Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?
To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
I think the more they bitch about Reddit alternatives, the more people will be reminded that there are alternatives to Reddit.
I’m here to read think and talk. I like it simple.
Same, was using old.Reddit before and plan on figuring out how to use the tools I saw to redo lemmy to page layout on no stupid questions.
Yeah, for real. “But there’s no fun awards and bubbly icons and bright colors.”
Well then, go back to kindergarten.
It’s about personal preference. It’s important to have a user interface that’s modular and comfortable for the end user and manageable for the devs. Options are always the answer, the ability to enable or disable certain aspect or details is what drives me towards one app or the other. (This is coming from someone who used Infinity for Reddit for the past 4 years.)
It just seems incredibly nitpicky to call alternatives lazy for not having all of the modularity of a decade+ old platform.
”Reddit is imploding, and the CEO is being terrible to users, and the native app is super intrusive and inefficient but ugh the alternatives have square buttons.”
Just really weird that the lack of visual bells and whistles is something to even talk about at the moment. Just a little lower in the thread, the same person complained about lack of gilding. Just, really weird complaints.
I’m happy to have people like that stay on reddit. They can stagnate along with the dying platform and their stupid round buttons.
“The hosts are too lazy” says the person whining about it without doing anything.
Try switching to a platform you’ve never used before and making a community out of nothing, or host the Lemmy instance and be forced to deal with thousands of new users daily. Lazy my ass…
I think Lemmy could use some more ads. I feel like I don’t have enough material things, and I don’t know what to buy. /s
I also would like to have content that makes people angry shoved in my face to keep me engaged.
If you don’t like the UI, you can always download a browser extension that change the CSS of the website. However, if this is the main criticism people do to Lemmy, I would say that’s not bad for a relatively new platform
It feels familiar to old.reddit so i like it. Squabbles has an interesting approach to displaying posts + comments tho
The reason I used Reddit is Fun WAS because of its stripped down, bare bones style. I only wanted to read thoughts and opinions, and choose to view images/video/ads when I wanted to. This is absolutely a feature of Jerboa (and Lemmy) for me
I don’t know the background of OP so this is just an opinion: I feel that modern UX have become so ubiquitous and streamlined for content consumption that users who aren’t used to old-styled UIs see the lack of “sleek” design as lesser. It works doubly so that users aren’t willing to venture outside of their ecosystems and will put up with anything regardless if it’s detrimental to their experience.
Compare users of new reddit and the official app vs. users of old reddit and 3PA. I used 3PA because there wasn’t an official app and RiF matched what I was used to. It’s a similar phenomena to Apple users vs Windows/Android. People are just used to a streamlined sleek experience (which to be fair has it’s merits) but to say it’s superior or that the alternative is lesser is a large misstep in thinking.
It takes effort to go out of your comfort zone but it’s saddening to see users mindlessly, for lack of a better terms, consume
This is an actual use case for ‘the customer is always right’. No matter how much you prefer the layout, there will be others that prefer something else. And if we want to attract more users, that’s something that we’ll need to consider.
By far the most off-putting thing about lemmy is how people think themselves too good to consider the preferences and experiences of the average user coming from reddit.
Personally, I love the clutter-free design of lemmy.world it’s a good mix of looking pretty without being too empty.
That being said, this is a refreshing take after reading through some of the top comments. I wish more people were a little more level-headed like this.
Maybe there could be other instances with different themes that appeal more to the casual reddit user? I’m still not sure how the themes work when it comes to Lemmy and its instances.
“The customer is always right, except in matters of taste” is the full quote I believe.
I love the homogenized look. If any chances are made I would hope they’d be optional so people who want the current look can keep it.
The customer is always right,
exceptin matters of tasteYou got the quote exactly backwards
TBF Lemmy UI/UX is horrible. So is Reddit’s IMO, for completely different reasons, but still. It’s a valid criticism, it’s just also not an endorsement of Reddit.
Yeah, Lemmy is still a bit rough around the edges in a lot of ways. I hope the surge in users brings some frontend devs over.
The new apps should help a lot, but it’s still a bit of a pain to use on PC. I also have issues with the feed just going wild and poping in new posts so fast I can’t read anything on the web.
Lemmy needs work, but I’m not here for the design. I’m here to wrestle control away from corporations. Anyone that doesn’t understand that is a bot.
Yes people do like nice design and user interfaces. Apple managed to grab a large market share by understanding that.
It doesn’t have to be cluttered but it doesn’t have to be … this.
If you want things to improve, you are going to have to accept criticism that your current crush isn’t perfect. There is already a lot of the toxic Reddit’ness that has come over, we don’t need more.
We don’t need people like that. PEACE ✌️ OUT
Social platforms need people. this line of thinking immediatly kills any growing social platform
Whatever… If the people are trolls, negative, and know it all assholes I still say we don’t need that type of people… Numbers for numbers sake is not the goal imo
Somebody clearly stating their preferences is much further from a troll than your comment.
I think you misunderstood me though, I wasn’t calling anybody here a troll or saying any preference stated here was trolling or even near it
OK, I’ve moved on and forget what this conversation is actually about lol. But all good bro. Let’s have fun
Nah we need everyone we can get. Plus the more people we accomodate, the more options we get
This brings up a good question: Do we really want everyone we can get?
On one hand, it’d help flesh out fledgling communities and keep threads and feeds more active.
On the other hand, the more people who come here, the more likely we are to see lower-effort, lower-value, and even counterproductive content and comments.
There’s probably some magic number, an adoption level where communities thrive but are not watered down. I have no idea what that is, though.
True. It would also mean more lurkers though, and lurkers up-voting and down-voting stuff adds to the perceived value of the content and makes the community feel “alive”, for a lack of a better word
I don’t mind lurkers at all, I was referring to the type we’ve all seen on Reddit, I won’t even explain anymore, y’all should know the type I mean
As someone who tried their damnedest to help make VOAT work and watched it die first from extremist trolls and then from inactivity… we don’t want EVERYONE we can get, but we do need a lot more than we have. We should have several 5000+ upvoted posts per hour, and we’re nowhere near that.
“Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter?” Hell nah! Polar opposite here.
I absolutely hate it when sites randomly redesign to look “modern” and “hip” or whatever you want to call it. Forcefully adding flashy, colorful stuff that you can’t turn off again or opt out of is a surefire way for me to dislike the site in question immediatly. Emojis, animated smileys, glitter effects, neon-colored letters, autoplay-animations, and worst of all: sound effects! Nope. Nu-uh. Get that sh*t away from me. I like my black-squared, simple layout and silent browsing experience, thank you very much.
i agree. the only reason why i hae accounts on shit like this is to prepare for the VERY VERY MINISCULE chance that reddit will shut down due to them making shit decisions.
bring back css for every community
In the middle of 2010, "Due to a controversial redesign brought on by Digg, disgruntled users declared a “Quit Digg” day where they posted links to Reddit and left Digg behind to join Reddit. Reddit subsequently overtook Digg in search popularity. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit
Here’s what Reddit looked like on August 7, 2010
https://web.archive.org/web/20100807085503/http://www.reddit.com/
This is what Digg looked like on August 7, 2010
https://web.archive.org/web/20100807080410/http://digg.com/
Reddit’s had 18 years to tweak the user interface. Lemmy’s Initial release was May 5, 2019; 4 years ago. Honestly, I have no issue with Lemmy’s interface, but I feel confident in saying that given another 14 years of development, Lemmy will probably not look like it does today.
Reddit still looks pretty much the same as that to me whenever I connect to it. RES probably helps though.
By that logic nobody should ever switch to lemmy because it’ll always be a decade behind the times.
Unless Tomorrow’s Reddit becomes Today’s Digg. Once hot, now not.
I’m criticizing the logic, not the site
You can also make it look any way you want b/c it’s open source
Reddit used to be open source as well
