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Lemmy needs all the users it can get imo.
If we start taking a “well, we don’t want those people” stance, then it’s going to fizzle out.
And it’s all well and good people saying “I don’t want an overly large community!”, but you need frequent activity or it’s not a real community.
A community with say five posts a day and four active commenters is essentially dead.
Five posts a day isn't bad as you put it. You've been for years overstimulated by Reddit's abundant content. Many of us have been contributing to lemmy perfectly fine; we see reccurent usernames and profile pictures, we grow compassionate and sincere with each others thanks to this familiarity.
Not everything should keep on mindlessly growing. Not growing fast enough isn't a problem, yet our modern, capitalist lifestyles make it seem so. That said, I am not against lemmy's ongoing growth per se.
The same is true for comments too. You don't really need every statement repeated five times in a 500 comment comment section. Once would be fine too.
No. And to think otherwise is elitist. Ease of access is important. Advanced features are important.
Making UI easy to use for casual users is how you end up with power users or advanced users.
I need a UI that makes it easy to get started and then let me grow into it. I don’t need something that takes weeks to figure out and then I can lorde it over the un-initiated.
Agree with this.
From the op:
"they're for power users and regular users won't understand them"
It's right though. 90+% of users are fine with default settings, so it makes sense to hide them. Otherwise, at best it is confusing & intimidating, at worst a lot of users will have an awful UX because they tweak settings they don't understand.
So far several folks I know are avoiding Federated services due to this. They like the idea but they are less tech savvy.
100% agree. People nowadays are used to easier applications to navigate, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has the time or patience to wrap their head around what's usually quite a dense look.
The key to inclusive UI/UX is customizability, starting with a simplified template and allowing the individual user to build from there.
As an IT trainer to non-technical people, HOLY SHIT NO.
It's nice when "easy" UI features teach new users how to use the "advanced" features, instead of replacing or hiding the advanced features.
For instance, the comment editor I'm using right now supports markup, but it also has a row of buttons that insert specific markup. If I don't know how to type boldface in this markup language, I can press the B button and it inserts some stars for me. I still see the markup, which means that I can learn how to type boldface using the keyboard.
This is an improvement over having a WYSIWYG editor where pressing the "bold" button makes your text bold but doesn't teach you how to type markup for yourself.
Another example of this is how menu items in many GUIs show you the keyboard shortcut that you could use instead of mousing through the menus.
Ohhhh, I know exactly what buttons to press and have time to screw around, so yeah, I'm smarter than everyone who doesn't... not the best take my man.
They have what you’re talking about, they’re called web forums. They have bad UX, high barrier to entry, and only contain nerds and enthusiasts that live and breathe that one thing.
That’s the opposite of what something like this is trying to be, which is building communities that can interact with each other. Scaring away users is antithetical to that goal.
This really comes off as elitist nonsense honestly. It’s like saying that anyone who can’t fix a car doesn’t deserve to drive one. People shouldn’t need to understand the inner workings of everything to be able to participate in it.
Totally disagree, preventing "non power users" to use a platform means that the platform will die in a very short time. I'd rather prefer a community with "brainwashed" users (as you defined them) than a community with four elitari power users jerking together in their small narcissistic circle.
I understand. I saw somebody else post about how the search feature is going to drive off refugees, which made me feel conflicted.
I think patience is the most important thing to be practiced at a time like this. Patience for Lemmy, patience for this process of transition, and patience with ourselves.
Lemmy as a whole is a much newer place, and reminds me in a lot of ways i’d what Reddit was like 12 years ago when I started there. In some ways, the esoteric account creation product, the beta iOS app that needs Test Flight, the much more personal, smaller user experience, all come together to make something reminiscent of the good old days.
We need to show patience to of us are reeling the loss of decade+ old communities. It’s going to be natural to go through a lot as we adjust.
Current focus with apps seems to be on mindlessly consuming content. TikTok/Facebook/reddit/etc all are trying to just be a feed of content where you just sit down, scroll, and consume.
I've always preferred to look over a lot of posts/content and choose what to engage with depending on what's interesting to me or what conversations I feel like I can meaningfully contribute to. I don't want to just mindlessly scroll memes, that leaves me feeling depressed and numb.
I'm not against "user-friendly" UI, but I don't like it when it's non-customizable or hampers my ability to choose what I interact with.
@Wander Very much so!
The big one for me is UXs that make everything huge, with a singular focus on a single thing.
At best, it makes you merely have to scroll more. At worst, it massively interrupts natural user journeys in the most frustrating way imaginable.
It's a waste of the space and the user's attention, and it makes me feel like an idiot as a user.
What apps are you referring to specifically here? Any examples?
Not sure about OP but Google keeps redesigning everything regularly and making it worse every time.
I'm guessing the way the official app and new reddit has everything so large. I prefer to view reddit posts as a list where I can look over a lot of posts at a time and engage with the ones that look interesting. 3rd party apps and old reddit are good for this, but new reddit and the official app are clearly intending for me to mindlessly scroll through content looking at every single post in the feed. I can only see a 1-2 posts at a time, and it makes it very slow to find content worth my time.