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.
The goal is to provide constructive feedback so developers get clear insights into the issues impacting users the most. 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 last post. 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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Nothing it’s a great.
There’s too many Redditors 😅
There’s too many AOL users.
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.
Don’t lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works have a very low number of defederations?
Imma check those out. Thanks. :D
Yep. I’m on lemm.ee and I don’t even think about what content I might be missing.
Wow, is that part of the reason why my feed sucks so bad? Seeing the same kinda stuff over and over again? I think I understand both sides of this argument. We’ve got users who are complaining of having their experience restricted with means outside of their control. They feel that perhaps defederation is a heavy-handed approach to this issue when a scapel will do. i.e. blocking and muting.
Then, we have those who advocate for a safe fediverse and view defederation as a means to that end. Or likely, from a more pragmatic perspective, they want to protect their own local instances and communities. I’m sure they’re thinking, “Dislike these restrictions? Too bad, find another instance.” And finding a new instance would solve your issues, for the most part. This is a tough problem I can imagine, and it sure does make for a less streamlined experience.
Defederation goes against the spirit of the fediverse but for large instances like Lemmy.world I think it’s the only option. Otherwise they have to have tons of moderators working around the clock.
Instances shouldn’t grow too big in my opinion, because then you get problems such as these. But it seems it’s in human nature to want centralized services because it’s convenient.
This is also why I don’t think decentralized is the future of the web. People want one place to go. If it hides the decentralization under the surface, fine, but people want one place.
Lemmy.today is federating with 100% of the fediverse. It’s a small instance with about 90 daily users but that’s an advantage, not a downside.
If I want, I can go read what tankies are writing or any other thing that people want to be protected from. I just like to make my own decisions what I should read.
With Lemmy 19, users can block entire instances themselves also, so you can make sure you block whatever you don’t want to read yourself.
But I’m a techie with strong opinions about freedom online and all that. Most people don’t care. :)
Federating communities is a manual process so in smaller instances you don’t see as much content as in larger ones since there aren’t many users subscribing to external communities.
On my instance, I follow most of the biggest communities with a “seed account” to fill out the “all” feed. This seems to work pretty well.
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.
Sort by hot instead, active seems to purely go off of comments on sync.
How the people here think they’re so much different than Redditors.
I can’t move my comments and history with me to another instance; only my settings and subscriptions follow.
- 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.
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.
To implement this feature you’d either have to:
- Edit the DB entries of every instance to match the new profile;
- Create copies of the old content on the new instance and federate that out, thus duplicating all the data. You could have it delete the old content, but you’d still need to recreate all the posts and comments.
Either of these would be very susceptible to abuse. Giving bad actors a button to force instances to run hundreds, potentially thousands, of operations probably isn’t the best of ideas.
All I know about it is that Mastodon offers this feature and is one that users have requested in a few very popular issues.
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.
It was MASSIVELY disappointing to see .world go down the path of announcing the intentions of instability with unnecessary change. It was the single most damaging move possible for Lemmy all because of stupid people’s anti community politics and people that can’t figure out Rust as far as I can tell.
Why would asking for input on thinking about something be so disappointing
It was things said in the comments of that post and reading between the lines. I think the change is inevitable and already decided. The main active admin of .world is working on sublinks. That is enough for me to view time spent on building community on .world as a waste. If it was the other way around and they were coding in Rust and the Lemmy base was in js or whatever, maybe I’d think differently, but everything I’ve seen is a massive red flag saying sinking ship, or at least I’m on the wrong ship and regret the time spent there now. A lot of people left already. I have my other accounts, but had never made a .ml until recently in an attempt to start making sure communities were shared across larger instances, but I guess it was well timed to make the shift.
I don’t think the chosen language should matter that much, I’m just worried about the fragmentation of the contributors
duplicated work that could’ve just been done together, or as 3rd party tools that link to the base Lemmy database/API, or plugins/extensions eventually
No complaints really but I’d take a native keyword blocker. (No apps for me, thanks.)
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.
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.
I browse by top 12 hours and I don’t find a lot of repeats, without hiding. Although I don’t check constantly so 6 hours or less might be better for someone who does
personally i think that there should be a way for communities to formally join each other in a way that sums up the subscribed and active users
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.
Searchability is bad.
Growing a new community is hard. I wish people used lemmyverse more often.
Try this https://lemy.lol/post/19638974
I may get flamed for this, but having having algorithmic recommendations would be good. The ones we’re used to suck because they’re designed to maximize metrics like engagement for advertisers, but it is entirely possible to have one that’s user focused and can be turned on/off as users wish. And it doesn’t have to be some super complicated thing out of the box
Feed Algorithms aren’t inherently wrong imo. The problem with typical feed algorithms is two things:
- no user choice or control: the user cannot opt out of the algorithm, and cannot customize the algorithm
- lack of transparency: there’s little to no visibility how exactly the algorithm operates.
TBH it takes a LOT of blocking to finally start seeing the Tankies less. Threw me for a loop when I first started interacting with them, and I still find instances that I need to fully block in order to not have to deal with them
For me it’s the extremist left and right it’s had to block. It really is better without them
I’ve definitely seen the extreme end of the left side of the spectrum here, havent seen as much of the right here though, much less the extreme variant… and I’m glad about that
It’s mostly extremist left, I just threw in the right so I didn’t get downvoted lol
Fair! xD
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.
Github has a way to mark things as important to users: users have to give the issues a thumbs up. No “+1”, no simple “this affects me too” comments, just a simple thumbs up on the issue. Then anybody can sort the issues by emotes.
Also, the amount of people complaining vs the amount of people actually willing to help is phenomenal. This is opensource software. You can contribute:
- money
- code
- documentation
- translations
Anti Commercial AI thingy
The Lemmy community is here not on GitHub, and discussions on GitHub issues without a threaded, tree-like structure suck.
IMO, it would be better if every github issue had a corresponding Lemmy thread. Or if this thread were about awareness that github exists and issues should be mentioned there. Users could use their github account to thumb up the issue on github and make non-tech comments on lemmy. Otherwise, using your thread is quite difficult. Put yourself in a dev’s shoes:
- they have to be aware of the threads
- they have to deduplicate comments (many things are mentioned multiple times by different users)
- they cannot assign a status to anything (valid, invalid, pull request welcome, in process, done, …)
Anti Commercial AI thingy
When I create a Lemmy community it won’t be discoverable on other servers until someone on the server subscribes, how do you subscribe if you don’t even know it exists? I understand why posts are not sent to servers that have no subscribers of the community, but why doesn’t it at least send the name and description of the communities to other servers?
An issue for this has been filed https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2951
For now, try this tool https://lemy.lol/post/19638974
Btw GitHub allows you to sort issues by number of thumbs ups
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc
