I’m really not happy with Lemmy so far. Its a great community and a cool concept, but the amount of bugs I am experiencing is really starting to put me off.
The site constantly updates / glitches, when I try click on something it moves just before I click so I end up clicking on something else. If I open a post, as soon as I go back the entire home feed is different and my sorting preferences have been reset.
As someone coming from the refinement from Apollo this really is offputting and makes me want to use Lemmy even less.
The people here are great, the federation is cool and I like how decentralized it is, but I think I’m going to log off now and I don’t expect to be back anytime soon.
Ps. A functioning app I can download directly from the app store would be great. I’m not interested in progressive web apps or testflight betas, I want something that just works and is well refined.
Edit: I understand its early days, I’m not faulting devs for not being able to keep up, all I am doing here is expressing my opinion. I’m also sad about losing Apollo so that definitely adds to my disappointment quite a bit if I’m being honest.
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If you expected someone’s fledgling project that’s just getting started to be as polished and refined as something that’s had thousands of dev hours over the last 5-10 years then that’s just bad expectations management. It will get better.
I understand its early days, not faulting the devs here, I’m just expressing how I feel
You should give kbin.social a shot. It works better than lemmy currently. I made an account on lemmy.world and kbin.social and end up spending my time on kbin. Even on mobile with no app, I find the user experience better. I am sure it will get better for all instances with time.
kbin isn’t bad, but it’s been plagued with 500 errors - probably due to the massive influx of new users/instances.
Someone on the Discord told me KBin gained 30000 users in the last 24 hours.
Over the past few days, I’ve had waves where kbin.social gets really hammered, but then it performs fine after that. Someone suggested that it might be when users here in the US have their peak activity times, that it’s getting hit much harder then.
Makes sense that kbin works better as kbin actually let me register I had trouble even trying to register on 3 different instances before someone recommended kbin because, and I quote, “it just works.”
Kbin definitely has the better front page algorithms atm.
Kbin is lacking the filtering for NSFW content though and there’s a lot of sketch making it into the frontpage on kbin is very noticeable so for now I have an account here and on a Lemmy instance and I use Lemmy more. Kbin is for when I can be more careful with my scrolling.
Isn’t there a setting in your profile to block NSFW? Or is not working fully?
Take this with a grain of salt, but I think the issue is that some content isn’t tagged as NSFW, so even if it’s from an NSFW community, Kbin won’t block it unless it’s tagged as such.
isn’t tagged as NSFW,
I don’t think that that’s it. I’m on kbin, and at least some of the images that some people were complaining about on kbin were blurred, so there must have been some sort of NSFW indication associated with them.
It works. It’s just that not everyone is using the tags correctly.
This is also my fediverse origin story.
Yeah I definitely prefer kbin, and it has an app which is overall pretty good even on my janky ass unihertz phone.
Wait, there’s an app?
Not the original commenter, but @hariette is developing an app at the moment. There’s an official kbin magazine (/m/Kmoon, or Kmoon@kbin.social)
I now can’t find the link but I don’t think its on the play store. But yes there is an app
What app?
Not the original commenter, but @hariette is developing an app at the moment. There’s an official kbin magazine (/m/Kmoon, or Kmoon@kbin.social)
I’m not sure if you will find much sympathy here. Many people (myself included) left Reddit because their policies and ethics now outweigh the benefits of a refined, smooth experience. Although, even that may be gone now if you’re switching from Apollo to the default Reddit app…
The communities here have made any occasional glitches worth it for me.
P.S. you can set your sorting preference under Settings.
Yup. It’s buggy and the native apps are pretty rough. I’m trying to give it a chance. I suspect the original Reddit was pretty rough too.
The original Reddit was definitely rough. But it was also an open source project and grew with time, until the company closed-sourced it in 2017 and went with the new redesign (which remains controversial with older redditors even now).
Tbf the fediverse (and Lemmy & Kbin as Reddit alternatives) is in a very impressive state for something that has been fairly small scale up to now. It’ll improve faster given the increased interest and as new devs decide to pitch in. Early reddit was exciting and chaotic; its a good time to be on a site like this.
Agreed, the original reddit was rough, definitely much worse than Lemmy currently is now. For the amount of growth Lemmy has seen its holding up well, I just wish it was better. Maybe I’m impatient…
in 2017 and went with the new redesign
Christ, was it that long ago? I am old.
it was pretty bad. I used it a bit before everyone left digg and it took a good while after that for it to feel “polished”.
Kbin I’m trying out too and seems little better. Even newer project though
I understand you but…
pls be patient, stay with us.
Many skilled (and less skilled) people are working hard and cooperating to make Lemmy better week are week.
(Pretty sure Aaron Swartz would have loved that)
Love the project 😎
Found u/Spez
/s
Most have been here less than a week. It will take time. The Fediverse was not created with the intention of toppling Reddit in one week. Many of the bugs that people have been complaining about are being fixed in the next release.
100% agree. I will deal with bugs today because I can see the benefits of decentralization. Yes it’s buggy, but I know that we, the community, are fixing it. And that we are making the service better as users and not in some top-down decision making way.
Also maybe it’s just me but I find people’s lack of patience to deal with a few bugs really strange. Yes I’ve come across bugs and intermittent connection issues but it’s not really the end of the world and knowing that the Devs and admins of each instance are working hard to keep things turning over is enough for me… I’ll just do something else for a bit. It was the same when Reddit would go down or what ever.
Give it time, but don’t stop giving feedback. Every platform is buggy in the beginning.
It’s very early. There are a lot of great ideas here, but also a lot of details yet to be worked out. Also lots of bugs.
I wasn’t on Reddit in the early days, but I expect it had problems too. I know twitter did.
If you’re a developer or have any skill in that area, I’d encourage you to contribute. If not, I’d ask for 2 things:
- Have patience and a bit of grace with the devs, operators, and mods, especially in these early days.
- Get active and talk about what you want and what’s not working for you.
This is your chance to help make “Thing n+1” better than “Thing n”. Chances like that don’t come around very often.
I guess I don’t notice any of this because I’m on jerboa. Haven’t had complaints with the app.
It’s so close to the reddit apps It’s throwing me a loop. But yeah. Other than the hot feed bug It’s been ‘good’ for me
Jerboa has been very good for me.
I’m actually having the opposite peoblem. Jerboa sometimes refuses to load communities citing java exceptions, and loading up a thread takes a long time. Browsing on PC has been fantastic, on the other hand.
Lemmy is very new software currently only at v0.17.4
If you’re here then you’re getting the real Early Adopter experience. That isn’t for everybody.
So they drove a bunch of people into a public beta software. Do developers need free beta testing?
While it is okay to not be a fan of being someone’s unpaid tester, you have to recognize that the developers of Lemmy are giving it away for free under the GPL, and letting people run in on their own hardware. This is extremely generous, and there is no incentive to actually use the software beyond the demand and goodwill that people have for a place to talk on the internet that isn’t actively hostile towards them.
They? Spez did xD
It just happened that quite a few redditors found that the experience using Lemmy was already good enough and started suggesting it.
And here we are :shrug:
Btw considering that Lemmy is open source, yes, they do need free beta testing. They even need more contributors to handle the development and bug fixing.
I’m using jerboa. It’s very similar to rif. I had zero expectations coming in. And that’s probably a big part of why I like it.
It’s definitely buggy. Clunky. Etc. But I’m here for it, and I’m curious what becomes of it. It’s actually pretty intuitive, and the bugs will be ironed out as we go. It’s kind of like everything in life. It’s what we make it. And I really vibe with that.
Tbh I don’t need perfect or easy. It’s home brew decentralized version of reddit. I can deal. But I understand your concerns and agree with all of them, but I’m just kind of enjoying the journey and viewing it as it’s own experience.
+1 for the jerboa app. I’m finding myself searching around and engaging on the fediverse a lot more now because of it.
95% of the time I spent on reddit was through the Relay app. Jerboa has definitely filled that void for me on the fediverse.
I was using the official reddit app (gasp) before this, using Jerboa now and it feels just as smooth if not smoother?
I’m on iOS so Jerboa isnt an option :(
Did you try Mlem?
My condolences to your past self and congratulations to your current self!
You can’t really expect an amateur project led by 2 people (or 1 in case of kbin) to be comparable to a decade of reddit development. Even the Apollo app, that just built in top of other tech instead of having to reinvent the wheel, is at least 5 years old by now afaik.
If you just care about convenience then reddit is still your best bet. If you have other concerns then you need to weight which one matters more.
I’m not using an app, but rather the site directly on a PC. I’ve been pretty happy with the experience so far, and it’s become something that I check regularly now. I’m looking forward to the communities becoming larger and having more content.
Of course, I’m also looking forward to the mobile experience improving for others, too.
I want something that just works and is well refined.
Not trying to be rude or anything but, if you are trying to replace reddit with another reddit this won’t work out for you. Lemmy is not and will never be Reddit. It will never have the same functions and bugs will show up sometimes, why?, because this project is funded by normal people, they aren’t making any money at all.
I’m not saying that you should be ashamed of expressing your opinion, but please keep in mind that this project is fueled by passion and love. You could focus your time in trying to make it better rather than just pointing out problems that people are actively trying to solve.It’ll get better with time but yeah I agree it’s clunky and buggy at the moment. Kbin (kbin.social or fedia.io) seems to be a more stable alternative but have their own bugs and issues.
I’m not sure I’d give up on it though; maybe come back and forth and see how it gets on. It isn’t meant to be an instant Reddit replacement, but the increased interest will spur more people to help with development and some communities seem to be reaching critical mass to be sustainable.
