this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Why is the default setting for the startpage's feed "Local" and not "All" (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by blue_berry@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4374751

I think this has negative effects on the threadiverse because it tends to keep user's focus at lemmy.world and in general keeps users to stay in their bubbles

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[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The ideal flow isn’t people making “lemmy” accounts like reddit accounts. Take an Arsenal fan. When he finds out the lemmy instance called arsenal.club, he doesn’t have to immediately know what lemmy is or what federation is. He can sign up, view and participate in his local feed, which will be full of Arsenal related stuff. And then he can stick with it or find the full capabilities of federation

If they default to “All”, random news is gonna fill all the default feeds which is weird for a general user

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If you are e.g. on lemmy.world, random news will also fill your feed with "Local". Content-specific lemmy-instances are not the rule. The person you describe would sign up for an Arsenal-community and then yes, All as default would be confusing, but Local also. It should be Subscribed as default and All as next choice.

[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The subscribed feed would be empty and the All feed would be irrelevant in the Arsenal fan’s case.

Local would be full of posts from communities inside the Arsenal instance. Why would that be confusing?

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It would be fine. Thing is there aren't that many content-specific instances. The Arsenal-Lemmy-Server is a bad example to generalize upon

[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is where we disagree. I have active accounts in 3 instances and none of them are general-purpose. I need local feed in all of them.

We don’t really need more general-purpose instances. There’s <10 right now and that’s good enough. But there’s >100 content-specific instances. I may be wrong on the numbers, I’ll run some analytics and get back

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok, but the ones with the most users are all general-purpose. Why do we need less general-purpose instances? The concern of instances is technical, which content you follow should happen in communities. That's the whole idea of the fediverse: you chose an instance and with that, environmental settings and then discover the Fediverse with it.

[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole conundrum of “choosing an instance” is a phase that early adopters like us go through. People can’t be expected to go through the choosing part, then find communities to follow.

We expect people to find their specific instances without even knowing what Lemmy is and if needed, grow their fediverse presence from there.

This decentralised nature is the fundamental idea of fediverse. More generalised communities like lemmy.world means we keep trying to build a centralised alternative to Reddit.

The ultimate end user doesn’t even need to know what Lemmy is. Much like a blog’s reader doesn’t have to know what Wordpress is. They can create an account at arsenal.club and if needed also subscribe to transfernews@mufc.club. But by default they see their local feed filled with news related to Arsenal. And their subscribed feed full of their interests apart from Arsenal.

The local feed is what differentiates an instance. The quality of which is a direct indicator of the instance’s quality. Hence the most important feed

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole conundrum of “choosing an instance” is a phase that early adopters like us go through. People can’t be expected to go through the choosing part, then find communities to follow.

You don't necessarily need to. Here you can just send somebody a link to an instance. But this should not be the case for communities.

I agree with you that the dezentrality should be hidden as much as possible - but first: how do you explain to such a person all the other communities on the community tab? Second: If the frontend is designed well (almost as it currently is, just with the different default setting I suggested), you can browse through communities of other instances AS IF they were on your own instance. The thing that the choice of the instance decides should be technical stuff, moderation standards and the instances (ergo the communities) you see.

More generalised communities like lemmy.world means we keep trying to build a centralised alternative to Reddit.

No. You are turning the whole idea of the fediverse upside down. The dezentrality is there for tech and architecture but not for content. What YOU suggests points to a gated community just as big techs wants it. Sure, choosing an instance should maybe be jumped over when joining the threadiverse but the aspect of dezentrality should, even if it only abstracted, be an aspect of the user experience from the beginning. Maybe then people realize what instances actually are after a while but I'm not a fan of creating first a "sandbox" where they can experience the threadiverse as if it where a centralized platform to later join the "real" threadiverse and learn everything about dezentralization, choosing your instance etc because too often they stay there.

The problem about lemmy.world is that it is too big - but how should other instances grow if all the user focus is directed to internal communities?

The local feed is what differentiates an instance. The quality of which is a direct indicator of the instance’s quality. Hence the most important feed

The all-feed does so too given which instances they mute. I think currently Lemmy does not have really good moderation tools but that doesn't change the fact that the quality of All is also determined by the instance you are on.

The ultimate end user doesn’t even need to know what Lemmy is.

So if they start on an Arsenal lemmy instance they think about lemmy as a social network about Arsenal? And you would be ok with that and even consider it a user-behavior that should be encouraged? I'm sorry if I sound too harsh but that's just not I have in mind there.

[–] _thisdot@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To answer the last part of your question, they don’t need to think of Lemmy at all. “Lemmy” is a framework, not a social network. infosec.pub is the social network I’m on. I don’t need to know about Lemmy at all (most of us don’t know what powers Reddit). Here we discuss information security and I can also communicate with the wider fediverse.

It doesn’t even have to be lemmy. I can connect to anything that uses activitypub. Mastodon, Kbin, Bookwyrm, Wordpress, etc. using my infosec.pub account.

The lemmy code provided by lemmy team is cloned and then patched (if needed) by infosec.pub maintainers and then deployed to their servers. The code for all intent and purpose is owned and maintained by infosec.pub. Lemmy doesn’t have any real control at that point.

Same with the arsenal example. arsenal.club is a social network about Arsenal powered by lemmy framework. If mufc.club uses another activitypub enabled protocol, the arsenal fan on arsenal.club can view that in their subscribed feed too.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Switching to another instance is central to the idea of the Fediverse and should be easy. But here, I leave all my favourite communities behind and have to search for them all over again, let's say on a different arsenal server.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I think we should admit that's just two views on the same system. Or is it maybe because the architecture of Lemmy feels kind of make-shift? Kind of in the spirit of the fediverse by design but not quite ... although I don't know how to make it more consistent

[–] jamesrylandmiller@mastodon.social -1 points 1 year ago

@_thisdot @blue_berry If you use IceCubes you can add multiple local feeds.

[–] w2qw@aussie.zone 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Don't people switch to using subscribed pretty soon anyway? All is full of junk for me.

[–] bahmanm@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

junk

I'd say "irrelevant to my interests" 🤷‍♂️

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago

If you sort All by TopDay it's not too bad.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Very well. Then subscribed should be default. But in the community tab, default should definitely be "All". I think here it would be even more important.

[–] shagie@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

If you haven't created an account, subscribed isn't available.

For selecting which instance you should join, would "local" or "all" be a better choice for the front page for a new user unfamiliar with Lemmy?

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I don't understand why local feeds exist at all. Very few instances are topic-based. Most of the time a local feed makes no sense.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 5 points 1 year ago

My little Lemmy is for art, or so am I trying to make it.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think its nice to see which people are actually on your instance and what they are chatting about :D But its definitely an advanced feature, which makes it even more confusing to me why its the default value in the feed and the tab for finding new communities.

[–] blue_berry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This was also complained about in this post: https://www.androidauthority.com/reddit-alternatives-lemmy-3335429/ and probably mirrors experiences of other lemmy-users, especailly new-comers.

One paragraph reads: “Sure, there are categorization tools like Lemmy map that let you look up instances, but the Matrix-like grid will certainly not make things any easier for the average user. Even after logging into Lemmyworld, it took me a while to figure out that the local tab restricts all conversations to discussions on the Lemmyworld server. Switching the tab to all and catching up on discussions happening in the broader multiverse of Reddit alternatives is also possible. Still, there’s no visual identifier that guides you toward it.”

This was also my first impression of Lemmy and why I almost dropped it: I thought I could only interact with the communities on my server, which was very frustrating until I saw the filter for “all” and that I could join them just like that. Then it was fine.