this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.

Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.

What can we do?

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[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The biggest UX issues, in my opinion, is the process of choosing an instance and content discovery.

When you go to "join lemmy", rather than choosing a username, you're presented a big list of instances, and you have no idea what that means and what it means for your experience if you choose one. Even though in reality it doesn't really matter, just having the list paraylyses the user as it's not a process they're used to. Users are likely asking themselves:

  • Am I going to miss out on content from other instances?
  • Do I need an account per instance to interact with their communities?

Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn't create any communities. So basically when they they're directed to join-lemmy and go to sign up, they create an account on that instance right away and get started.

On the discovery front, a potential idea would be to allow communities to have a specific category tags field. When a user signs up, the host instance could have a page that they're directed to (this would be controlled by the instance, so they wouldn't have to have it enabled) which lets the users pick some topics they're interested in and can then subscribe to the communities right away.

[–] coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafe 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Sometimes I think it would be best if we could have some kind of read-only instance people can create an account on and get stuck in first, then choose an instance to sign up to once they understand it. The instance would be locked down so they couldn't create any communities.

I believe lemmy.myserv.one is what you're looking for.

[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 2 points 18 hours ago

Interesting, thanks!