this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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I made a blog post discussing my biggest issues with Lemmy and why I am kind of done with it as a software.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There are a lot of good points here, I appreciate the time you put into it.

As an end user of both Lemmy and Mastodon, it's always an eye opener to see how developers greet user requests and suggestions with curt or snarky replies. Even "Why don't you open an issue on our source tracker" will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.

My own concerns are more on my own level, though. It resonates with me when you write —

The Fediverse has its own existing cultures that thrive here. And when you enter a space that already exists you need to be mindful of that to prevent issues from occurring.

I've seen a few user migration waves, and I think your description of (some) Lemmy users who just want a drop-in Reddit replacement is on point. Mastodon has had its share of Twitterati who surged in trying to recreate their previous circles and tone. Obviously, it's a generalisation but we do need to face the problem.

The transition from a walled garden environment like Reddit or Twitter — moderated by professionals or enthusiasts, and algorithmically curated — to a federated space with carefully cultivated etiquettes will never be like simply picking up a conversation in another UI.

I'd be interested how a project like Sublinks would/could accommodate the existing fediverse cultures, and hopefully bridge the cognitive gap that seems to exist between threadiverse and fediverse?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Even “Why don’t you open an issue on our source tracker” will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.

How should developers handle feature requests? Keep in mind there is a need for the whole team to see the suggestion and it's also good to have a place to gather feedback and further discuss.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

No, that's fair. I meant to illustrate that there is also a technical gap between developers and especially the general users that come on board with mass adoption.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Community managers - sometimes just talking about your issue with someone will help tremendously in figuring out how to put it and they often can just do it for you. That said, Lemmy devs do not value work being put in the issue tracker - they have admitted to not reading it. People who cannot contribute code are just entirely ignored and have no power in the project's direction.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I suspect the small size of the dev team and the general nature of an OSS project means there aren't swarms of people around volunteering to be community managers.

Small projects your sway with the project is directly proportional to your ability to submit pull requests. It's just a sad fact that it's easier to say "I wish we had feature X" vs. "Here is a pull request that implements feature X".

At least with OSS you are getting what you paid for (nothing!), vs commercial companies where you pay for the software and they STILL ignore you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I essentially proposed to do this myself in private conversations with Dessalines but there was no willingness for a shared roadmap so it felt pretty pointless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

If the developers' wants and needs don't intersect with a given user, there is no way forward for that user, community manager or not.