I wanted to get a pulse check on how new members are finding the general experience/website. Is it more confusing than Reddit or are you finding the instance system a better way of doing things as it can give you more freedom of where you choose to create an account?

I’m a new user myself but have found the experience to remind me of Reddit back in the day, lol. It’s definitely giving me old-school yet modern vibes and it’s great to see something that isn’t Reddit growing in popularity!

  • HammyEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I’ve been doing the same, but the search seems hit or miss. I’ve found some good communities through the search (like this one), but some that I know exist don’t show up. That being said, I appreciate the functionality the app provides!

    • SanguineParEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      This is an incomplete understanding as I’m new too, but I think that if you know it exists and have the URL, you can search for the URL itself to find that community.

      And in doing so, I think it makes your instance aware of the specific community, so that in future other members of your instance can search with a simpler term and not need the URL.

      Over time, most instances should become aware of most communities. I think…

      • HammyEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Exactly, the issue is just with communities that I don’t know exist. If I can’t search for them from my instance, it’s really difficult to find them. Then add to that that the communities are so fragmented (there may be 100 different communities for the same topic across different instances). If I search for a topic (ex. Gaming) I want THE biggest, most active gaming community.

        Lemmy has the potential to get there, but if they want to attract and keep users en masse, it needs to prioritize making it not feel like such a fragmented experience.

        • SanguineParEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          One place you could try is https://browse.feddit.de - this makes it MUCH easier to find communities across all instances. And it has the busiest ones at the top if you just want to join those with most people in them.