this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Thanks! If lemmy wants to grow (and I do want that), it better listens to people who share their struggle.
It is irrelevant wether we find that struggle justified, wether we deem him worthy of joining, wether his assessment of the situation is correct. Even an ill informed rejection can help us improve.
Most users who face similar problems will just go away, never come back and not share anything to learn from. This person shares their point of view, and that's a great resource to improve the user experience right from the welcome page.
This perspective is especially valuable, since once you managed to get through that process and familiarized yourself with the system, your view has changed. It can be hard to assume an uninformed perspective again. But we need to make lemmy accessible especially for this audience, because they are the only ones who can make it grow by joining.
So, what did we get?
We'll come back to this later.
Let's compare the experience on https://www.reddit.com/ and https://join-lemmy.org/ from the point of view of an unfamiliar user who might want to create an account.
On reddit, without being logged in:
In short, reddit is filled with what most users come for, right from the start. It takes their wish so serious that there are many ways to check out the core content (center feed, four exemplary posts) or categories (left and right) or search (top, left, right).
This redundancy with slight variations can address different people who are used to different things. A person coming from an image-centered platform like instagram might go for the four exemplary posts which look like image thumbnails, while a person coming from a text-based forum will intuitively go for the center feed. Both ways directly lead to and familiarize with the core content without the need to log in.
The registration process is simple, the buttons are very visible and again redundant in opposing corners of the screen. Everything happens on one page which does not need to explain anything in text, because it is intuitively accessible.
On join-lemmy:
Let's revisit what your friend said:
That is correct. Most of the information on https://join-lemmy.org/ seems to be geared towards people who are interested in running a server. This is not what people expect when they are looking for something like reddit as a user. This will most certainly scare some people away, or cause confusion.
Solution: Hide the tech talk. Address the regular crowd. People who want to run a server can manage to find it somewhere "hidden". People who want to share cat pics cannot.
He shares his interest, and expresses feeling helpless in finding it. Until they discover a specific link on page 2 (and invest a couple more clicks), users cannot see what's going on inside lemmy, or wether there is even anything going on. Things which some newcomers honestly won't know at this point.
Solution: Bring our star, the content, center stage. This is what people come for. Don't make them search for it, we don't have to hide it.
Expressed frustration: "This is not what I was looking for. Where is what I was looking for?" All the technical explanation cannot convey what a direct content presentation conveys in a few seconds. How does lemmy look like, what does it feel like, how can I use it, what people and topics are there?
He seemed to expect to be logged in after registration. Yeah, why not? Some sites do this, others do not. I also find it mildly annoying to log in after registration, to repeat myself.
I spent 3 days learning lemmy and am still struggling with this. This will trip over so many users. https://midwest.social/c/cats will throw you out, but /c/cats@midwest.social hidden in a link works fine. Would be nice if lemmy could automatically do this for me when clicking on a link to another instance while being logged in.
Absolutely right, that's a UX design smell. Your friend was lucky to have you to ask. Most users will be alone on their journey. A good portion will turn around when they find server talk where they expected a reddit scrolling substitute.
The process of choosing an instance should be simplified, be hidden from users. Advanced users can still have that freedom.
Sorry if I was harsh in my words at some points. It's not because I despise lemmy, but because I love it and want to stay here. But I also loved to have so much people and content around me on reddit, to be part of the one page people turn to when they are unhappy with Google results. I want lemmy to shine, and to grow. To achieve this goal, it is imperative to review how we approach new users, because there is no other way for us to grow but to win them. Let's help them help us. Make joining easy and fun.
It seems to me that he follows the link to another server and is asked to log in again. Different server, another account is needed.
Or that, yes. Technically you don't need another account for another server.
For example, this link is relative to your home instance. But if I just paste the full link: https://discuss.tchncs.de/c/lemmytips it probably shows the page logged out.
Related GitHub issues: #3259, #3261
Technically you need another account if you want to post on another server.
For some reason the user landed on a different server with the same look and feel. When challenged to login (again in their experience) they got confused their credentials wouldn't work. The new user expected a single-sign-on for 'lemmy the social medium'.
Could be an early adopter issue that'll be solved over time with wider use and more content, and people get to know what to expect from federation.