I think Lemmy desperately needs to integrate two things:

• The ability to search for communities across instances inside of Lemmy (I'm aware of the search option outside of Lemmy, but that's less than ideal)
• The ability to easily search within posts A) in all local communities, B) in all subscribed communities, and C) across all communities in the whole Fediverse. Yes, I'm aware that C) is a huge ask. But I think it's vital to the success of Lemmy.

Echoing many things that other users are saying already:

Signing up/choosing a home instance is confusing. I don't think it's very confusing conceptually, but it is confusing from a UX/UI perspective. Subscribing to outside communities was the toughest part, I had to find them through a different instance using a search engine, then manually paste the community-specific URL into my home instance search, wait several seconds, then click into the community home page and finally click "subscribe."

Not something a casual user is going to want or even figure out to do. I trust that many of these growing pains will be fixed in the coming weeks/months. I just hope that it's not all a flash in the pan and then fizzles out totally.

Once using it though, I like the general feel of it. Better themes and some cleaner UI choices and it will be really nice imo. People are friendly so far and that's worth a ton right there.

People are much friendlier here, so far.

I will make this my first ever Lemmy post:

Overall, this definitely feels like a promising alternative with some growing pains. The bigger communities are decently active but the decentralized nature of Lemmy carries the risk of some communities becoming too fragmented where communities are duplicated in different instances. As some other users have suggested, This could be remedied by creating "Super communities" spanning the Fediverse which could help with growing to a scale large enough to rival Reddit and incentivise even more Redditors to make the switch.

I'll be honest. While I like the idea of decentralized social stiff, its also a huge issue. First you have to choose an instance, which isn't too bad, but you can't move. I hear Lemmy.ml being under pressure and I want to move somewhere else to help.with that. My account is 4 years old though and I can take nothing with me. Additionally this means all my content is on one instance. If that ever goes down, the network as a whole my keep existing, but my user and all I've put into Lemmy will be gone. And while I trust Lemmy instances more than reddit in terms of privacy, I'm not so sure when it comes to uptime and longevity. Finally, the whole concept of decentralized is hard to wrap my head around. My instance being separate from others but still being subscribed to communities of other instances feels unintuitive. Its the she issue I have with mastodon. I keep loosing track of instances, communities, apps etc. All with different names and logins etc.

For now, I'm trying to get used to Lemmy and just search for communities I'm subscribed to on reddit and see how it goes. It definitely works well enough. Just some conceptual issues I might have to get used to.

I'm so confused!! Still trying to figure out how to tell jerboa to show me communities that aren't local (and aren't showing in all - I did find memes and other juicy numbers there!)...

I might have made the mistake of trying to pick a server that wasn't struggling under the load of the Reddit refugees, but I still don't think it was a bad idea...

Quite a learning curve though. Some cheat sheets or heaven forbid, starter packs would be snazzy :)

I think my experience can be best summed up by:

404: FetchError: invalid json response body at http://lemmy:8536/api/v3/site

Jokes aside, the web portal is pretty great. Jerboa seems... like it needs some polish.

Much like when I went from Twitter to Mastodon, finding "my people" is a lot more work. It's unpleasantly easy for links to a community to take me directly to that instance instead of leaving my on my instance where I'd be able to subscribe and interact. But also like Mastodon, the experience is much nicer once things start getting set up. Really nice not getting pestered to use the app constantly!

The app I'm using (Jerboa) is a bit lacking, but I'm sure it'll improve. I'm unsure about how accounts work with the servers, can I migrate my account if the server I am using shuts down? Communities are tiny and a lot are missing, but I'm sure those will grow and fill in as more people join.

I love how it feels like a smaller but friendlier reddit. I hope more people can join

Interface is better than "new" Reddit, not as good as old Reddit + RES.

Also: if I click on a link on another instance (for example https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy when I'm signed in on lemmy.world), I'm not signed in to lemmy.ml so I have to manually search for it in lemmy.world to post there - is there a common solution to that?

Sorry if this has been asked before. But my front page seems to dynamically add new posts as I'm scrolling. It makes me lose my place during the scroll. How can I have it just load once at start, and then allow me to scroll through?

cool that it's written in Rust also decentralization (not the blockchain kind) is the future, but...
lemmy ui feels kinda unpolished, and sometimes community join requests just hang forever.

Confusing. There are communities I can't subscribe to because I can't access them from my instance, and I have no idea why that is. The experience has been interesting so far, and growing the network is going to be something I'll be keeping an eye on. For now, though, I'll have to wait until someone creates the communities I was a part of on Reddit.

Edit: It seems a community won't show up on your instance's community list unless someone in that instance is subscribed to it.

Search is brutal. I dont want to open a new link, i just want to type what im searching for and then search for it.

I love it here and I'll express myself and show love to all with manatees

It's weird, a little confusing, and a little janky. Love it so far. It's not a novel observation on my part but it definitely feels new and exciting the way Reddit and Tumblr did back in the day.

It's just something to get the hang of. Currently somewhat confusing, but not insurmountable. It does feel a lot like Reddit did some thirteen years ago. This is a nice blend of modern and easy to use, and has a whiff of my early days on the internet (bb's, forums, etc) without measuring internet speeds in kbps, which is nice.

I just signed up a few hours ago. So far it seems to be entirely dominated by posts about the recent reddit drama which makes it hard to judge if there is much regular content here that I would enjoy.

It's gone quite smoothly so far - found an instance local to me and joined, subscribed to a bunch of communities, installed Jerboa and set it up - didn't hit any roadblocks.

The cross-server subscription thing is a bit counter-intuitive, but this seems to be an issue that people are already aware of. The Fediverse lengthy signup ritual of choosing an instance is there, but that's just a feature of how the medium works and I'm already familiar with the issues from Mastodon, so it didn't bother me.

I like it here a lot more than Mastodon and its so much easier to go and subscribe to other communities at other nodes/servers also to engage in other servers as well. Mastodon was a little more complicated, you do that but it was a little fincky IMO and of course I love Lemmy more than Reddit and I hope it blows up also stays that way too lol (RIP all the servers)

The web is okay, kind of, but the mobile apps (what I mainly use to browse this stuff) are sorely lacking, especially on iOS.

I decided to write my own client (mostly for myself) and so far the API seems very straightforward. Might eventually publish it to the stores, if its mature enough.

It's heavily based on Apollo (in case it wasn't obvious). One might even call it a rip-off 😅

What I'd really like to work on after the basic navigation is done is discoverability. I think the platform really needs some improvement there.

There's a learning curve for sure, but I think I could get used to it. I'm hoping this boom during the Reddit black out helps pick up steam and we see a lot of cool features roll out in the mobile app/mornptions for fedoverse clients.

Confusing. The apparent 'segregation' of instances is difficult to get my head around. The Jerboa app is (understandably) in early days and not that intuitive to use. The layout of the website isn't much better (it wasn't at all obvious how you're suppose to even post stuff, for example). I get that we're all coming in on the 'ground level' here, but the whole set up feels very rough-and-ready. I'll keep an eye on Lemmy to see how things progress but at the moment, honestly, if feels like I'm working against Lemmy/the Fediverse rather than with it.

I've been a Redditor for more than 16 years, and it's a little complicated understanding how this works. But I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

I love it. I am genuinely excited to be on here, and it is literally the only social media I use at the moment.

The single feature I that I think would improve the site tremendously is some kind of indicator to know if I have posted in a thread before. It is silly, but sometimes discussions blow up and I cannot remember everything I write.

Like, just a colored dot next to the title in topics I have posted in would make the experience so much better.

I find it easier than using mastodon for the first time tbh

I love the idea of Lemmy and I haven't found it too hard to create an account and get the gist of things.

BUT, the novelty will wear off and I'm not interested in general channels. I used Reddit for UX design, menslib, indieheads, OCD support, and lots of niche stuff that doesn't seem to exist here.

I know the answer is for me to get involved, but I work long hours and am a single dad to 2 .. I could set something up, but I don't have time to find quality OC and nurture multiple communities. I'd honestly be a poor mod.

I half expect Reddit to announce major changes to their official app, which may be enough to win a proportion of people back.

I think it's got all the potential, and I really mean it. I want to be here and I will try to contribute wherever I can. The onboarding of the platform is confusing, but everyone already knows that. I can see the growing pains, but that's totally fine.

I enjoy the format, and I very much like what Lemmy is meant to become.

The one thing I'm struggling with is how do I find a subreddit equivalent? For example r/formula1 or r/UKpolitics on Reddit might be.... What?

Also is it possible to find these communities using Jerboa or so I need to login on my desktop?

Edit - spelling

I was new to Reddit (3 weeks of activity), and switching to Lemmy is a bit confusing. But one evening is enough to learn the basics, I hope. Let's keep it rolling. :)

The interface is nice and friendly, but the way the fediverse and the different instances works is kind of confusing. Still not sure what that's all about

I’m really glad that browse.feddit.de exists because it’s near impossible to find instances otherwise. However, I wish the “copy” button on the search results copied !communityName@instanceName rather than a simple URL to make it easier to sub to that community from any instance.

New user and reddit refugee here! The instance system isn't as straightforward as something like reddit where all of the content exists in the same place, but once I understood how the system works (via the first few posts I saw after opening the Jerboa mobile app for the first time) I got signed up on an instance that ISN'T lemmy.ml and I've just began surfing in earnest! Thanks to the community that's made this possible!

Like Mastodon, I'm getting used to the decentralized nature. Now that I found subscriptions and the option to change my view to subscriptions, things are easier. I'm just worried that topics are going to get big on disparate instances that aren't linked. But as I use it, I'm liking it.

For now it is nice to be outside corporate sanitation.

I have a terrible experience on mobile. I'm literally only on desktop because I was ready to delete my account. It's extremely unintuitive, Lemur doesn't work for lemmy.world and the other app is confusing to use. :/

Not a fan of Jerboa, but I realize that it's early days. Hopefully we can get some of the UI people from the 3rd party reddit apps on here to develop a better client.

Other that all of the sign up feature being very confusing, I kinda feel afraid of selecting a less popular space to create my account on, as its not really documented what happens if the space your account is created on dies.