I don’t understand people who say they can’t figure out Lemmy or KBin

ohellidk, 2 years ago

not gonna lie, the "magazine" thing did really confuse me at first. I thought it pulled magazine articles at first, lol

Anka, 2 years ago

Honestly I just understood the term right now while reading this thread :D

required, 2 years ago

Any website that doesn't have a simple sign up in two steps (username/email, password) and everything clearly explained to them like a 5 year old will receive tons of complaints about being confusing. It's just the internet

iamsgod, 2 years ago

is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.

dunno, but this is the main reason I juggle between Lemmy and Kbin. Lemmy is more intuitive/similar to reddit, but it's buggy and has an ugly UI. Kbin has a better UI and less buggy, but has some questionable design

spark947, 2 years ago

I asked someone who wrote a huge reddit post about it, and they responded with "idk, I just looked at it and didn't get it."

I think people are just resistant to change, and only want a system that they think is 100% a clone. Honestly, IDK how you look at lemmy and don't think it looks like reddit, but I guess it is just that browse local is the default option. I guess browse all should be the the default for now, but I actually like browsing by local first to see what is going on in my local instance before looking at the rest of the fediverse.

tal, 2 years ago

I asked someone who wrote a huge reddit post about it, and they responded with "idk, I just looked at it and didn't get it."

UI labs record a person trying to use something for the first time so they can see what they get stuck on. Like, mouse movements, clicks, even eye-tracking.

Not saying that the Lemmy or kbin devs should be doing that right now, as they've got full plates. Or that Reddit did this. But understanding where and why people get stuck is a big part of working on UIs.

Wyrdletini, 2 years ago

It’s the UI that trips me up on KBin. It’s probably a lot easier for people using a desktop to navigate. But from mobile, it’s frustrating when I tap what I believe should be a button and it isn’t actually a button. The navigation of KBin.social is less intuitive to me than the navigation of Lemmy.world. Also, yeah, “magazine” is not an intuitive term.

iAmTheTot, 2 years ago

“Magazine” is the biggest offender here. That’s a very unintuitive term.

Lmao what? For people born after 2010 maybe? Magazines have been a thing for decades and anyone over 20 is going to associate "magazine" with "series of articles about a topic"

norapink, 2 years ago

I guess generally online the term magazine hasn't been used often. Then again subreddit wasn't either and that's a made up word.

Shylight, 2 years ago

A made-up word is easier to adjust to compared to the word that already has a different meaning in your mind, I think. Once your brain has filed something into memory it's not very enthusiastic about changing it.

Quill7513, 2 years ago

I was just thinking that. Subreddit is a dumb made up word that a corportation invented. Community and magazine are descriptors. Sublemmy or subbin are just people trying to map experiences from on platform to another, and are understandable, but I’d personally prefer to see us call them communities and magazines in the long term.

Bottom line. Subreddit. Dumb word. If you were able to learn that, you can learn “magazine”

metic, 2 years ago

“Magazine” implies little if any input from readers (letters to the editor being the exception). It doesn’t sound very interactive.

EnglishMobster, 2 years ago

Not necessarily? I guess it depends on what magazines you read.

A lot of the magazines I've read over the years are collections of things submitted by readers. Model Railroader magazine is a bunch of model railroads submitted by people across the US. They'll pick a few to feature, but they're all basically submitted by readership and it's fairly interactive.

Lego Magazine was the same way when I was a kid. While a lot of it was about upcoming Lego products, there was a significant section that featured Lego builds made and submitted by the community.

For newspapers, I'd absolutely agree that it implies an editorial staff and no input from readers. But magazines (to me) have always had a focus on community involvement.

IMO, it translates quite well to the web, and the fact that there's a big ol' "+" button with "add new article" as an option makes it pretty obvious that this isn't just a static read-only place.

My main hangup was "make new post" vs "make.new article". "Make new post" will make a Twitter-style short-form post in the "microblog" side; "make new article" goes as a Reddit-style self-post thread on the threads side. But once I understood that it was pretty straightforward, and I use both pretty regularly (articles for self-posts I'd normally post to Reddit, posts for little one-off thoughts or things I'd otherwise put on Twitter).

Kbin is planned to work with more fediverse stuff at some point as well. It already supports Pixelfed (Instagram) and PeerTube (YouTube). Mobilizon (fediverse event planner) support is on the roadmap, which would let event planning appear natively as well.

So if you ran a magazine based around a TV show, you'd be able to add a Mobilizon event that corresponds to when a new episode comes out. Then that event would serve as a "megathread" for episode discussion once the episode airs. It's a pretty neat idea, since it intuitively reminds people when things are and gives the community a place to discuss.

Eggyhead, 2 years ago

I think the implication is from the perspective of a long-time reddit user. I've already gotten used to posting "articles" in "magazines" and the nomenclature has clicked a little, but I certainly was pretty confused about it for a day coming hot off of reddit. For example, something like "community" and "post" could have been more fool-proof, albeit less interesting and unique.

tal, 2 years ago

I think that "magazine" is fine. As is "sublemmy". But I kind of am not enthusiastic about having two different words for them, unless there are future plans for them to act very differently.

From a user standpoint, unless he's talking about the internals of the server involved, there isn't really a difference. Saying "sublemmy/magazine" is just verbose and annoying. I'm on Kevin, but I want to be able to refer to magazines/sublemmies in a way approachable to all the people reading the content.

Zellith, 2 years ago

Been here a week. Still no idea what the words you just said mean. Lemmy wont become super popular unless it becomes super simplified so even a caveman could do it.

EnglishMobster, 2 years ago

Kbin doesn't have as much of this because it's simplified quite a bit. It's one reason why I recommend Kbin to newbies, because it gives you a giant "sign up" button immediately.

But to answer your question:

• Instance: a server that hosts everything. You and I are on Kbin.social, which is an instance. Another Kbin instance is fedia.io. Kbin has relatively few instances. Lemmy has oodles (Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, etc.). Lemmy actively encourages people to spread out over many instances.
• Magazine/Community: If you're on Kbin, I'd hope you know what a Magazine is. Lemmy calls them Communities. Reddit called them Subreddits. They're all basically the same - buckets for people to make posts about certain topics.

PangolinPaladin, 2 years ago

I think I understand the terms you have explained, but I am still a little confused on viewing by “all”, when I view “all” am I seeing posts from every instance that is federated with the one I’m on or only the communities/magazines that users on my instance have visited before?

EnglishMobster, 2 years ago

"All" shows every community/magazine that at least one person on your instance has subscribed to.

The different sort options sort then differently, of course.

PangolinPaladin, 2 years ago

I see, thank you! This makes the choice of instance when signing up more significant than I thought.

EnglishMobster, 2 years ago

Yep, places with more people will have a wider range of communities in their "all" feed.

That said, the barrier to making an account isn't too high. My first account was on Lemmy.ml back in 2020, shortly after Lemmy was created (I never stuck around and left pretty quickly).

Last month I realized I don't trust Lemmy.ml, so I joined Beehaw.org.

Then I thought Beehaw.org was a little overzealous at times, so I came here to Kbin.social.

I've largely stuck to Kbin because I really like how it looks and feels, but I did make accounts on Lemmy.world, fedia.io, and sh.itjust.works as backups in case Kbin goes down.

Hondolor, 2 years ago

KBin is actually the best reddit alternative I've seen in along time. The truth is though that reddit has a 15 year head start and giant conglomerate corperate backing. Even though federated sites like this are getting better and better all the time the user base is still small when you compare it to the internet monster that is reddit. This site still has along way to go in terms of users, content, and overall polish and ease of use. I look forward to the day when I site like this can scare the likes of reddit, but sadley I don't feel that today is that day. This is coming from a place of support for the fediverse btw.

AnonymousLlama, 2 years ago

Having "add new post" in the header on kbin it's definitely something that will trip up people coming from Reddit. You need to add a new "article" which isn't very intuitive

AlteredStateBlob, 2 years ago

Took ne a few tries to figure that out. And what is a microblog even and why do we have it?

Eggyhead, 2 years ago

Microblogs are like tweets. I think posts from people you follow on Mastodon and similar federated microblogging platforms should appear there. I wish there was the option to merge the microblog and magazine feed. I don't think having them separated is necessary on a platform like this.

AtomicPurple, 2 years ago

It's for Mastodon compatibility. Articles are like Reddit posts and microblogs are like tweets. You can post either from Kbin. Your articles will show up as community posts on Lemmy, and your microblogs will show up as toots on Mastodon.

godless, 2 years ago

The only real issue I have is that searching for communities I know exist on other instances often fails, and opening them in their home instances doesn't offer a subscribe button to my host instance.

AlteredStateBlob, 2 years ago

With you on that one. Some small youtuber I have followed for years setup over on lemmy.world. I know it exists, but searching on kbin, no matter what I try, doesn't yield it to me. Unless it hits the frontpage or I am accidentally looking at the new feed the same moment the guy posts there, I won't really have a way to subscribe. Also don't really want to wrangle multiple accounts.

EnglishMobster, 2 years ago

For Lemmy, if nobody has subscribed to a community locally, you need to search https://instance.social/c/whatever to get !whatever@instance.social. Once someone subscribes locally, searching !whatever@instance.social works.

It's pretty unintuitive, especially when Kbin lets you search @whatever@instance.social even if that community isn't on your instance yet.

aquarisces, 2 years ago

I feel like certain users are echoing others in terms of the “oh it’s too hard/complicated” - I don’t know, imo not really just sign up, subscribe to your mags of interest which will pull across the fediverse and engage (up/down/comment) as much as you like lol… really not that hard but I guess change is hard for people (but then it’s not really much a seismic change? I don’t know - I guess I like trying new things).

SnailMagnitude, 2 years ago

They are saying it’s hard to figure out as it’s hard to figure out. It, as you say, has a learning curve that isn’t really present in Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok etc.

Choosing an instance seems important. Many of the large instances are overtly communist, quietly communist, piracy, porn, nsfw focused or a safe space for lgbtq+ people. Instances are changing hands and de federating each other. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of GDPR type agreements about user data. If a server vanishes with all your data, can you legally retrieve it? Are they obligated to delete data on request? who is they?

Choosing communities is complicated. There is massive duplication of communities across instances most of which have have very little content or members.

The apps are all alpha quality from what I know. curious about accessibility options too, r/blind was hit hard.

Whilst I was trying to get a grip on how Lemmy & kbin interact, Lemmy seems to have blocked kbin access.

I think I could sell Lemmy to the average linux user but it appears I don’t have to as most of them are here anyway. It’s the other 99% of the user base that’s the issue.

Honestly I wouldn’t even bother trying to convince my meat space techy friends at the moment never mind a non-techy community with a few hundred thousand iphone and windows users.

tal, 2 years ago

Whilst I was trying to get a grip on how Lemmy & kbin interact, Lemmy seems to have blocked kbin access.

That was lemmy.ml, not all of Lemmy. Lemmy.ml is an important instance -- one of the larger Lemmy instances, and it is run by the Lemmy devs -- but it's still but one instance among many.

thatfuckinglinuxguy, 2 years ago (edited 2 years ago)

I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out.

Haven't been back there and didn't read the comments...

But I think I can understand to a degree:

• Too many choices: Picking an instance can be confusing for folks that are used to only having to remember 1 name. I personally think this is a bit like people trying Linux for the first time and getting confused by all the choices available. Basically, it's what some people call "analysis paralysis" but add to that the fact that you'll get 12 different recommendations from every 10 people you all (e.g. there's no clear consensus on the "best" one bc "best" means something different to each person). I think one list I saw on GitHub literally had over 200 instances... For non-techies, I could see that being a bit confusing
• UI differences: some things like making a post on kbin are a bit different (IMO not bad but still different enough that I could see some folks getting confused). Doing searches on lemmy for specific topics (not finding communities but searching for something in a community) is done from a different area on lemmy than on Reddit and IMO is kind of a pain in the ass currently. And on kbin, frankly, I'm not even sure we have that feature at all.
• Missing features: haven't tried mobile apps (which could again be another point of confusion) but for desktop at least, AFAIK we don't have anything comparable to RES yet. There's no analog to multireddits. And we don't have anything similar to reddit's Saved feature yet. All valid complaints in my opinion. And someone used to any or all of those, might spend a lot of time looking bc they just don't know if it's hidden or does not exist. So, yeah, I could see so confusion there too.

I think there are a lot of advantages they're probably missing too. I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing. I saw one guy mentioning how there's no karma bullshit to deal with for new accounts and absolutely agree with that sentiment.

tealdeer; meh, I like the fediverse and it's not hard for me but I'm not shitting on people who don't get it. If they want help, would probably help but not going to push it on people either. It is what it is and that's good enough for me

nocturnalzoo, 2 years ago

‘teal deer’ lol

Great points!

tal, 2 years ago

I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing.

"Snoo". It's a space alien.

valzek, 2 years ago

I like that kbin/lemmy we can choose whatever fucking avatar we want instead of being limited to customizing our snoz or wtf Reddit calls their mascot thing.

You can still do that on new reddit. When looking at your own profile while logged in, there's a little camera with a plus in the corner of your current avatar/placeholder. (There's also a separate icon further to the right for uploading a banner image.)

Edit: Dang, I didn't expect that image to look so big, it's only 600x300

Gamers_Mate, 2 years ago

It took me a little while to figure out reddit. After migrating from reddit I actually found it easier to pickup this time around. I am sure some people might have some trouble but as long as we make this place welcoming and helpful for new users asking questions people will want to migrate.

detwaft, 2 years ago

Kbin was trivial to figure out. Mastodon I still struggle with a bit.

themadcodger, 2 years ago

What part of Mastodon do you struggle with, if you don't mind me asking?

coffeetest, 2 years ago

Fear and an unwillingness to try new things.

For example, some of the complaints that people had about Mastodon early on were just odd to me. They made such a big deal out of "you have to pick a server, no one understands that" or nitpicking UI interfaces between Mastodon and twt. They didn't have logical arguments IMHO it was them just not being happy about change and not being honest about that.

Teglement, 2 years ago

Saying "I don't want to deal with different servers within a single website" is illogical? Seems entirely logical to me. Anyone used to Reddit is going to be turned off to the whole messy fediverse thing. Me included. Legitimately, it evokes feelings of the dead on arrival Metaverse.

People want simplicity. We're decades past the days of BBS boards.

Quill7513, 2 years ago

It’s not a single website. And what’s with all the hate I see around here about BBS boards? BBS boards were great. I just want someone to loop me in about the hate. I just think with the fediverse we’re seeing a rise of a model that brings the best things about BBS boards to more modern web technologies