Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy
This reddit post likely has tens if not hundreds of thousands of views, look at the top comment.
Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.
What can we do?
I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, "iT's JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY." None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, "It's easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork."
Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.
Once you're into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you're coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, "EmAiL! iT's LiKe EmAiL!" then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.
👏👏👏 Very well said!
True but they've improved dramatically - especially what Blaze is telling people now in r/RedditAlternatives. (it's sth like 5 sentences now, only what they need to know - see it live here)
None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those
I almost never use the local feeds. Technically my instance choice does affect them, but I could switch to any other random Lemmy instance and the experience would be 99.99% the same for me.
To me it's not forks vs. chopsticks, it's someone looking at a fork with 3 tines instead of 4 and getting paralyzed not being able to decide between the two.
What's a good way to explain it then?