AnimalsDream

too overwhelming in UI/UX for majority of people coming from Discord

Uhhh, Discord’s user experience is one of the most chaotic fever dreams I’ve ever come across, and is a large part of what makes me want to get away from it (among many other reasons).

One of the really frustrating things about Discord is that people are using it for things that it’s not good for. Like documentation, or really anything where a new reader is looking to find a persistent source of information. Chat should be good at chat, and wikis should be easily accessible on the open web - not in an obscure digital group that has to be joined to be seen.

It’s like when people start a business and then use facebook as their “site.” No that is not a site, and you know what, I don’t want to shop there anymore either. Same energy.

My problem isn’t with open-source online services existing. Of course some things are inherently net-based. My problem is with the way everything is being done as a server even when it’s completely unnecessary. Syncthing alone - which is not server-based btw - is more than enough to take care of cloud needs for everything from calendars, to photos, recipes, text files, password databases, and more.

Hell, it’d actually be pretty interesting if someone did come up with a way to make a e2e chat client that works through Syncthing.

My point is I just want to download an app, have that app convert a recipe webpage into its own standard format, and then save that file on my own device. I do not want to deal with the hassle of getting Docker installed and working, nor to have it gobble up tons of computer resources just to do that one simple thing.

Synthing does not use a server based architecture.

Those same routers that still have problems with security updates, and are frequently the targets of cyber attacks? So how is it in any way a good idea to run entire server stacks, and databases (which throw a wrench in data portability compared to standard file formats), creating so much bloat and unnecessary attack surface, and then making all of these apps network-facing - opening them up to attacks?

How about instead I just use a standard text editor to save my recipe as a markdown file, and if I need to move it I can either get a usb cord or use Syncthing? Sorry but this whole self host movement is pretty insane.

On the one hand I do support the existence of open-source self-hostable alternatives to surveillance-capitalist offerings. But at the same time it has been driving me crazy how many things are being shifted toward this server-based architecture. For one example, I want an open-source app that will allow me to import recipes from any text or website automatically. But I want those recipes to save in files, be offline, and I do not want to maintain a whole damn server just to manage my fucking recipes.

Not everything needs to be web connected by default, and most people have no interest in running any kind of server.

The thing I don’t get about these self-host apps is why so many of them exist when the thing they do would be better to implement as a run of the mill offline program.

I just want to auto-import recipes from websites into a cookbook app without any fuss. We do not need to bring a server into this equation!

You do you, but why not keep it simple? Friend to friend, just give your peers a link to the same instance you’re on. We can start instance sports teams and find out who wins the tournaments!

Then I’ll just quote it directly:

"Here’s what all these complaints about federation choices reminds me of: every job I’ve ever had, new people get hired from time to time. What do they do? Long before they’ve had any time to get any training or learn how things work to maybe get a better understanding of why some things are done the way they are - day one, they start complaining about all kinds of little things, waxing fantastical about how they’d do things differently. Same energy.

Nothing is perfect, and maybe things can be improved in a number of ways as time goes on. But also everything has a learning curve, so maybe try learning that curve before making demands about getting rid of the core elements that make federation what they are."

That’s the thing: no matter how well a system is designed, there will always be a subset of people who find it confusing and frustrating. I’ve seen Facebook users who refuse to touch reddit because it makes no sense to them. People who never “got” Twitter. Hell, I love digging into operating system environments and learning how they work, and even I ragequit Apple devices every time I touch them - systems whose design is the most celebrated in the tech world.

Learning new things is just uncomfortable, and there will always be people who refuse to do it.

But the fediverse is here, and despite your gatekeeping attitude about it “never being adopted by the masses” because it doesn’t follow your personal views; it is growing just fine. New users come and go every day. New systems get federated regularly. Maybe a different reddit clone than lemmy will prove to be the most favored one? Who knows. But it’s doing just fine, one day at a time. And it’s open-source, so if you don’t like it, then code something about it.

If somebody gave up on the registration, how would you know? They wouldn’t be here to say it.

If you gave up on the registration, then how are you here? You’re inventing impossible physics to support your arguments. Are you a professional programmer for doge?

Here’s what your expert opinion is really about:

https://slrpnk.net/comment/13815707

Where they are is having spent most of their life in a walled garden corporate internet. What you need to understand is that all new things have a learning curve, and the process of learning needs to be accepted - rather than trying to pressure free systems into being the very thing everyone is wanting to get away from.

Freedom means having choice. Sometimes a lot of it. Sometimes that’s scary. But it’s worth embracing.

If I send you (assuming you’re an average person) a link to lemmy.world, that site has a basic signup. That is the same as virtually any site. There is no functional difference between joining reddit, and joining a lemmy instance. The only difference is you’re not in a walled garden here.

I know freedom is scary if you’re not used to it, but try it for a while. Once you get used to it, you’ll find the corporate web is stale and banal.

You can’t expect things to be different if you’re applying old ways of thinking and looking at things, and trying to box the new into being the very thing you migrated away from.

And? The tech bros currently ransacking the federal government also work in IT.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

And yet here you are.

It’s not empathetic. It just tries to understand human psychology well enough to manipulate consumer choices for more profits. If you want something on that philosophy, that’s what reddit is already for.

When I recommend federated sites to people, I literally just pick the ones I’m already on and send the link. Problem solved. They can learn more and try new things in their own time. It’s also not hard to just tell them, “It’s like email, but for the whole internet.”

“Of Earth’s estimated 400,000 plant species, we could eat some 300,000, armed with the right imagination, boldness and preparation. Yet humans, possibly the supreme generalist, eat a mere 200 species globally, and half our plant-sourced protein and calories come from just three: maize, rice and wheat.”

Would you consider biodiversity to also be bad ux? Maybe consider that the benefits of decentralization far outweigh the cons of your marketing programming, and that the issue is more one of education. Dumbing down and patronizing people like we need somebody to make our choices for us sounds like a solution that’s worse than the problem.

When it comes to software things, I do tend to err on the side of supporting new users - I’ll be the first to argue that a person should not have to learn how to use the terminal in order to use Linux.

That said, this situation is honestly bewildering to me. I cannot fathom how the idea of having choices could be considered, let alone by so many people to even make this into a controversy, to be bad design. That’s the very thing that makes federation great.

You’re all seriously overthinking this. Just look at a few of the most populated sites, and pick one that looks good. The choice makes 95% no difference in practice because on most instances you’re going to see all the same content as soon as you press the All button anyway.

One thing I can imagine that would make the experience better, is maybe if there was a one-click way to join or migrate to another lemmy instance, using an existing login. Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal to just quickly sign up for a new instance if I want to. But I did see that Pixelfed has the option of signing on by using a Mastodon account. So maybe something like that can help?

Is that a consistent experience across lemmy though? I looked at some of those downvote-disabled instances, and then looked at posts in those instances from within an instance that still had downvotes enabled - and it appeared that people were still downvoting those posts just fine.

If it is possible to simply disable votes all together - including comment votes - I might try spending some time learning how to get that all setup and running and see how the experience is. But I would likely defederate from all vote-instances (or I don’t know if there’s a way to make the federation opt-in), so that community could be entirely free from voting effects.

I was looking at NodeBB as an option for that sort of thing. The problem there is it’s not really structured for the kind of user-driven dynamic sub-community building that reddit and lemmy are built for.

But yes, that is essentially what I want, a traditional forum site with subreddits.

But then again, there’s also the design of the posts themselves, and how they’re shown on the user feed. Reddit clones put links and link access front and center, whereas there’s more clicks involved in even accessing post content on a forum.

Overall I still think it’d be easier to forumize lemmy, than to lemmyize NodeBB. The latter would require too many additions and modifications, whereas the former can be done hypothetically with deletions only, well, and a few switched defaults.

What are you supposed to do about the opinion of newcomers whose opinion is, “I don’t like choice,” and the central feature of federated platforms is choice?

I think that’s more of a feature, not a bug. It means if one group is doing a shitty job of running their community, it’s easier to find another group of the same nature. I’ve noticed a lot of communities on .world are run a lot like the most popular subreddits where moderation of posts is highly aggressive, and seems aimed more at curating “high quality content” than actually being a community. Okay, easy enough, I just start posting to similar places on other instances, or start my own.