Fediverse

I always forget about it. The speed is impressive!

The ootb experience is what matters to most. As people seem to just want it to work. I personally love the bare bones.. but most users don't really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings. I would be fine with polished and basic settings complemented with an advanced settings menu and other apps.

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

First graph

Perhaps a modal the first time someone visits that shows the different UI options and directions on where to switch

This is a good take.

Speaking from the same neutral pragmatism, it makes sense to let the default Lemmy web UI be a lightweight, actually-mobile-friendly derivative of old.reddit, rather than a more committed default like Alexandrite or Photon.

Keeping things similar is a good jumping-off point, and if we do want to make some large change, different generations and cultures have heavily varying default preferences. Wouldn't it be wiser to pick a common ground, something these differing peoples have grown used to, as opposed to some new style A or B or C likes?

(Fun fact: if you think that ppl sticking to old designs is silly, Panasonic has a whole $$ niche in Japan selling modern-internal, vintage-external laptops with DVD drives and old-style keyboards. https://old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/v0t06p literally has both a VGA and a thunderbolt lol)

I love the Lemmy UI, and am a Gen Z. There's nothing worse than a UI that's slow, takes more time than necessary to load and is overloaded. I would much rather have bare HTTP forms or just make curl calls than using (new) reddit or Photon.

A lot of the comments including yours sound gatekeep-y to me but I have to say I kind of feel the same way.

Everyone who has come here and stuck around found their way through the jank and is joining an exclusive club of high-quality discussion. Like Linux, once you can get past the basics, you can customize your experience nearly limitlessly, but it takes effort, trial and error to get to something you like.

How will they? A new UI adaptation won't change the fact that Lemmy is community-run, federated/decentralized and not owned by a corporation?

I disagree. We want all people and all perspectives. Federarion needs to become the default to put enough pressure on the big tech companies to get all people on a common protocal. It is the ideal that web3.0 promised to be.

Also we need to monitise lemmy so that running an instance is profitable enough to support the usrload. I think we can do this via lemmy gold make it monero based where a golded post/comment get split between instance/community/post/comment. Align profit incentives with making federated media better for everyone.

We're at 44k monthly active users https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats

100k or 200k wouldn't kill the platform

I mean, yes. And I also like the oldschool interface, it does have its iffy corners but the overall layout and UX is great.

That said, there's a difference between "avoid (success at all costs)" and "(avoid success) at all cost". We should be making lemmy better for the purpose of making lemmy better, we shouldn't be changing it just to please random people so they come over.

Eh, i agree that lemmy shouldn't grow too big (Reddit is an example of why, feels like a circlejerk of bots and reposts), but the userbase feels too small currently. On a lot of communities, The activity is 1-2 posts a week, which makes it feel quite dead. And I especially miss the niche communities that you could join on reddit, for small games or obscure topics.

I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.

People who prefer old Reddit often say the same thing about new Reddit. While old Reddit, or in this case a barebones, simpler UI, is lightweight and "slick," the reality is that if we want Lemmy to grow beyond its current base of tech-savvy users, we need to consider a different perspective, one that focuses on the needs and expectations of the average user.

For example, despite old Reddit being lighter and having its loyal supporters, 80 to 90 percent of users still prefer new Reddit. As someone who used to moderate on Reddit, I can confirm that the majority of traffic came from new Reddit, even though old Reddit was still available. This highlights how a more modern and user-friendly interface is often what appeals to the majority.

From my personal experience as someone who primarily used new Reddit, Photon feels far more intuitive and familiar compared to the default Lemmy UI. That said, I am not claiming Photon is perfect. However, considering that most alternative UIs are currently niche and their development relies heavily on a small group of contributors, Photon stands out as a mature and robust option.

While it is encouraging to see Lemmy’s developers working on improving the default UI, the project is still in its early stages and may or may not succeed. Why start from scratch or bet on something that is just beginning development when we already have a well-developed alternative like Photon? By adopting Photon as the default, we can take advantage of an existing solution that is in good shape, has significant potential, and can continue to improve with more widespread adoption and contributions.

This approach would ensure that Lemmy becomes more accessible and appealing to the average user, while still leaving room for users to choose other UIs if they prefer. First impressions matter, and adopting a polished and familiar UI could make all the difference in attracting and retaining new users.

BTW those who want to can still change to alternative UIs, nothing will stop them from doing so.