As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that’s why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit’s API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it’s the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can’t let growth stagnate, it’s high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
EDIT: The image I attached is from photon.lemmy.world, which I just realized is using the outdated version of Photon, I have updated the image to the updated current photon version from phtn.app. There are a lot of improvements made.
Hi everyone, I’m the dev. Reading all these comments really hurts when it’s something you’ve poured your heart and soul into for over a year.
There’s reasons I do everything I do in this UI, and my primary goal is to make Lemmy accessible for everyone.
This is the “cozy” view as well, but there’s a “compact” view for people like me who enjoy more information density. Again, my end goal is to make Lemmy accessible. I don’t do this for the sidebars for convoluted reasons I won’t get into.
I’m not the one trying to advertise it, and I’ve never really tried to because of the fear of disapproval. I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood. This screenshot uses the “list” view, imo the worst one, with some cursed chrome scrollbars.
Now that I see that the majority of users believe this sucks, I’m not sure if my mission is worth it or if I’m even doing it right.
I’m probably being too sensitive to criticism which I should expect from any project. But this project is the only one I used to feel proud of, then people chiming in claiming it’s the ugliest thing they’ve seen. I don’t know im blind to design which is the only thing I considered myself “good” at in terms of web dev.
Never used your project but don’t let this thread get you down.
Clearly OP loves it - don’t let those who don’t know it or don’t like it be the voices that ring loudest in your ears even if they hurt the most.
I worked professionally in open source at a company with lots of funding. The tools I worked on were used by millions and millions.
Every negative comment hurt so much. Every angry user I wanted to talk to. Most of them wanted to TALK AT me. It all hurt. And I was being paid. The engineers on my teams were burnt by the community time and time again.
If you love what you’re doing and you have a growing or happy audience - stay the course. Listen to criticism, decide if you agree (and maybe take some time when it hurts because the criticism might be valid), make a decision and move on.
Also, and this is going to be tough, maybe think about expanding or modifying what you mean when you say making Lemmy accessible for everyone.
Do you mean making a UI that will become the majority default or making a UI that brings some features (or perspective) for users who see value in those features? Trying to make something for everyone in a pond as small as the fediverse, where there are already a plethora of options is a big lift.
Above all, do you. And that includes this comment which I encourage you to promptly ignore. ;)
Well said.
Hello @Xylight@lemm.ee ,
First of all, really sorry that you took it that way. A few comments were indeed harsh, and I guess people were just focused on the interface and forgot that there’s actually someone behind it.
I personally value Photon a lot, it definitely helps a lot of people who prefer this type of interfaces.
I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood.
I think you don’t even need to advertise it that much. We have Photon as an alternative frontend on one of the instances I follow, and people regularly bug the admin to update it because they like it!
The negativity this post received is probably because interfaces are a very personal matter, and trying to uniformize the default interface is always going to lead to heated discussions
Take care, you are doing an amazing job.
I for one am a fan of everybody doing UI Fediverse improvements. It is very literally paving the future of the internet, because the future of the internet is not corporate bullshit. The Fediverse needs to be as slick as possible, and more people working on that is sorely, sorely needed!
Don’t be disheartened. You did a great job with your version.
People complain about Apple and Google UIs that they spend hundreds of millions on creating and user-testing. There’s no one-fits-all in UI or UX.
This is a good example, look at the Magic Mouse for something coming out of a multi-trillion dollar company compared to Logitech although am sure Jony Ive had pure passionate intent in his heart.
Photon is amazing, and I use it daily. I love it. I’m sorry about the users in the comments that don’t understand what “subjective” means.
Thank you for all your work, and keep doing what you’re doing!
Hey man you and the team did a great job. Love the default UI. It’s all open source yeah? So they can change what they want. Kinda like what semaphore social did with mastodon.
My other comment was blunt so here’s my attempt to be more constructive, this is all my personal opinion and my reaction was in response to making it the default I don’t think that you should stop working on it or even that I am objectively correct.
There is way too much empty space. I don’t use it but from OPs screenshot it appears this is to allow for larger thumbnails. It would be better to have them smaller and expandable if someone finds one interesting. Moving the thumbnails to the left of the text would eliminate all the blank space your eyes have to travel across to view them as well.
Shitty microsoft paint edits to demonstrate what I’m trying to say:
Freed up space in green:
That’s an option. You can change the thumbnail alignment to the left, then use compact instead of list mode. OP is using bad settings.
Just played around with it a little and it is much more tolerable than OP makes it look like. I wasn’t able to get it as compact as the default view but I don’t hate it.
OP is using bad settings.
That’s very important
You really trying to convince us with a screenshot of the ugliest ui i ever seen huh
Yeah I used old Reddit. I don’t want something that looks like new Reddit
You both aren’t wrong… But this isn’t about you.
If it’s not about me then why does it exist.
.world in a nutshell
better than whatever the fuck .ml in a nutshell is.
Personally, I think this looks great. I love the command palate and the display modes, and it checks the other boxes, for me at least.
BTW I actually used an outdated version of Photon on the screenshot, looks like lemmy.world haven’t updated their photon version, I have updated the post with the updated current Photon UI, I think more people will like it. It’s an improvement from the older version.
Nah, the current UI is fine. We don’t need fancy shit on a link aggregator. Reddit went to shit after “updating” the UI.
Your opinions of “good” or “best” aren’t the same for everyone.
Different OG ex-redditor here. I think Lemmy’s UI is vastly superior. But full disclosure, I used old reddit.
How is it clear that Lemmy’s growth is nearing a plateau? And why does Lemmy need broader growth? That seems like a solution in search of a problem. A major advantage of not being a corporate social media property is not having to think like one.
Nice! But the average users graph shows continual staggering growth, no sign of a plateau.
45k monthly active users on 14 October
44k monthly active users on 11 DecemberThe first graph is generally considered the most relevant to assess the activity on the platform
On a longer time scale the monthly active users has been steadily trending down for 4 months, from 48k to 44k. But the users per day has been steadily growing - apart from whatever TF happened on Oct 14 when it suddenly dropped by 50k if I’m reading it right. Database problem?
I’m kind of curious how these readings are taken. The Fox News claim of being “America’s most watched cable news network” is based on a Neilson rating that records TVs multiple times a day, which heavily overweights ones people keep on it all day whether they’re watching or not. Fox does much worse on another Neilson stat called the “qume” which only records one hit per day per TV if that TV was tuned to a channel at all during that day - a much better indicator that people deliberately switched to a channel to watch it for a while. I don’t suppose we know how these Lemmy averages are arrived at.
Anyway, the posts and comments per day - which to me defines “activity” better than number of users, are both steady upward lines - unless fewer users who are more active is a bad trend.
There’s a lot of discussion about the “comments and posts per days” metrics, the consensus seems to be that they should be “total” rather than “per day”
https://lemmy.world/comment/13761285
People are posting the same, the graphs just go up because they are about the total number of comments and posts, not daily.
Meaning that we indeed have hit a plateau of 44k monthly active users.
As much as i love photon, i don’t think it should be the default. The default lemmy ui is pretty slick and lightweight, even if it is kind of bad. Photon can be sluggish, and overwhelming for some.
I think they should just improve the default UI (which they are currently), and leave it for the user to decide.
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.
Not sure where you’re getting that 80 to 90 percent figure, but most users being on new reddit is not at all a reflection of preference, it’s of new being the default option
I also prefer the new (new-old, the current one sucks) reddit UI and love photon, and i don’t think it’s too far fetched of an idea to want it as the default UI. I think it should be left to instances, so for example, lemmy.world could use photon for the default, yet lemmy.ml could use the default lemmy UI.
I’m still a little concerned over first impressions of a new lemmy user, when they try to use lemmy.world on a weak device, and realize it is slow, or laggy, and could sour their opinion on lemmy as a whole. A non tech savvy user might not completely understand the idea of lemmy, or clients, or even instances. They’d just blindly choose lemmy.world and assume that’s the “main” instance. (I also could just be underestimating the average user’s intelligence, lol.)
That’s why i brought up performance as a main point to why we should keep the current lemmy UI. Maybe if photon is optimized and is more stable, i could completely agree that it should be the default.
it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form.
Good! Lemmy doesn’t need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.
Please no!
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.
Niche communities happened naturally over time on reddit as well. You need to grow the larger base communities first, since you’ll be gathering the numbers there. Then you branch off. The only other option is for you yourself to build up the niche communities by posting more often, it’s a lot of work.
Yeah, i think in general even the big communities aren’t too active, but they are the most active. We aren’t ready for niches and such. Such is the life of a lemming :(
We’re at 44k monthly active users https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
100k or 200k wouldn’t kill the platform
When the front page doesn’t have posts from over 2 days ago on it then I might say Lemmy is a good size, but it’s a pretty stagnate site.
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.
For many users (including me), monero / crypto / web3.0 integration would be an immediate red line.
Regural payment methods would work just fine, this is a mere forum after all. If you are that concerned about people linking your username with your identity, then you might as well just skip gold / silver.
Ik people hate crypto and thats valid but monero is an objectivly better way to tranfer value than fiat currency.
Federation is literaly web3 philosophy. Fiat will destroy the decentralisation we have tryed so hard to create.
Your statement regarding monero is objectively untrue. It is far easier to use real currency. This is just objective fact.
My intention wasn’t really to argue for/against crypto. Just pointing out that for me and many others crypto integration is a no go. Take that as you will.
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.
I just use the Voyager app, which has a great UI, with no need to visit the website at all.
I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.
Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users
You say that like it’s bad 😊
Your points are valid, but you do run on the assumption that growth is good, which is not an universal truth IMO.
As someone trying to keep the non-tech communities active, having a few active posters would definitely be an improvement
Yes, I just want to point out that opening the floodgates will get you the fish, but also a lot of mud.
What communities do you manage?
Personally I think the day to day UX is fine, but finding communities is the real mess.
Thanks!
About link for finding new communities, I worded my request badly, I am not interested in finding new communities, I’m interested in finding specific communities. Thanks though!
Newcommunities has posts where the active communities on a topic are posted, so that can help
Sure, but it’s impractical when you search for a community.
Edit: tried your link, but the search function doesn’t seem to work. I searched for “art” and got technology, world news & shit post.
I just tried, art indeed seems too broad for some reason.
I just tried “television” and got relevant results. “video games” and “trains” work too
There was this post from 4 months ago, I’ll start a new one today: https://lemmy.world/post/19101266
Eww. I don’t like that screenshot at all. I vastly prefer the more info dense version I use that looks like classic reddit.
I mistakenly used the old photon version, I have updated the post with the image of the new current updated version of Photon.
You can customize photon’s post layout to make it more info dense, even more than the newer image I have attached on the post.
While that is preferable to the previous one, it’s still only showing 3 posts with tons of wasted space. This is putting an infosparse UI over an infodense application/platform and when you do that you lose functionality and make using the platform more tedious and time consuming. In a way it’s nice but it loses too much function to be appealing in this application. I could see that being an acceptable UI for another platform but not a link aggregator where the whole reason for existing is to gather a lot of information together.
While I do favour that UI improvements are needed - in particular for guest views and community sidebars, I’d say defo chasing the “big social” trends and UIs is not the way to go. Heck, I left Reddit partly because of the new UI (I know about old.reddit, it’s just there’s no promise of any kind to maintain it).
This UI is so beautiful
I personally really dislike new reddit and the Photon theme. I’d say no to any change to my main instance.
I don’t see any issue with the current UI.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter.
I think many people use Bluesky instead of Mastodon because of its UX, not its UI. Both looks great (I think Mastodon even nicer!).
I personally use Mastodon, but I’ve seen people complain about their experience with it.
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.
most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings.
Usually I just recommend
- one instance: https://discuss.online/
- one app: Voyager
They can figure the rest themselves later, but that’s usually a good way to set people up
Great advice, didn’t know about discuss.online.
Is there any other “human-readable” instance out there?The question I usually get is “what is Lemmy?” when sharing a post
Probably https://reddthat.com/
Be cautious, downvotes are disabled
What’s the consequences with disabled down voting? Is there any difference on how the post displayed ?
Yes, downvotes will be ignored. On the other hand, you can’t downvote any post. This comes from a time where there was no option to disable downvotes display at a user level (came in 0.19.4 I think, LW is still on 0.19.3, so you probably never tried it out).
Got it! Thanks.
I’ve been planning to move from world but apparently there’s no easy way to migrate with everything intact yet afaik.
That’s too much padding. It needs to be more like Hacker News.
Are you aware of https://old.lemmy.world/ ?
Oh nice. It’s like reddit with res. I like that a lot.
Glad to hear!
