I’d like to invite you all to share your thoughts and ideas about Lemmy. This feedback thread is a great place to do that, as it allows for easier discussions than Github thanks to the tree-like comment structure. This is also where the community is at.
Here’s how you can participate:
- Post one top-level comment per complaint or suggestion about Lemmy.
- Reply to comments with your own ideas or links to Github issues related to the complaints.
- Be specific and constructive. Avoid vague wishes and focus on specific issues that can be fixed.
- This thread is a chance for us to not only identify the biggest pain points but also work together to find the best solutions.
By creating this periodic post, we can:
- Track progress on issues raised in previous threads.
- See how many issues have been resolved over time.
- Gauge whether the developers are responsive to user feedback.
Your input may be valuable in helping prioritize development efforts and ensuring that Lemmy continues to meet the needs of its community. Let’s work together to make Lemmy even better!
Keyboard navigation. I know about https://github.com/vmavromatis/Lemmy-keyboard-navigation but it’s annoying that I have to use an addin/userscript for such a basic feature.
You can use the Photon frontend instead.
Photon doesn’t exactly have keyboard navigation, i’ve been working on it though
Help promote longer discussions by using the sidebar to display comments initially sorted by “New”. Give options to filter comments by Community, Local, Subscribed, Mod View or All.
A mute community in addition to block community. There are communities i may not want to see in my feed, but I might want to look at them. Currently my only option is to block and then offi want to check them out i have to unblock.
One thing you can do there is to take advantage of federation and jump to an instance where you are not logged in, which will then display all of the comments. On the web UI, the multicolored Fediverse icon works fantastic for this purpose, as it will jump straight to the comment that you want to see (although the hidden ones would be below that, or perhaps you would rather go to the post itself).
e.g. for me, I am reading your comment at https://discuss.online/post/12642239/11643668, but the multicolored button would take me to https://sopuli.xyz/comment/12447782, which I do not have an account on hence nothing under that would be blocked for me there.
Yes, that will allow me to read the community, it will not allow me to interact/post/reply.
Oh absolutely that is correct - once you’ve “blocked” something, you cannot then interact with it later, as it is a rather hard cutoff. I suppose you want to see something like a “remove from my feed” - basically a “hide this community from me until I want it” - rather than an actual, full-on “block”. Which is notable then that e.g. a user block of an instance is even softer than that, allowing you to see and reply and receive replies from people (though you don’t get notifications for those, unless they specifically tag your username). So community blocks are harder than people would like, and instance ones are softer, so they really aren’t hitting the sweet spot in-between.:-)
Yes, I suppose I want that too - a “community hide” option, rather than full community block:-).
Yeah, hide community is better verbiage than mute.
Hopefully they’ll work on stuff like this - but I don’t know their prioritization.
When I go to Lemmy, I’m not logged in until I click on a post to read, what’s up with that? I used to stay logged in.
sounds more like a potential browser/cache/extsnion thing than lemmy itself but what do i know
It started happening to me as well. And only on Lemmy.
I think it’s because it’s just memes and also quite hard moderation and downvotes. It feels like a reddit clone that has the exact same mindset as reddit. I get annoyed when I see people being moderated for having an opinion that is not popular.
I saw a post being locked yesterday for asking about moderation. Doesn’t anyone else see the problem with that? Your channels rules are not more important than making people feel they can talk and express what’s on their mind.
I hate that so much. Stop treating people like they are just resources to moderate.
I don’t see much discussions. But I’m sure there is a few here and there.
It certainly doesn’t help that Lemmy had and still has absolutely no sensible way to actually surface niche communities to its subscribers. Unlike Reddit, it doesn’t weigh posts by their relative popularity within the community but only by total popularity/popularity within the instance. There’s also zero form of community grouping (like Reddit’s multireddits) - all of which effectively eliminates all niche communities from any sensible main view mode and floods those with shitty memes and even shittier politics only. This pretty much suffocated the initially enthusiastic niche tech communities I had subscribed to. They stood no chance to thrive and their untimely death was inevitable.
There are some very tepid attempts to remedy this in upcoming Lemmy builds, but I fear it’s too little too late.
I fear that Lemmy was simply nowhere near mature enough when it mattered and it has been slowly bleeding users and content ever since. I sincerely hope I’m wrong, though.
I would love to be given a few minutes worth of grace to edit some minor spelling and/or grammar mistakes once I’ve hit the “post” button.
that or the ability to see what was before the edit, but I assume that has already been discussed
Displaying profile bios more prominently and encouraging the display of them would help everyone know if the user shared links to their other accounts or other SNS links and whatnot
This would also help fellow moderators and admins know if the newly created user is a real admin/mod that created a duplicate account or is just an impersonator
There’s got to be a better way to do cross posts. When people/bots crosspost, my “All” feed gets cluttered with multiple copies of the same post. Maybe something like a drop-down showing all the instances and communities it’s posted to.
Edited to fix autocorrect…
I don’t know if this was requested before but I really want there to be a way to see all comments throughout crossposted threads. It sucks that there are so many crossposts that have like 1-2 comments each. I want to see all discussion about a post at the same time.
Some apps will collapse those into a single post, but not all of them, and not all the time. It would be nice if that were better.
Dynamic Linking System:
- A system that automatically links related posts across different communities and instances.
- Allow users to see all related discussions in one place, regardless of where they were originally posted.
Downvotes are an inherently unequal proposition, as they are now implemented. This allows everything from near and dear friends who respectfully disagree to randos with day-one accounts who don’t even know what a community is all about, to brigading events organized in a larger community (possibly on Reddit or in Matrix or Discord or such). e.g. iirc I can user-block someone or even an entire instance, but in retaliation they can see my profile and downvote everything I have ever done, or have a bot do so within seconds of new material coming out. Which would affect its discoverability.
Potential solutions would be to make them no longer anonymous, and/or when you block a user or an instance then they can no longer downvote that content - just like a user-level defederation. As it is now, user-level blocks are extremely weak and even notifications can be delivered by simply tagging someone’s username.
A more robust approach could involve combining multiple user engagement metrics like votes, reading time and number of comments, along with a system that sorts posts depending on how they compare to their community averages. This system would be less susceptible to manipulation by new accounts or brigading, as it would require genuine engagement across multiple factors to influence a post’s ranking.
Incorporating User Engagement Metrics in Lemmy’s Sorting Algorithms
In general I find that the comments that tend to contain the highest proportion of batshit insanity across the entire Fediverse - I’m talking reminding me of what it was like to argue with Magats on Reddit - are those from lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. e.g., ignoring 90% of what I say while hyper-focusing on a single thing, which they manage to twist into sounding as if I said the exact opposite, while demanding that I provide proof of all of my points, and ofc offering none of their own proof in return, plus what “proof” is offered ends up supporting my own point rather than theirs… It’s fucking exhausting.
And moreover it’s relentless. So it would seem that my options are to either move to Lemmy.cafe - the only one who has defederated from all of the big 3 - or block such people one by one, or just put up with it, since user blocking those instances does virtually nothing. Also, they could easily create an alt, on let’s say lemmy.world, to accomplish their anonymized downvoting fetishes.:-P
Do you recall if people are allowed to vote on your content after you’ve blocked them? Even if so though, those user blocks of instances (as compared to user blocks of users) would not block downvotes (they don’t even block showing of content, plus notifications can even still be sent just by tagging the recipient’s username), so someone who downvotes but never speaks up by commenting would go unnoticed.
Anyway, my own preferences aside, I’m trying to think of what would encourage people to post content more often, and reducing the overall level of toxicity present in the Fediverse seems like it would greatly help with that (even if that ends up being something that you have to curate yourself via blocklists, with mods and admins being unwilling and unable to keep up with such).
allow me to be the batshit representative from lemmy.ml to argue with you :P
Honestly, I just hate the instance bashing. Most people didn’t have a real informed “choice” when it comes to their first instance. This seemed like an instance with good uptime and connectivity to me compared to the single admin instance I had before, the only factor that really matters to me. I see what you’re saying about % of users, but those people exist on every instance and like you said, they can just jump over and make a new account. If I’m being judged by the .ml next to my name and not the content of my reply, then they were really never going to listen to anything I had to say regardless, so I’ve decided to stay with this instance.
I think you’re seeing more arguments on those instances because it’s more of a melting pot. People who all agree with each other’s perspectives and have similar life experience aren’t going to have a lot to discuss besides patting each other on the backs and talking about subtle nuances of the subject matter. I do agree with your entire premise of the downvotes, which is why I’m replying to begin with. I like the thought of a downvote system, something that would hinder off-topic or abusive material, but it’s just horribly abused by users.
A proper system would see two competing articles and the one which provides the most information with a legible format would be upvoted the most. Now it’s which one has the most comments, what user uploaded it, what website was the article published on, which headline is catchier regardless of the article’s own words being taken out of context, what instance/community is this being posted on, etc etc.
Maybe I’m just confused and using this site and reddit wrong. From my conversations about downvotes, my understanding is less time is being spent on reading the article or links, and more just running through upvoting/downvoting like it’s tinder matches. I don’t get it because it’s not like youtube suggestions where you’re creating an algorithm for your likes/dislikes. You’re just creating a general feed of populace attention-seeking content and creating the pattern for a hive mind to form.
I think any of the many solutions would be a step forward, votes being public (all your other interactions are public/not done anonymously, and likes/dislikes has no commonality to democratic voting so people need to stop conflating the two), blocking any downvotes like lemmynsfw.com successfully implemented (you can still report off topic, etc), can only dowvote in joined communities or content you’ve engaged with, and many other ideas. All sorts of solutions that will stop us from going down the same path as Reddit, luckily we have instances to experiment different approaches with that we can point to for data in the future. I guess I prefer more of a forum style but those always get overtaken by zealous admins/site ideology and eventually hyperactive community members meaning it’s hard or not worth the effort to actually engage with the drama surrounding the subject you want to discuss (even some shroom forums get like this, absolutely crazy).
Sure!
Yes, my whole “spiel” there left out how my blocking lemmy.ml leavs out a whole huge swath of innocent bystanders who, exactly as you said, simply joined a large instance and had no concept of what was going on, plus back then it wasn’t even happening yet to the extent that it is now.
Speaking of, a large number of instances defederated from hexbear.net, and in response it seems that a large number of people - the kind for whom “no means yes” simply created lemmy.ml alts to get around those. Thinking deeper about what that means and extrapolating forward implies then that if lemmy.ml were to ever be defederated from by a large number of instances as well, then those people would simply create alts on lemmy.world (or something) instead.
So it boils down to an ideological POV: must I be exposed to literally everything online with no way to have any filters (some people want this and that’s cool), or am I allowed to curate my experiences? More to the point, some things such as NSFW content are really quite friendly on the Fediverse - so long as it is labelled, the people who want it can get it, while those who do not (for whatever reason - maybe they’d like to have it at home but they are literally at work and don’t want that tension, so they turn it off?). Unfortunately, both (a) toxic people and (b) extremist content (“extremist” from the perspective of people in the western world, particularly USA - which granted is very much skewed wrt the rest of the world, but… it is what it is) are not labelled at all. Therefore new people walk right into it, see things that they do not want - much as if NSFW, or worse yet NSFL, were to not be labelled - and then leave the Fediverse. So I am saying: it would be good if things could be labelled appropriately, for the sake of maximum friendliness and welcoming.
But as it is, things are NOT labelled, or if they are, the labels are buried elsewhere. When I first switched from Kbin to a Lemmy instance, I made the mistake of replying to a content on ChapoTrapHouse on hexbear.net. I had no idea what that community was - it’s whole purpose is to dunk on people!? - and I am not saying that the community should not “exist”, but DAYUM! A warning would indeed have been nice. And now, I do not need such a warning personally - I KNOW - but every person that I tell about Lemmy irl, in the next conversation comes back with negative things to say about it, in how it has such extremist content. So they do not join, and this effect magnified by everyone in the mainstream lowers the overall amount of content across the Fediverse. Thus, this isn’t about any one post, any one community, or even any one instance. Good fences make good neighbors. If people on hexbear.net or occasionally some on lemmy.ml disrespect others boundaries, then it makes sense to block them. Though I am having quite a pleasant conversation with you personally, and have done so with others from lemmy.ml. Overall though, on balance, I find it necessary to block that instance. Which I note barely matters - e.g. you replied to me here, and I got the notification for that, I could see your comment, you can see mine… this is the weakest type of “block”/“ban” that I have ever heard of, so much so that the name is really improper, as it barely blocks anything at all.
And no, they don’t exist on every instance. Or yeah, surely they do, but not in the enormously large numbers that we are talking about here. I will preemptively say that I get a lot of batshit insane replies from lemmy.world too - so yeah, lemmy.ml is not the only one like that. However, the proportion of responses is different, probably b/c I (who lives in the USA) shares more ideologically in common with someone from lemmy.world. So perhaps they would go off on a rant against something that I say, but the “trigger” to make that happen is less likely to happen. I have not done a scientific study, with controls and such - I am just speaking of my personal experience, which I see is shared by a LOT of people across the Fediverse.
It sounds like you are just being counter-cultural, which I have done more than a little of in my life, so I support that. You seem willing to bear the consequences of that, e.g. you risked me not replying to you, although then I did so… hopefully that shows that the “judgement” of the .ml next to your name is not a firm yes-no but merely a slight bias.
So about down-votes: personally I want to receive down-votes, if people do not enjoy receiving my comments. That is helpful feedback, and helps guide me to submit future content more in line with people’s receptivity. The problem comes when the down-votes are from people that I do not respect. An example would help here: let’s say that I submit a youtube video for my favorite hard rock band to a tiny niche community, specifically for hard rock music, and let us further say that people downvote it for these reasons: (1) they do not like the music - fair; (2) they do not like youtube - okay… I guess… still fair; (3) they do not like hard rock music at all, but saw my post while browsing “All” - these people are not Subscribed to this community, and are improperly abusing the system of down-voting away from “this content is not a good match for this community” to “I do not (personally) enjoy this content”. The latter type would be much better handled by blocking that community entirely - but people refuse to abide by the rules, and maybe do not even know what they are, if they are new. Oh and also (4) I managed to piss off a troll, who then goes to my Profile and down-votes literally everything they see, until they get tired of hitting the “Next” page (ironically I don’t think this has happened to me, which I would expect given my instance-bashing behaviors, but I have seen others where it has, mostly those who post in more political communities).
As you said, yes the creation of the hive mind. IF people would use it properly, then it would not be that way, but again, people refuse or are not able to so… here we are.
And one reason for that is that we have so few developers - Rust is a very hard language to learn, and those devs I suspect are prickly to work with (given their moderation practices on lemmy.ml, mass-banning people from communities they’ve never even heard of, so would they similarly reject someone’s actual code, not based on the integrity of the code but rather on some offhand remark that they make even on some other instance, possibly even taken out of context?). I have ENORMOUS respect for the Lemmy codebase that has been developed so far… but I also wish that it could move forward more quickly. Maybe Mbin/Sublinks/Piefed will do so, as they are written in languages that more people already know.
Also there are enormous barriers to running a personal instance - CSAM attacks to name one, hardware and especially network bandwidth to name another - but what it would take would be for someone to spin up their own instance, and try out a new system of voting. Nothing really is stopping anyone from doing so except… it’s hard. Otherwise, beggers cannot be choosers, so we wait for an actual developer to do something. And in the meantime we talk about a subject that we find of interest, but it won’t lead to any changes. Probably. Maybe - though also, maybe not, b/c perhaps one day there will be a poll put out by the developers, and with enough people answering that, we could ask for a change that we would like to see in the code? :-)
There are instances where downvotes are disabled, if you don’t like them you can just use an instance like that.
Downvotes are public and not anonymous, but they are hidden in Lemmy ui. Afaik you can see who downvotes your posts from Piefed or Mbin. See this thread: https://lemmy.world/post/18805474 or this: https://piefed.social/post/205362
MBIN makes upvotes visible, but PieFed doesn’t. The thread you linked to is about PieFed anonymising votes, so they aren’t revealed on instances like MBIN.
Lemmy: exactly - so you can either have all of downvotes or none of them, by picking such an instance, but there is really nothing in-between. Yet another example of “in-between” could be to show like downvotes from only members already subscribed to the community.
Mbin iirc doesn’t allow downvoting at all and instead has its own system of “reduces”, which does not federate at all with Lemmy, but instead acts as just another form of it. And yes those are publicly visible, which puts it ahead of Lemmy in this respect.
Piefed does the exact opposite of what I’m suggesting, even going so far as to hide the identity of downvoters from remote admins, who may need to know such things in order to ban someone who is being consistently abusive. I don’t think this is a good experiment. Anonymous polling results would be awesome though, so it depends on which type of “voting” we are talking about here.
Mostly what I mean is that someone who posts content to the Fediverse has to expose themselves in order to do that. Whereas downvoting goes against that principle, allowing someone to do what looks to 99.99% of Fedizens as an entirely anonymous procedure.
Also, a viewer can block a poster whose content they dislike and thereby never have to hear from them again, but not vice versa - the recipient has no choice but to receive votes (up or down). Except, as you mentioned, by going to an instance that disables them entirely. Which does not help all the enormous number of members already in instances such as Lemmy.world.
Hence the roles of content creator vs. viewer are unequal, skewed in favor of the downvoters having more power than the posters. Which can inhibit content creation, and given how lack of content (especially niche) is the primary issue with the Fediverse, it seems like making the roles more equal would help.
Thank you for the clarification, I understand what is your issue now
Option for default comment sorting. you can change the default sort only for posts, but not for comments, comments always sorted by Hot, and you have to manually change it each time you open comments.
In Voyager you can set this up, but it would be useful in the webui as well.
On a related note, threads ought to be able to have the default sorting changed at least by a mod, if not by the user who posted them. For example, the recent hurricane megathreads ought to have been defaulting to sorting by new.
Every day for the last 15 months I have been hitting Top on every. single. post. Every day I hope that tomorrow will be the day this completely obvious missing feature has been added.
I’ve used Lemmy for a while and just recently felt like I was missing a feature for the first time: I’d love if there was some kind of mod mail functionality. One of my posts was removed by a moderator and I wanted to ask why, but I obviously didn’t know which mod did it, so I just randomly messaged someone from the list. There should be a more “elegant” way to do this, like some kind of functionality that allows a user to send a message directly to the community or the moderation team itself.
Just fyi, since the mod log is public you can look up who removed your post.
It just says “mod” for me.
I just realized that the default Lemmy UI doesn’t show it. Photon shows it and Voyager to. There are probably more but I know those two show the mod.
The moderator is only given if the action was taken on your local instance
That’s not true:
Interesting, as you are replying to the Photon dev 😄
This must have changed recently since i remember having to add an explicit case to show just “Moderator”
Every time I’ve looked it just said “mod”, even though sometimes I’m pretty sure it’s been an admin.
The default Lemmy UI doesn’t show it I think. Voyager and Photon show the mod, not sure about other clients
I would like to have the ability to follow a Lemmy user, in the sense of seeing their posts in unblocked communities.
Has anyone suggested any feature related to word list filters? Like, blocking any community, comment, post or user with a certain term in their name/title?
That or tags or something, I’d love to be able to block sports/anime/AI “art” altogether without my blocklist being gigantic
Me too, but I want to block political things.
We are currently missing the ability to report user accounts.
Can’t you report a comment for that?
Not really. A reported comment rarely even gets evaluated in the context of what it’s replying to, let alone a long history. It might make sense to allow a user report to link comment/post examples of why a user is toxic to the user report. I know there are a couple of users I would’ve used that for.
Well, at least I review the user profile in question when banning people. And take the whole context into account. Makes it harder, but I can usually ban people with clear conscience.
