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Are anti-Lemmy sentiments being botted? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by tehmics@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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In other places on around the web, (chiefly /r/RedditAlternatives) whenever Lemmy is brought up, invariably I see the exact same complaints from brand new accounts.

Lemmy is too complicated, it wont gain traction, can't figure out how to use it, can't log in, etc.

Now, I'm definitely more tech savvy than the average redditor, but I just don't see the complaints. You can go to any Lemmy site, instantly start doomscrolling with a familiar UI, and sign up on all the instances I've tried has been frankly more simple than making a new reddit account. The only real complaint I have is the generally smaller volume of users and posts.

My only thought here is the words like federation and instances getting people hung up. Maybe join-lemmy.org being a highly ranked site is doing more harm than good by creating an additional barrier to the instances and content.

Ideally, the first link someone sees when googling Lemmy would be a global feed on a fairly generic instance, with a basic tagline akin to 'front page of the internet.' End users don't need to care about the technical details, at least not until they're interested in the platform.

So is this "Lemmy is too confusing" sentiment even real? And if not, what motive would there be to astroturf this?

If it is a real issue affecting would-be users, how can we address it?

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[–] dan@upvote.au 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I've used software where you have to ctrl click but I'm not sure I've ever come across another website where this is the case

This is the standard behaviour on the web for lists where you can select multiple options. See the example here for instance: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/select#advanced_select_with_multiple_features

Most sites have a custom version though, since the built-in HTML element has such a poor user experience. I really wish browsers would just switch it to be a list with checkboxes.

The behaviour was based on Windows desktop apps in the 90s (where this behaviour was way more common), but after a while, most things switched to checkbox lists instead.

[–] Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The behaviour was based on Windows desktop apps in the 90s

Ah, so that's why it was chosen as the default here.

[–] dan@upvote.au 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah I don't think the multi-select listboxes have really changed much since the days of Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator. Out of all the standard form components you can use in HTML, it's probably the one most in need of improvements.