplicate posts from different instances into one (matches on post title and/or URL vs just URL with most UIs)
  • Option to default to "Top" comment sort in settings
  • Allow filtering/blocking by regex patterns (Can filter based on keyword, though I'm working on adding regex as a filtering option)
  • Scroll to top when clicking "Next" page (not really an issue with Tesseract, but pains have been taken to make sure you land back where you left off when clicking into and back out of a post)
  • Easier way to subscribe across instances (can browse other instances and automatically resolve unknown communities and subscribe)
  • Notification badges should update without refresh

The rest are all great ideas, but need API support.

Not trying to plug my UI, specifically, but just using it as a reference for your wishlist. Those are all thing that can be done with the current API without waiting on Lemmy devs to add support. Granted, some of those would be better if the API were handling them versus the frontend, but I was working with what I had lol.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Multiple communities with the same topic across multiple instances, gets kinda confusing and makes it harder to block ones you aren't interested in

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

Especially when the same thing gets posted to all of them at once and the same post floods your front page.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago

Better integration within the larger fediverse, mastodon, friendica, pixelfed, etc. This is a killer feature that none of the big walled gardens can have and will improve the amount of interactions we have (which is a big thing people keep comparing about) a lot.

[–] ByteMe 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think it would be nice if same communities from different instances could be merged in same way. Like there are 2 android communities.

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[–] hperrin 23 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I can’t follow a user, only communities.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ever since reading about the challenge of deleting an image from your profile, a GUI for that. It should not only be an API call, not should you have to contact your instance admin to do it. It should be completely self-service from your profile page.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

~~I can't move my comments and history with me to another instance; only my settings and subscriptions follow.~~

Sublinks. You whine and make excuses but didn't make pull requests with good code, and now you are trying to tank the largest instance. Very Spez move of you.

I want nothing to do with your casus belli

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)
  • Moving user profile to a new instance #1985: Provide the ability for users to migrate their account and all associated data (posts, comments, moderation actions, saved posts, etc.) from one Lemmy instance to another. This would allow users to move freely between instances without losing their online identity, history, and credibility built up over time on a previous instance.

It's crazy when I see this super popular issues closed without completion by the main devs. It makes me feel like they don't care at all about user feedback.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

There was a submission made about how few people donate to the Devs. I asked about transparency and some links were given that show some things. I commented that it's not as transparent as it seems at first glance and they responded that it's fully transparent. I asked them to clarify but they decided to ignore me. I see why the Devs get criticism.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Hiding read posts means they're now lost (when you’re logged in) if you didn't save the link somewhere. Can't find it after a day and now you have to check it on incognito.

But if you don't hide posts you've already read, you end up with the same posts on your feed.

it's a very small nitpick though. having new posts load every time I visit lets me see a lot of new content, I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

I hope some app devs can put up a section for "read posts" locally so instances aren't overwhelmed.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Right of the bat: lemmygrad, hexbear and .ml other than that lack of userbase, lack of interaction in certain communities. Also some good communites are hosted on .ml and some good users there so I can't outright block that instance.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

It tends to be a little slower than mainstream social media, but I don’t expect that to be comparable nor do I expect it to improve quickly.

The user base is too small.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

I wish they'd port reddit's old multireddit feature over, and make those lists shareable.

[–] guacupado 16 points 3 months ago

How the people here think they're so much different than Redditors.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

personally i think that there should be a way for communities in different instances to formally join each other in a way that sums up the subscribed and active users

[–] reddig33 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

No organizational hierarchy like Usenet, and no tags or hashtags , so there’s no simple way to block huge swaths of content you’re not interested in — like sports, or politics.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Searchability is bad.

Growing a new community is hard. I wish people used lemmyverse more often.

Having a fully customizable feed algorithm would be a killer feature.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

User and Post flairs. Post flairs is helpful to me (in reddit) when I want to find posts that are similar. Like having a flair named "Episode Discussions" for communities like [email protected] can help me to go through anime episode discussions threads. This is just my own use case and there might be better use cases for post flair.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I know it comes with more users. But the default filter on Sync for Lemmy (Active) means I see the same post at the top of my feed for 2 days! Previously on Reddit that would change like the wind changes direction.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

I stopped using Lemmy due to instances blocking each other. I wanted to view content from specific instances, but none of the instances between the most popular ones allowed me to see all the content. I had to create multiple accounts, which made navigating between them cumbersome. This experience was more frustrating for me than any issues I've encountered on Reddit. I believe users should have more freedom to choose the content they see without having to create their own instance or manage multiple accounts. I was hopeful that this would change with user instance blocking implementation, but I feel validated in my decision after seeing that it hasn't.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Don't lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works have a very low number of defederations?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Yep. I'm on lemm.ee and I don't even think about what content I might be missing.

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[–] dragontangram88 12 points 3 months ago (19 children)

I like Lemmy. My only complaint is that I have some other users that stalk my account, if they don’t like my comment on a particular post. They will go through my past comments and posts, to use that content in abusive remarks towards me. The same thing was happening on Reddit. The way they were typing made me think it was my estranged husband and some of his friends. They have been harassing me online for years. I don’t think the mods and developers can do much about that, though, unless they notice the IP addresses on the other users all come from the same area.

Anyway, I like Lemmy. For the most part, discussions seem more intellectual than the ones I have found on Reddit, lately. It just seems to draw a different crowd of people.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Upvote/downvote system turns content to a "popularity contest".

There is no way to categorize content by " funny", "insightful", " serious", "scientific", " helpful", etc...

Steam is a good example of this done right, comments can be given Trophies, misskey does Emoji's IIRC

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