I don’t understand people who say they can’t figure out Lemmy or KBin

Does federation have a bit of a learning curve? No doubt.

Is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.

But I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out. The front page feed and sort options are very similar to Reddit. Searching for same-instance communities is not too difficult. Posting, commenting, and voting are all quite intuitive. What’s the problem?

LanternEverywhere,

It makes no sense to me that there are separate forums for the same topic that have the same names other than "@instance". IMO there should be a single place that is /politics which has the same posts and comments regardless of which instance you're logged into. If these instances are "federated" with each other then they should act like a single shared space. Or at least that's how it seems like it should work to me.

BaroqueInMind, (edited )
@BaroqueInMind@kbin.social avatar

Hell no, I do not want this to happen because then you have lemmy tankies and exploding-head fascists all dog piling into normal discussions, saying preposterously stupid shit to spoil what you read as you scroll through the comments.

LanternEverywhere, (edited )

Then as a user you would be free to click to filter out comments from lemmy, and the top mod of /politics could choose to "defederate" from lemmy for that forum, and users at lemmie would be free to create /politics_tankies or whatever.

Zouden,

Wait so do communities not have mods?

LanternEverywhere,

I don't know about other places, but at kbin each forum has mods.

hardypart,
@hardypart@feddit.de avatar

That's a matter of moderation, not the technology behind the platform.

Chozo,

I'm not sure how federation does anything to prevent that from happening, though. They can still do that on your instance, from their instance.

At most, I suppose an instance could defederate from a troublesome instance that's doing this, but the more that happens, the more fragmented the Fediverse becomes, and it starts to defeat the purpose of federation in the first place.

EnglishMobster, (edited )
@EnglishMobster@kbin.social avatar

Reddit was the same way.

You have /r/gaming. /r/games. /r/truegaming. /r/videogames. /r/videogame. Etc.

Each community was slightly different in subtle ways, but some people were subscribed to multiple (basically identical) communities. Others self-sorted into different communities based on moderation style and community vibes.

Not to mention that your idea of how federation should work kind of ignores moderation and community preferences. Communities hosted on Beehaw are tightly moderated. There may be other communities that want something less strict. How do these two reconcile with one another? What happens if a conversation is removed on one instance but kept around on another?

If local mods only have local power, they can get quickly overwhelmed as you effectively need a mod team on every single instance. Smaller instances wouldn't necessarily have the manpower to have their own dedicated mods for literally everything.

Kichae,

Well, instances are all different, independent websites. As an admin, if I can't name a community whatever I want on my own website, I'm probably not participating in this ecosystem.

Plus, 1000 times more posts get posted to r/bigsub than you or anyone ever reads, and 10,000 times as many comments. It creates an environment where no one is actually discussing anything, and are just jockeying for attention.

You won't actually miss anything except for big vanity numbers by just choosing the community you like best for a topic and just... Ignoring the others.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

There is no problem with similar communities. It wasn’t a problem on reddit and it won’t be a problem here.

static, (edited )
@static@kbin.social avatar

Anything new is scary
Reddit is complicated, they just forgot.

The digg users said reddit was ugly and they would never use such an ugly site.
I tried explaining reddit to a diehard forum user, why are all the replies out of order? why are upvotes changing the posting order? this is so complicated!

Don't explain, tell them where to start and how to start. then it explains itself.

HandsHurtLoL,

I can't help but think that people who describe the Fediverse as complicated joined reddit after the redesign...

Kbin is exactly like an old, stripped down version of old.reddit.

Jon-H558,

I think this is also the cause of the squabbles.io Vs kbin/Lemmy split. Squabbles is like new Reddit, kbin is like old Reddit. And people like what they know

Bristlerock,
@Bristlerock@kbin.social avatar

This last sentence is the crux of the matter. People don't like change, but quickly forget that they spent time learning the site that they're so familiar with.

e-ratic,
@e-ratic@kbin.social avatar

This is 100% it. Also some people have only ever used iOS with the Reddit app and Twitter and Tiktok which are so easy to use a literal 3 year old can use it

AnonymousLlama,
@AnonymousLlama@kbin.social avatar

In kbins case you actually have a responsive admin and can actually find devs on here working on new features and tweaks (hey there!)

Super happy with how kbin has been going so far

Grimlo9ic,
@Grimlo9ic@kbin.social avatar

As a forum user, it was absolutely crazy to me when I first signed up on Reddit a decade ago that the replies would be out of order and sorted by popularity. But I grew to understand that it was a crowdsourcing effort in most ways and that the cream rises to the top. It was really quite good to get the information you needed out of the thread.

Anything new is scary

Agreed. Most people just want to settle into something comfortable.

static,
@static@kbin.social avatar

I feel it, and if I had another chance to explain it would have just told her(forum user): make an account, go to /r/horses, start commenting.

Beefalo,

People also forget that Reddit wasn’t built in a day and digg didn’t die in a day

sota2077,
@sota2077@lemmy.world avatar

It isn't hard to sign up for. No one is saying that is the case. It gets confusing when people start talking about adding subscriptions from other instances and how you can copy and paste the link and subscribe. That right there is where 95% of the people on the internet stop caring.

If the developers of Lemmy and the wider Fediverse ever get that fleshed out in an intuitive way I think popularity will go pretty fast.

That and long term if there is a way for information to be collectively backed up so that if some owner shuts down an instance everything isn't gone.

metic,
@metic@lemmy.world avatar

This can be alleviated a bit. If one person searches for an other-instance community by URL, it will become available for all other users through a normal search. So over time this becomes less of an issue, particularly if someone takes out some time to seed a bunch of these for their instance.

Zarxrax,

What is this about having to copy and paste a link to find subscriptions from other instances? I literally just pull up the community browser and set it to "all" and then search.

MiddleWeigh,
@MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world avatar

That's cause over time people have added communities to your instances repitoire over time. Network effect, essentially, making it easier for each new user. Tbh, if new users are on a bigger instance this should be a non issue.

LollerCorleone,
@LollerCorleone@kbin.social avatar

Yes, that will show you all the communities/magazines that your instance has already discovered and have started federating with. But if it is a community that hasn't been discovered by your instance yet, you will need to search with the link for it to start federating. And once even a single user from an instance does that, the community will be visible to everyone else as well.

Kichae,

Yeah. Really, new admins should understand that they should be seeding their new instance, but the last couple of weeks have been... Kinda nuts? So, this won't really be an issue for most users long term. It'll be a thing for admins on small or niche sites that want to ensure they're discoverable and that their users can access the best communities.

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@kbin.social avatar

On Lemmy, if nobody is subscribed to a community on your instance, it doesn't appear in that view.

In order for it to appear, someone with an account has to go to the search bar at the top right of the page and type in the URL to the community manually. Then it'll appear after an initial search.

On large instances like Lemmy.world, you can almost guarantee someone has already done this for most popular communities - but newer/smaller communities may not appear because nobody on your instance has searched for them yet.

For smaller instances, there are likely multiple communities missing and you'd have no idea until you went to look for them.

themadcodger,
@themadcodger@kbin.social avatar

Just be careful. That only works because your instance already knows about those other instances because someone already interacted with them. If you ever want to join a community on a non-popular instance, you might have to be the first person to search for it by copying and pasting.

bobs_monkey,

Agreed. It still is a pain to follow subs on other instances, especially within Jeroba. I know you're supposed to copy the !sub into the search field, but it never comes up.

tal,
@tal@kbin.social avatar

Kbin doesn't presently auto-hyperlink the !sub text.

I expect that it will in the future.

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@kbin.social avatar

It will in the next update. See https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/317

LollerCorleone,
@LollerCorleone@kbin.social avatar

You don't need to do that if that community is already federating with your instance. If its not, it might take a little while for the federation to actually start after you make the search (based on the server infrastructure of your instance and the remaining queue). Try searching again after a bit and it should be there. These quriks should be solved as instances become more stable, and Lemmy/kbin gets further developed.

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@kbin.social avatar

For Lemmy, if nobody is subscribed to that community on your instance you have to copy the entire URL. E.g. you need to search for https://instance.social/c/sub in order to find !sub.

Once one person on your instance searches for it, then you can find it by searching !sub.

I don't know why Lemmy works like that. Kbin doesn't have the problem; you can find things by searching @[email protected] no matter what.

ExcessivelySalty,
@ExcessivelySalty@kbin.social avatar

@sota2077 When I first came over to Kbin that's the thing I got hung up on, everything else I got used to quickly. There's plenty of smart people in the Fediverse, I'm sure someone will come up with a solution.

@metic

sota2077,
@sota2077@lemmy.world avatar

Oh I have all the faith in the world that someone will come up with a solution eventually. I just assume it was never a major priority because of the userbase. With an explosion of users I'm sure they have a 100 things they want to improve and it is just a matter of time.

moon_matter, (edited )
@moon_matter@kbin.social avatar

The question everyone was really asking was if will they will be able to make these quality of life changes before the Reddit API changes come into effect. The answer seems to be "no" unfortunately. It's a huge missed opportunity that may never come again.

WhiteTiger, (edited )
@WhiteTiger@kbin.social avatar

The first step is completely different from anything else you've ever done

"Pick an instance to sign up for"

This does not compute. What is an instance? Why do I have to pick? Which one should I pick? Compared to

"Create an account at reddit.com" makes sense and is something everyone has done before.

It doesn't matter how simple the answers to those questions are, the fact that the very first step requires multiple explanations is huge, and will always be a barrier to entry.

Pamasich,
@Pamasich@kbin.social avatar

The first step is completely different from anything else you've ever done

This isn't really true, you already had to do this for email. Never heard of that being a barrier of entry.

My parents prefer to opt for local privacy/security focused email providers, while I go with gmail for the feature set and design. But I used to try out a few different ones to figure out which one works best for me. Still use a hotmail email for my Windows account.

I fail to see how this is different to the situation with lemmy/kbin instances.

WhiteTiger,
@WhiteTiger@kbin.social avatar

99.9% of people just use gmail, and before that 99.9% used hotmail, etc. There's always been 'the one' that effectively everyone is on.

tenet,

My dude... YOU JUST DESCRIBED THE SIGNUP PROCESS FOR EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET BEFORE FACEBOOK APPEARED.

Ever heard of IRC? Instant messengers? Usenet? Mailing lists? FUCKING FORUMS?

People are nowhere near as stupid as you seem to think and those that are probably shouldn't be interacting with other humans in the first place.

WhiteTiger,
@WhiteTiger@kbin.social avatar

You're describing an internet that doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for decades.

static,
@static@kbin.social avatar

simplyfy it, just give them less options : join kbin.social or mastodon.world

RoboRay,
@RoboRay@kbin.social avatar

Even a low barrier to entry tends to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in discussions.

So, I'm fine with people that can't get past making a simple, almost irrelevant, decision as step 1 of gaining access... not gaining access.

Manticore,
@Manticore@readit.buzz avatar

A greater percentage of reddit is younger than some of them realise. So many redditors are going to be used to new reddit, and plug-and-play services in general. Kbin and Lemmy look like old.reddit, and they require them to understand the concept of what a 'server' is to even get started. This is knowledge they've never needed before to use the services they want to use.

Imagine spending all your life eating McDonald's and then somebody told you homemade burgers are way better quality, taste better, cheaper, etc; then when you ask how to get a taste of those bad boys they start with informing you that you'd need to grill them. It's not hard, it's just new.

Packopus,
@Packopus@kbin.social avatar

@Manticore

they require them to understand the concept of what a 'server' is to even get started.

I've known 5 year olds start minecraft servers. And understand that each "world" is an "instance". But that's aside the point, as you're right that even Help-Desk IT people struggle to understand the difference between computer and server.

It's not hard, it's just new.

The "new" part is what gets people. All of this is new. Even the implementation of all of this "fediverse" is new. It will come with time! People probably didn't understand email vs snailmail, and probably had an even harder time with SMS/IM vs email when all of that came about just over 20-30 years ago. Most of these "complications" are from people that grew up knowing that the "internet" is basically 5 or 6 social media sites for very specific uses, and those 5 or 6 sites are older than most of the people using them, so that's all they know. Even for a dude in IT, the fediverse was a new concept to understand, and even difficult to understand how it could best be implemented for the masses.

@metic

kembik,

As someone who designs software you are vastly overestimating users, they wake up with their shoes tied together and spill hot coffee on their lap before they even get to the website.

detwaft,

Kbin was trivial to figure out. Mastodon I still struggle with a bit.

themadcodger,
@themadcodger@kbin.social avatar

What part of Mastodon do you struggle with, if you don't mind me asking?

tenet,

How the fuck does anyone struggle with Mastodon? There's nothing to figure out.

"Home" is where the people you follow are.

"Local" means everything on your server.

"Federated" is everything on your server and everything on the servers your server shares information with.

That's... that's it. That's literally everything. Beyond that it's just options.

UserNotFound,
@UserNotFound@lemmy.world avatar

I used Joey for Reddit, it has better UI than Reddit. Yes, I have problem with UI on Lemmy, terminology is confusing. It will work out, somehow

Truaxe,

I also used Joey, and this is the first time during this whole debacle that I’ve seen someone else mention Joey in the wild. I was starting to think I was the only one not using Apollo or Sync or RiF.

AdamBomb,

I can’t either, but I’m also on the border of don’t care and actively glad. Maybe there won’t be such an Eternal September here. That would be a win.

Deron,

I can't put aside my sneaking suspicion that can't figure out any of these tools: kbin, lemmy, mastodon, etc.... Is more or less code for, "I have reach and influence on platform x, and I need can't figure out how to be that person here."

Can they setup an account? Can they read? Can they write? These seem to all be achievable. Can they influence? Well... should that be the goal?

BarbecueCowboy,

I think some of the problem too is not realizing that... it's kind of broken in a lot of ways and a lot of the times it's not super apparent why.

There's a lot of things that work in one instance and just don't in another, and I think the user frequently thinks it's because they're doing something wrong when in reality, whatever you're trying to do just isn't working right now.

Starfish,

when you are used to reddit its not easy to make yourself feel at home in fediverse. The Lemmy themes dont look to good on widescreens.
I can recommend kbin with rounded corners + Stylus add-on with "kbin-it theme" activated.

eleitl,

Consider that slight entry barrier to be a feature. Do you really want the Fediverse experience to be a 100% copy of Reddit?

PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S,
@PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@vlemmy.net avatar

A lot of people don’t really understand computers. We mostly know how to manipulate the user interface (UI) to get the computer to do what we want, but if you switch up the icons or install a new desktop environment, I guarantee you that 99% of users will be completely lost.

This is because the UI abstracts the complex process of running a computer so that the user can just think about getting things done. The user doesn’t need to know what it means to “go to the start menu and click the Notepad app.” Practically, this is Windows-speak for “open the default text editor”. However, if you take a Windows user and drop them into a Linux and ask them to open up the default text editor, they probably won’t know how to do that unless a Windows-like desktop environment is chosen.

Basically, a lot of people don’t “know how to use Reddit” so much as that they know how to get the Reddit website to do what they want it to. Lemmy is even slightly different than Reddit, cosmetically different. Although we usually use the phrase “cosmetically different” to imply that the difference is not important, because we rely on GUIs to understand computers, cosmetic differences are really important in UIs.

Go look for posts on Lemmy discussing Jerboa and the other apps. The apps mostly differ in how the user is able to interact with the site. They should all have the full functionality of Lemmy (or are working towards it), but the ways of presenting that functionality to the user are different.

One of the most important groups that moved to the Threadiverse were the blind community. It is because of the inaccessible user interface in the Reddit app that they decided to move over.

And let me be very clear that the fact that computers abstract away their complexity is very much a good thing. That’s why we have computers: to do tedious, complex work automatically and simply. Not everyone needs to be a computer expert, but I do think that developers need to resist the urge to make cosmetic changes that don’t improve functionality. I realize that this is an ill-defined tall order. Regardless, we need to be aware that most people don’t know how computers work.

I think that, in order to get people joining our communities, we should try to be compassionate and helpful when it comes to users learning how to use site. Actually, this is a special case of my more general position that we should try to be compassionate and helpful in the face of people who are confused and trying to learn, whatever the subject. I know it can be hard; if I’m being honest, I have a bad habit of getting annoyed at people who don’t look like their listening. But we need to unlearn that.

supermurs,
@supermurs@kbin.social avatar

There's a bit of learning curve for sure, but people shouldn't overthink the federation aspect too much. At least here on Kbin there is plenty of content already.

May,
@May@kbin.social avatar

I do get ppl saying its complicated. A lot of people dont know much about servers just as a start? (Not that you really have to to use kbin or lemmy.) or know anything about federation or what it mean in this sense. If you ask them what is meant by instance, most people saying so probably wouldn't understand that in this sense even if English's their maternal language. Not even that those people arent smart, just like just because you dont understand a foreign language doesnt mean youre not smart: this is just an area they dont know about.

I think some people find it strange that people are confused, because maybe they dont often talk with people who arent as familiar with technology, or more used to being on 'tech' related parts of the internet where some people would understand these. It seems this way bc the community of kbin seems to be more into technology, like i seen programmer humor posts get popular a lot, and discussions about linux, and the technology magazine, and stuff like that.

If so i can see why someone being confused would be surprising. But know that: a lot of people probably wouldnt join other social media either if it was more user-driven (in terms of setup? If thats phrased right?) which is why stuff gets more simplified on official websites and app. Is important to remember that many people (even some my own age!) dont have any context for all of this stuff they would need to deal with and decide in order to use Kbin/Lemmy - dont know what is an instance. What is federation. Defederation. I would say its easy to understand once you try, but i know i speak for myself who already has some knowledge and interest about technology and learn fast. And not everyone even wants to use something that required them to figure it out as they go.

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