Thought that I would start off my first post in this place by getting this off my chest. In case anyone is wondering why more people haven’t flocked to Lemmy yet, this has been my experience so far.
Last night I decided to give this place a shot and sign up, just to be met with a join page that was mostly unresponsive and didn’t want to load anything. I ended up giving up and going to bed but thankfully by the morning, the web page had listed the possible servers for me to join.
So, especially after my experience the night before, I thought that the server that has in its description “recommended for users to join this server to reduce load” was a good start.
Then it came to looking for apps. I thought that the app with the description “made by Lemmy devs” would pair well with the server recommended to new users. Only to find that the server that I joined isn’t even listed in the app when I try to sign in. And that manually typing it does nothing but give “server error” responses as well.
So now here I am, typing this from my laptop, wondering how many other people try to join this platform and give up after the first couple of hoops that need jumping through first. I’m hoping that eventually I will find the right server and app combo to give me an actual complete, working experience but so far my experience here has been a little bit ridiculous.
Anyway, glad I got that off my chest. Hi Lemmy, just a Reddit refugee hoping to make a home here, once I’ve got this absolute circus of trying to get going here in the first place behind me.
I’m happy you made the trek here despite the hiccups 😊
I made an account on lemmy.world and use Boost for Lemmy since it’s exactly the same as Boost for Reddit and it’s pretty awesome. I paid for the app, one time purchase, no subscription but you can launch the rocket to support the dev.
It was a similar bullshit experience for me. I created like 4 different accounts at the beginning because one server needed to allow me to join, one didn’t load, one literally disappeared one week after I started on it and so I ended up on the one that I am now. Every time I switched I lost all my settings, filters and blocks.
It’s a very disjointed experience and you can immediately tell there’s no one putting proper focus on user experience.
I would be shocked if the average person encountering a quarter of this shit would not give up immediately and for ever.
note that since a year now, you can port your settings over to new servers
Also, smaller instances seems shunted from .world for example.
LW is too large of its own good, until they upgrade to 0.19.8 it’s going to stay messy.
I use Voyager on android. Works pretty well, and it allows you to filter content by keyword or community
It also has RES style tags
Yeah, the Fediverse needs to transcend this clunky as shit open source ass stuff. Thank you for the excellent back end. Now since this is important, we gotta get the front end not to be hostile.
The world is transforming radically and needs a new internet that is both not corporate and not shitty. Fedi’s at like 1.2 out of 2.
As far as apps go, I personally recommend sync (if you’re on Android anyway)
And I personally have enjoyed jerboa app.
Nice, I think I used that for Reddit for a bit ages ago. I’ll definitely check it out, thank you!
So while it’s good to spread server load, for a new user it’s also good to just land on a reliable server and then I’d suggest move to another server once you’re familiar with Lemmy if you find a server you prefer. You’ll already find a lot of content has been federated in locally on established servers.
I’d suggest Lemmy.ee, Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, of sh.itjust.works . There are also good regional servers like feddit.uk, and Lemmy.ca and similar non-english servers.
In terms of apps, I use Boost which is pretty much identical to the old Reddit version.
You should be able to log in to any server on most apps, so it may be that the server you’ve picked is a little flaky or difficult to reach?
Maybe not that one https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
Yeah, onboarding is a major bottleneck to jumping into lemmy.
I can’t say that’s a bad thing, but it does make it a barrier to large scale adoption.
That being said, I’m kinda surprised that jerboa didn’t work for you. I’ve never run into trouble manually entering instances, but it’s been a while since I used it. While it isn’t exactly the best app for lemmy, it’s the most reliable overall. Well, on android, no idea about iOS.
But, I noticed you said you were a sync user at reddit. Sync for lemmy is pretty reliable, though (as was the case with reddit) the developer does the whole no updates, then a single big one thing, so it can lag behind lemmy version updates a good bit. I’m using it right now, and it’s fully functional for a user. Can’t moderate on it. It also has some issues with markup handling, but every app has some quirk or another with that. That’s a lemmy thing tbh.
Connect is another reliable app, purpose built for lemmy. Boost and eternity (which was infinity before) are both essentially the same as the reddit versions. Summit and thunder are nice ones that are lemmy based. Tastes vary, but those are the ones I’ve liked most.
The good thing is, with that barrier to entry, you tend to not have as many idiots. The kind of folks that will sign up and spam shit while being an twerp because it’s easy to do tend to get filtered out. So the overall experience here is more fulfilling. Might want to avoid lemmy.ml, and hexbear if you aren’t pretty radically leftist, and just avoid lemmygrad entirely.
Posted on Lemmy.world from lemmy.myserv.one. very cool.
Is this something that’s incorrect to do around here? From what I can tell, myserv.one has one single community and the whole deal is that you’re supposed to able to access anything from there? Although I’ve already come across a post suggesting that there’s some sort of server wars going on around here so I’m starting to wonder if this is actually the place for me. I just want to post and talk shit, not worry about the url I’m coming from or tip toe around in case I stumble into some war that I know nothing about.
No. Not at all. You said first post, so I thought it was kinda cool. Anything else I wanted to say… Well This sums it up.
Is this something that’s incorrect to do around here?
No. It’s exactly the point of federation.
No, it is absolutely fine.
You make an account on an instance and this is your home instance then you’ll be able to interact with other instances like you are doing now as long as the server you joined hasn’t banned an instance.
Ignore all the drama and use the block function liberally for shit you dont care about and you’ll soon be able to tailor your experience to more of what you want to see and chat shit about.
Once you get your head around what is going on it really isnt too complex, it is just the initial experience that can be a little confusing I guess.
How can you tell what instance they are posting from? Is that visible on some apps?
This is how usernames are displayed on Eternity
(no downvotes bc of my instance (blahaj) btw)
Voyager shows it, if you click on their username.
I’m using the web UI and it works great, even on mobile.
Yeah, looks like it’s back to Firefox on Android for me. Just tried Sync and it doesn’t list the server that I signed up with either. Lol. Lmao even.
It seems like most of your struggle is from choosing a new instance with a very low number of users.
I’d say just use lemmy.world
Apologies if this is a stupid question. I promise I’m not usually tech illiterate but this whole setup is new to me. How do I transfer my account to a new instance? Or do I just have to abandon this one and make a new account there?
Edit: yeah this instance I’m on sucks. Realizing now that it definitely does not let you access everything from there. A lot of communities I’ve searched for and thought were missing just aren’t showing up in myserv.one’s search results. Here I was thinking that there wasn’t even a functional non-binary community in the lemmyverse or fediverse or whatever.
Aaand it looks like I found my answer. From what I can tell, the Lemmy devs consider import/export as good enough / the same thing as transferring a profile so they’re just going to ignore the issue and never attempt to implement it. So I guess new account it is.
https://lemmy.world is a large general purpose instance that would certainly work. https://lemmy.blahaj.zone is a popular instance that is specifically gender diverse.
They both block the two most obnoxious instances.
Just make a new account. There is an option in the settings of the website to export and import your settings. I’ll reply with a screenshot.
Apologies for another reply but I just wanted to dump my mounting frustration with this platform somewhere. Now I am lemmy.world, signed up and everything, and if I try to visit this Offmychest sub that is part of lemmy.world, it only loads one single post from 2014. And yet if I access the same Offmychest sub from my myserv.one account here, I see all the posts. Currently have lemmy.world open in the subreddit on my laptop, via Firefox, so I can confirm that it’s not an app issue.
Honestly I dunno anymore. I really wish that this wasn’t the only really viable Reddit alternative because I’m getting less and less impressed and more and more frustrated with this fucking place with every moment.
There’s also this sort button.
It was hidden by the bright header for me. If it’s set to something like top posts for the day, you’ll only see today’s posts.
It’s one of my favorite features because I often limit to the last six or twelve hours.
Nice, thanks. I’ve actually ended up settling on the Eternity app. I used its Reddit sibling, Infinity for a long time, so I’m finding my way around pretty easily at this point. I’m sure I’ll start making use of sort more once I’ve got a bit more lurking in and I’ve seen what there is to see.
That’s definitely strange. Could you please have a look at your account settings and make sure that in the “language” part you have “Undetermined” selected? That could be the issue.
Thank you for the help here. Turns out that “Undetermined” was selected but “English” was de-selected. And in order to select both, you have to ctrl click them, or else it de-selects the other. But the problem seems to be solved now, so thank you very much.
Thanks for the info but I ended up just signing up with lemmy.world in the mean time. Myserv.one doesn’t seem to be what it’s advertised as because I even only got the notification for your reply now, besides a bunch of images not loading and communities not showing up search (basically every queer or feminist space I looked up besides long dead communities, suspiciously enough).
lemmy.world is already 10x better. Didn’t bother with import/export as I wasn’t around on the old server enough. And I’d rather start over subscribing to communities somewhere that’s actually going to show me all the communities.
Even if it’s not listed, you can still login with it and use it. Just type your instance domain and it should work.
I did that with Jerboa and just got server errors. So I didn’t even bother trying with Sync. Gonna give it a go now, thanks.
On iOS, I can recommend Memmy.
I read that Memmy wasn’t under active development any longer. I switched to Voyager and I’ve been pretty happy.
Interesting, I haven’t had complaints after blocking a few communities.
Same I’m loving the tag system. Makes blocking arses way easier and cleans up my feed.
