this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
221 points (91.1% liked)

Fediverse

28713 readers
548 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
221
A Case for Modernizing Lemmy's Default UI with Photon (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
50 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Recently, I made a post here, which gained some traction in support of the cause. However, I mistakenly used an outdated screenshot of Photon. It turns out that photon.lemmy.world is running an older version of Photon, which caused some misunderstandings.

For those who saw that post and were misled or disliked Photon because it appeared to display only 2-3 links on-screen, similar to new Reddit, let me clarify. While Photon is modern and intuitive, it is not like new Reddit in this particular aspect. This outdated screenshot gave the wrong impression, which I’ve since updated, but I wanted to create this new post since many people may not revisit the previous one to see the corrections.

The latest version of Photon, which can be seen at phtn.app, is a big improvement over what’s on photon.lemmy.world. Photon is modern, intuitive, and, speaking as someone with years of Reddit moderation experience who has also started moderating a few communities on Lemmy, it offers a far superior moderation experience. For example, Photon allows you to view the mod queue for all communities at once, making moderation much easier compared to the base UI or other alternatives.

Photon's modularity and customization options are comparable to, if not better than, Kbin's UI. You can easily change fonts, reposition docks and panels, apply custom themes, adjust sorting, and customize the modular side panel to arrange and pin items in any order you like. All of this can be done without needing CSS or additional technical knowledge. It’s probably the most modular yet user-friendly UI available right now.

Here’s an example of the latest Photon interface settings:

Here’s a more customized version I created in just a few seconds—it can be personalized even further:

In my previous post, I emphasized the need for a modern, visually appealing, and intuitive UI to help the Fediverse grow and attract mainstream users. Currently, Lemmy remains dominated mainly by discussions of political topics and critiques of Elon Musk, while its user base is still relatively small at around 40k+ users. For Lemmy to thrive, it needs to expand beyond its current niche and cater to more general topics and interests.

Personally, I use Reddit for far more than just shitting on Elon Musk, discussing politics, or even tech, especially FOSS. For example, I frequently engage with communities about cars, gaming, TV shows, entrepreneurship and general topics that are largely missing or underdeveloped on Lemmy. These general-interest communities are what make platforms like Reddit so versatile and appealing to a wider audience.

If we remain in our current comfort space, Lemmy will likely continue to stagnate as a niche platform. Meanwhile, other alternatives could grow and potentially replace Reddit one day, and it may not be decentralized, open source or community-funded rather centralized and driven by investors/VCs, Just as we’re seeing with platforms like Bluesky gaining traction over Mastodon to replacing X/Twitter. By embracing a UI like Photon’s, which is both modern and user-friendly, we can create a more inviting experience for mainstream users, helping Lemmy grow into a platform that caters to a broader audience.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That is highly unlikely to happen. This was a response from dessalines, one of the lemmy devs:

@erlend-sh We have no association with whoever made photon, and they've never contributed to lemmy-ui or the lemmy backend. I don't see us accepting as "official", a front end that we have no control over.

Source: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui-leptos/issues/15#issuecomment-1747293678

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Could happen on other instances

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Agreed, IMO the default UI is going to suck for most new users. For a smooth transition it should be fairly close to reddit, that's where most users come from.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Fine by me as long as you keep old.lemmy for the rest of us. The current UI is about as good as it can be. I wouldn't change a thing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mostly agree with you on so much of this - like perhaps the main reason that hobbyists don't use Lemmy rather than Reddit is that we have no actual "content" that they would like (politics + Linux just isn't everyone's thing). Which in turn relates to people not being here, which in turn relates to still other things. One chief among the latter issues is the overall lack of moderation, which in turn relates to the overall suckiness of existing moderation tools (reputedly?), especially across instances that do not currently receive reports (one Lemmy dev, Nutomic, has added that to the Roadmap, but not until ~0.20, and while the current version is 0.19.7, Lemmy.World is still rocking 0.19.3, so this does seem like the work of the better part of a year to get fully deployed to ~80% of the users on the Fediverse?).

However, and unfortunately I am not joking, fully 100% of the people that I have recommended Lemmy to have turned around and actively chided me for having recommended it to them. Obviously the big 3 tankie instances (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml) can be quite toxic hellholes - I almost quit the Fediverse myself after mistakingly making a couple of comment over on those, and receiving replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, each - but even so I could not quite understand the vehemence of the response for the longest time. Until I put myself in their shoes: did you know that (1) a Google (not DuckDuckGo, but which one are mainstream normies going to use!?) search pulls up lemmy.ml as the top instance for "Lemmy"; (2) the default sort method there is set to Local, not All; (3) that instance is chock-full of content that makes fun of people in Western nations, particular Americans but also Europeans too. NO WONDER!?!?!

And related, so many Lemmy instances (such as lemm.ee the #3 one overall, after lemmy.world and lemmynsfw.com) still federate with hexbear.net and even lemmygrad.ml - as I mentioned earlier, I almost left the Fediverse myself after being trolled by them. They can do whatever they want, but so too can I, and why would I desire to expose myself to that?

So I would argue that the top issues with Lemmy relate more to lack of content, presence of toxicity, lack of mod tools, and in particular lack of "niche" interests that make people feel welcomed. To help with that, I petitioned my instance Discuss.Online to defederate from hexbear.net (it was) and created [email protected]. We already have the likes of e.g. [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. - but this makes people, particularly Americans from Reddit, feel more welcomed when there is a space particularly suited for them (actually: us, as I am one of 'em!:-). I hope more people do more activities such as this. Also, check out https://piefed.social/ - it's not quite ready for the masses yet as it lacks many features, but damn it is so welcoming and friendly and fills me with hope for our future when I see those.

All that said, yes a snazzy UI will profoundly help as well - not in isolation of but in combination with all the rest of the work that we need to do in order to grow this wonderful place that we like to call our own:-).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Also, check out https://piefed.social/ - it's not quite ready for the masses yet as it lacks many features, but damn it is so welcoming and friendly and fills me with hope for our future when I see those

Yes. Many people are too hung up on mastodon and lemmy to see that there are other software in fediverse. And if lemmy UI doesn't quite work for one, they should try a different one. There's no need to stick to the most popular software.

As for communities, there's not much one can do about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Regarding mod tools: someone can teach themselves to program, learn Rust, and then develop that functionality and contribute it for free to the Lemmy codebase. That's a tall ask though.

A more readily accessible contribution would be for someone to start a community. More importantly, someone can fill an existing one by writing posts with content. But then people will ignore it or worse, possibly downvote it into the negatives. Some people want the Fediverse to grow, while others just want to be fed meme-style content. These people are at odds with one another, and yet it takes all kinds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There’s no need to stick to the most popular software.

As long as they properly interact, sure. But critical mass is important, and I feel like Lemmy is just getting there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Aren't we shrinking though? After a spike of 51.8k Monthly Active Users in March, a steady decline down to 43.4k today, with more users per server growing but no more actual activity so probably reflecting alt accounts (I know I've done such - starting on Kbin.social, migrating to StarTrek.Website, then Discuss.Online, now making an alt on PieFed.social). We just don't seem to be bringing in users, notably even as X implodes and we might have picked up a few from there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We just don’t seem to be bringing in users, notably even as X implodes and we might have picked up a few from there.

Twitter users don't like Reddit format and vice versa

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Very true, but perhaps not universally so. Even if a tenth of one percent of those users who left were to have come here, it would have been noticeable. Instead, we stayed the same size.

Or perhaps they did, and it balanced out people leaving, as too people increasing their number of alts - I sometimes comment or even post from my STW instance, and vote too, so I maintain all 3 on a monthly basis: at the beginning of this past year I would have been considered as "1 user", whereas now I am counted as 3.

And like, if someone were to leave LW and move to another instance, then likewise they will be counted as "2 users"? (this could be simply a blip as they migrate from one to the other, unless they also occasionally visit their old, and perhaps do an activity like vote or reply, as I have done, in which case it remains as 2 active users)

And in creating the [email protected] community, m_f created a new alt in order to help mod it, and AdmiralPatrick started using their DO account after seemingly having let it lapse. So are those "2 new users" - definitely not.

So even more than us not growing, we might be shrinking more than we realize.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Very true, but perhaps not universally so. Even if a tenth of one percent of those users who left were to have come here, it would have been noticeable. Instead, we stayed the same size.

Twitter and Reddit have been around for more than 10 years, people are familiar with both sides, are know which one they prefer (it can be both).

That's why I was not expecting any Twitter not liking Reddit to come here, the same way Mastodon probably didn't see a lot of new accounts when Reddit messed up in June 2023.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You are right. The normies don’t want to use Lemmy if it looks like it does today. Hell, the only reason I use it is because of a sleek mobile app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What app do you use?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

IDK about them but I use Voyager

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

@[email protected] Okay, you're right, this actually looks better than the first screenshot you posted, I know that Lemmy already develops new UI tho, so I am not sure there's really a point because it's gonna change anyways?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I frequently engage with communities about cars, gaming, TV shows, entrepreneurship and general topics that are largely missing or underdeveloped on Lemmy.

[email protected]

There's more potential for than just tech on Lemmy, but it seems like people just prefer to talk about this. A community like the two listed above, or [email protected] could be much more active, but people just don't seem really into this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks for your contributions on that matter btw. I appreciate you sustaining these other communities, even though I know it's not easy. I like reading non-news stuff lol.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Glad you like them

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I completely agree.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Clean. simple. Has my vote

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If we remain in our current comfort space, Lemmy will likely continue to stagnate as a niche platform.

I follow what you're getting at here, but I think this line of thinking, of Lemmy as a platform, also contributes to the issues in drawing more people to this network of communities/sites.

As Kichae said in your other thread:

[...]
“Lemmy” doesn’t exist like Reddit does. It’s not a place people can go to talk about shit. It’s a website engine. It exists like WordPress does. One of its features just happens to be “can pull content from other websites”.

If we want this space to grow, we need to focus on building community websites that stand on their own. Then we can market it as “hey, you love it here on MyInterest.social, but did you know you can also talk to people from SomethingElse.social? Pretty cool, huh??!?” Nobody seems to want to do that, though. That means we’re totally at the mercy of places like Twitter and Reddit, waiting for them to fuck up badly again and hoping more people just kind of land here, in some cheap and uncanny knockoff of where they really wanted to be.

On one hand I agree that the interface, and in turn the user experience, is worth focusing on to help get people to participate around here. On the other, I think you also need what Kichae describes at the end of their comment. Communities that can stand on their own with their own distinct identities and interests that also happen to let you talk with and see stuff from other distinct communities.

At some point I'd like to move to a little more focused sort of community like that built with Lemmy (or Piefed, or Mbin), but haven't had luck finding any that fit so far since many are broader in scope instead.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Basically we need to market it as a forum software instead of just a reddit clone

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

Believe it or not that will not do us any favours lol, the term "forum" is becoming a thing of the past and if we want to become more mainstream and break being a niche platform, that isn't the way to go.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

@[email protected]

It's a bit of both in my opinion. You only market/suggest Lemmy (as forum/link aggregator software) to those with the tech knowledge to build with it, but to everyone else you mention a community site to join and don't bother mentioning what it's built with, as they won't care anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Right, I'm not hung on the term, just the idea.

To add, discourse is pretty big among techy communities, including, ironically, the fediverse forum. It also has a pretty terrible user experience, but also a ton of tools for corporates, which lemmy will probably need if they want to market to those types (lot of potential money there).

And the thing is, even if those don't add to the regular fedi/threadi verse, they still get people familiar with the platform and UI.

@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Agreed.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

After your first post, i've thought about your points, and i've changed my opinions a little.

I agree, we should replace the default lemmy UI as a whole. Out with it. But photon wasn't designed to be a "default" UI. It was designed as an alternative.

The point of a default UI is to be as accessible as possible, yet still functional. That's why most users on the fediverse usually use a 3rd party client (Including me, i use photon + raccoon on mobile). While the current lemmy UI checks the "performance" box, the functionality box? not so much. It feels like everytime i use it i am overwhelmed with information density, and the auto expand feature implementation is just bad. Photon does the opposite. It checks the functionality box, but scratches the performance box. Even on a modern PC, photon is choppy for me, and the frosted glass effect is not helping.

I don't think we should have a default lemmy UI, as in, every instance uses the same UI. As i said in the first post, it should be up to the instance maintainer to choose their own UI. This comes with its own problems. Lemmy.world's photon is outdated, and so is lemdro.id.

Ultimately, this is in the hands of the instance maintainers, and Xylight himself. He is rewriting photon for more performance, so my answer may change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suggested the official adoption of Photon a year ago. Xylight was tentatively on board with it.

Even more important though is this change which would allow an alternative frontend to be used as a default, instead of having to be relegated to a sub-domain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

woah I hadn't seen this thread. this would be massive

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

It seems you’re uncomfortable with the term "default," and I can understand why. However, when I use "default UI," I’m referring to what users see when they access a server through its primary link (rather than alternate UI links like those offered by lemmy.world, for example). My proposal to replace the current base UI with Photon doesn’t take away the option for users to continue using alternative UIs if they prefer. That flexibility remains intact. However, the average user, especially those new to Lemmy, is likely to access and evaluate the platform through the default link.

Unless every single server admin changes to alternative UIs manually on their own, "default UI" will exist because a lot of servers, atleast to begin with, settle on whatever Lemmy comes with.

This proposal is aimed at both server admins, particularly those managing "general-purpose" servers where average users are most likely to join, and Lemmy devs themselves. A modern, intuitive default UI could significantly improve first impressions and help attract a broader audience.

In my experience, Photon has been responsive and largely glitch-free in terms of performance, especially compared to Reddit's new UI, which I personally find horrible. That said, hearing that Photon is being rewritten for further performance improvements is encouraging and only adds to its potential as a suitable base UI.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I'm pretty sure we agree at this point. My end point was that it is in the hands of the instance maintainers and Xylight (he has agreed) and that is what you are saying here, too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Photon came up in this discussion amongst the Lemmy developers.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm kinda the opposite. I love the information density of the lemmy ui and as a text first user I dislike auto expanding pictures with a vengeance. Now I don't really care what the default is as long as I can choose my poison.

Where did you find statistics on client use? I browse lemmy using firefox/mull whether it's on desktop, laptop, tablet or phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Honestly, I can't understand why people like compact mode instead of cards. Then again, I've always been bad at handling multiple information at once. To each his own, i guess

As for the statistics, those came from my own bias, but I see there are a lot of people that love the old lemmy UI, so it's false. Sorry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It wasn't meant as a "gotcha!" as I was curious to see the stats, I think that your bias is correct and that those like me that prefer the compact format are a minority.
Seems that there are unusually many of us perusing Lemmy though.

I believe having a poll where people choose their favourite Desktop UI, their favourite way of consuming lemmy content on their mobile devices as well as ask them if they consider using an alternate UI a hassle. That would be a great first step when it comes to deciding on where the UI should be headed. The next problem would be getting the poll to those that chose to leave lemmy and those that never tried it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

We definitely should make a poll to understand our demographics, eventually. Maybe i'll do it one day. It would be a huge benefit for us users and developers.

As for reasons why people don't choose to try lemmy, i remember before i joined lemmy that i heard warnings of the developers and community denying genocides, making up false information, and being toxic in general etc. I also couldn't wrap my mind around instances. That definitely soured my opinion, to be honest. Of course, now i know those are only a couple of instances that could easily be blocked, but the average user isn't going to understand instances, federation, etc.

The reason why bluesky was so successful was because it's easy. It has pseudo-federation, but it ""conveniently"" chooses the main server for you. That's why most users are on bsky.social. Simple, but incredibly centralized. It defeats the point. Also, the UI is very similar to old twitter. Lemmy/mbin are more radical in terms of differences, this makes it more niche.

I just don't think people are ready for the fediverse, yet. Maybe in a couple of years, people will start joining us, but for now, we're the minority.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

but the average user isn’t going to understand instances, federation, etc.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1fmuk7o/post_to_address_the_usual_criticism_about_lemmy/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Good read, thanks for sharing. But i think both of us are over estimating the tech literacy of the average user. Many of them look at software, or ideas, or platforms at surface level, and don't care much about how software works internally.

The average user isn't going to care about federation, and might not even understand it. To us and the OP of the reddit thread, we're familiar with federation, and have gotten used to it. It seems easy for us.

This is why i think the bluesky exodus is going to be useful, because it may inspire new users to learn about federation, and later on, the fediverse.

https://xkcd.com/2501

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The average user isn’t going to care about federation, and might not even understand it. To us and the OP of the reddit thread, we’re familiar with federation, and have gotten used to it. It seems easy for us.

That's why nowadays it's recommended to not talk about federation anymore. Just as in the Reddit post, (by the way, I'm the author) give them two links

And that's it. No schema, no picture, no federation. Just two bullet points, and people can already have a look, using an instance that defederates hexbear and lemmygrad, and with a nice app

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Hm, good point, It seems I over complicated the whole process.

Thanks for sharing your post by the way, it's very well written.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I think overall it's not a bad suggestion, and yes Photon looks very sleek, and I have even contributed a language translation for it.

However, my main concern is: what would happen if the main dev loses interest and drops support of the interface? Lemmy backend may add a new feature that either breaks Photon, or Photon can't make use of it until updated. If the development of this frontend could be more integrated with the Lemmy project team and funded, I would be less concerned.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

While it would be best if lemmy devs can be more involved with photon, photon is still completely open source and the project is open to contributors, worst case hypothetical scenario of if the project ever gets abandoned it can always be forked, continued, or even better it can be handed by the current dev to someone who can continue to keep it alive.

If photon is widely used I see no reason the dev would just abandon it as it is rather than handing over the project to someone else who has already been contributing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

photon is still completely open source and the project is open to contributors, worst case hypothetical scenario of if the project ever gets abandoned it can always be forked, continued, or even better it can be handed by the current dev to someone who can continue to keep it alive.

Like the old.lemmy interface which hasn't been updated since July?

I'm pro FOSS, but that's not a silver bullet that magically attracts developers to work on projects. We're still a 45k monthly active users community which relies on 5 devs which work on Lemmy, and maybe 2 on each of the alternatives (Mbin and Piefed).

The appeal for text-based forums just isn't there anymore.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

How’s it look on mobile?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

To be honest you are better off using 3rd party apps on mobile, web is mostly for desktop use and it's best on desktop. That being said hopefully photon improves in coming updates on mobile as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

To be honest you are better off using 3rd party apps on mobile

It's a matter of preference: https://lemmy.world/post/22994355

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Here's a screenshot on Firefox.

It feels nicer to me, and following nested comments is less tedious without the compact color lives. My friends who don't use Lemmy prefer I send Photon links when I can.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good, but slow

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Thanks for sharing. Looks like the designer still has more to do. See Mastodon web UI for mobile.