I started up my own instance and now I have realized that there’s no reason anyone would join mine instead of any other instance.

That’s no good. What neat stuff would the Fediverse like to see in a Lemmy instance?

  • Follow RSS feeds in your Lemmy feed? I have that already, in a way, but it would be nice to be able to do it for any feed automatically without it being clunky.
  • Follow Mastodon users? Or tags?
  • Embedded video? That seems costly.
  • Hackability? The ability to run your own customized front end? Or good scripting features in the browser console?
  • A better looking UI? This one is functional but it’s not pretty.
  • Better moderation? I have heard the Lemmy tools aren’t that good.
  • Something else?
          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
            8·
            4 months ago

            And if you could make the back button malfunction and then reload the page, and also open a dialog when I try to navigate away, that would be perfect.

      • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        6·
        4 months ago

        Our profiles playing music and having their own effects that we can pick

        With each day we’re getting closer and closer to classic Myspace

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
          9·
          4 months ago

          Cory Doctorow pointed out recently that having pages be ugly and half-broken is an immune system against creeping corporate influence. Marketing people are incapable of making ugly pages without collapsing into fits, so if every page on your system is ugly and homemade, they won’t be able to fit in there, and they’ll have a harder time turning it all into shit.

    • EleventhHour@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      4 months ago

      I have an app where I can just type “+gpt <gpt prompt>” into any text field, so I have that already.

      Seems slightly unfair to put that workload on the server.

      The app is “MacGPT” and runs in the menu bar. I presume that such a useful utility almost certainly would exist for Linux, maybe on windows.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    241·
    4 months ago

    I would split it the question into two areas, I think you’re looking into the second part?

    Why would I join a particular instance (of any fediverse platform)

    • High level rules/guidelines that align with what I want to see/avoid
    • A few active admins that can remove harmful content / bad users quickly. Experience with moderation and devops would be nice
    • If the instance “has a future” (backups, financials, long term plans)

    Nice to have:

    • located in my country or somewhere with better privacy/financial laws. That way I have a way to influence things
    • plans to become (or run under) a not for profit

    Why would I switch from Lemmy (software) to something else

    Look at the discussion related to Sublinks where people talked about what they don’t like about Lemmy. Some of the important points for me are moderation tools (ex. Automod), granular permissions for admins/mods, etc.

    Would be nice

    • Being able to follow users would be nice, Mbin/Kbin has that I believe?
    • RSS feeds sure, but also being able to make custom feeds, similar to what “multireddits” were
    • customizability would be cool, you can look at what userscripts and browser extensions people made to improve their Lemmy experience

    Depending on your area of experience, you could look into contributing to Sublinks development. It’s being developed in a way that allows Lemmy instances to migrate smoothly, and they could be open to adding new features to the roadmap

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        There’s some… questionable design choices with PieFed that I’m not sure I agree with. For instance marking people with lots of downvotes as “low reputation” and not counting reputation in kinda arbitrary “low-effort” communities (apparently that means mostly memes). And then there’s the way things are split into topics, which seems to be decided by the admin rather than decided by the communities themselves (afaik).

        All the power to the dev but it’s a bit too… opinionated (not sure that’s the right word) for me.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      4·
      4 months ago

      I agree on the customizability.

      The community aspects that form a reason to join this instance specifically are key, of course, but I have none of that. I just made this place. Now I need to make it neat enough that at least one person sees some reason to join, instead of one of 200 other already-popular instances.

      I think making the frontend more customizable would be good for Lemmy as a whole, and also if I’m tinkering with it on this instance, maybe that can give a flavor to the instance and give a benefit to people who do decide to come by. It is more ambitious than I was thinking of, but I just looked for a while and it is not insurmountable.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    4 months ago

    Well, I’m not looking to leave .world, but custom flairs for communities and better moderation tools would be the two big ones that are missing right now.

    … also, charts of views/posts per month in a community. I like seeing the squiggly lines

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      10·
      4 months ago

      What’s lacking in the moderation tools? I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the lack. What are some things that are hard to do?

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        4 months ago

        For me, I think, to pass a report ‘up the chain’ to the admins, either to alert them of instance rules being broken (spam, questionable content, etc), or of a user abusing the report feature. ‘Report’ having more than “Yes I’ve seen it” as an option in notifications would be nice. A dedicated ‘modmail’ would be welcome too, as right now you play moderator roulette trying to figure out who to talk to when there’s more than one moderator. Oh, and a common chat room thing for mods.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          I think hackability can go a long way towards this.

          Especially on the frontend, there’s no reason Lemmy shouldn’t have custom “plugins” to change its behavior in certain ways. I think the issue isn’t that the Lemmy developers don’t want these things to exist that you’re talking about, so much as them being the only ones in a position to make the changes or accept the PRs to make them happen. Of course in that situation, change will be slow and progress limited.

          Me making changes to the frontend that intensive, or anything like it, was a bigger scope of change than I was expecting. I just wanted to make some tinkering things for my instance. But it wouldn’t be impossible. And you could have your charts. Even little blinking lights and things.

          Let me mull it over for a while.

          • nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
            41·
            4 months ago

            I think the issue isn’t that the Lemmy developers don’t want these things to exist that you’re talking about, so much as them being the only ones in a position to make the changes or accept the PRs to make them happen.

            Lemmy maintainer here, and I’m really curious what gave you this idea. We generally welcome all contributions to the project. On the backend I made a pull request to add plugin support which is waiting for feedback. Onthe frontend I havent heard any interest in a plugin system yet.

            So if this is something you want, you’re welcome to implement it and open a pull request.

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
              41·
              4 months ago

              I completely agree. Maybe my phrasing was careless. I wasn’t trying to be critical of the pace of accepting PRs or anything. I only meant that I think more flexibility in the frontend would help, instead of needing any minor UI change to go all the way through a cycle all the way up to you, incorporating it into the core codebase, and then filtering back down to an upgrade by the instance admin. But please don’t take it as blaming you for any of that situation. I was raising it in the effort to propose a solution and also to advocate against people just complaining about the moderation tools and then moving on, and waiting for you to make them happy.

              I did look at the backend plugin system PR, although sadly not enough yet to have any opinion or feedback on it. I do think a frontend plugin system, of sorts, could help a lot. I’m not sure when I will have time but I will try to put together something on this instance to show what I’m talking about, and if I do wind up doing it and it’s well received, I am completely open to putting it together as a fixed-up and official PR for the main codebase.

              • nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
                32·
                4 months ago

                Yes that sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately lemmy-ui isn’t getting many contributions so development is rather slow, but contributions are always welcome. I don’t work on that project myself, so I suggest you discuss it in the dev chat on matrix to make sure your approach will actually work.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
    10·
    4 months ago

    Better mod tools. From a moderator (not admin) PoV:

    • modmail
    • ability to tag users and annotate things about them, preferably in a way that is visible for the rest of the mod team
    • a list of the most recent comments+posts in the community EDIT - already there, as pointed out by ericjmorey. I feel dumb for not noticing it before.
    • some sort of automatic warning, based on keywords

    Specifically for the desktop browser interface (IDK how much it applies to other interfaces), it would be great if the [M] for moderator was a tiny bit less evident when you’re just posting/commenting as a user, but there was a stronger highlight when speaking officially. Plenty times I feel the need to start the comment with [speaking as a mod], as that shield icon is easy to miss.

    For admins I can’t speak personally, but the list Beehaw admins provided seems IMO sensible.

    • ericjmorey@discuss.onlineEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      a list of the most recent comments+posts in the community

      Are the the moderator views not what you’re asking for here?

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      I spent a long time looking at it.

      I think what it boils down to is hackability. The friction comes from people being unable to modify their experience, or the experience of their users, without going through this crazy process that involves it going all the way up to two Lemmy devs for the entire universe of users, and then something getting changed, and then it going all the way back down to the moderator or whoever, after the site admin upgrades the entire site. Or, going rogue and starting to change the code for their instance, which of course only the admin can do and voids the warranty.

      I wasn’t trying to become a Lemmy dev. I just wanted to make my instance neat, and I like to tinker. But I’m glad that people took the question seriously enough to give real, detailed answers about what would make things better. Lemmy is already designed to separate the backend and frontend very cleanly. I think it wouldn’t be too hard (famous last words…) to make the frontend more hackable to make at least some of these into easier things to do at an end-user or end-administrator level.

      It might be good to look at other software, too. I was thinking Lemmy, but the goal is the neat stuff, not the Lemmy part of it.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          Worked on, it sounds like.

          This is outstanding. What I was thinking was UI plugins or custom frontends per-user, effectively, so it would fill in a needed niche on top of the backend plugins. Maybe they’ve done something in the UI area already.

          This is really good to know.

          • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            Well they’re still working on it. I don’t even think it’s planned to get into v0.20.0. They’ve been hoping to get feedback from people but they haven’t really gotten any feedback yet and not many people have tried making plugins for it yet.

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      modmail

      Just out of curiosity, what does this mean in detail? Would every mod get their own report that they’d need to dismiss? Or how should it work?

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        Modmail is like direct messages, but with a message box shared by all moderators of the same community. Any mod of that comm can see the messages sent to that box, or use it to send messages to the users.

        This has a few benefits:

        • Typically, users don’t know which mod they should contact for clarifications, ongoing issues, etc. Because they don’t know who’s active, or even who can solve that issue.
        • Sometimes a mod needs to issue a warning, but that would be insensitive or impolite to do through comments; for example if it involves the privacy of a third person. Doing so through DMs sounds like the specific mod picking on the user, instead of issuing an official warning.
        • It reduces the likelihood of miscommunication between users and mods. For example: user contacts mod A, mod A allows the user to post something, user posts it, mod B sees the post, and remove it. With a shared message box, mod B would see that mod A allowed the user to post it, and leave the post alone.

        It isn’t currently a big pressing matter, as current mod teams are kind of small. However I think that it’s necessary for Lemmy’s growth.

    • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      14·
      4 months ago

      You make a valid point but I just want to push back a bit. These are the largest Lemmy instances in order of monthly users

      large instances

      As far as I know, lemmy.ml and hexbear are the only heavily communist and censorship prone servers out of the top twelve. They were here first, but we really need to stop perpetuating the notion that they represent or dominate Lemmy as a whole, along with the idea that they represent a typical moderation experience on this platform.

      I feel like the numerous well-moderated instances don’t get enough credit. The actions of lemmy.ml moderators tend to shape the narrative about Lemmy moderation, which is unfair to other servers and repels new users from the platform. Other instances aren’t perfect with moderation either, but at least they generally try to moderate in good faith and with some degree of neutrality, which is the most you can really ask for.

      The primary influence that remains is lemmy.ml still hosts a disproportionate number of major communities, but that’s slowly changing.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      6·
      4 months ago

      I saw that already. Programming.dev was right away on point about hiding some of my RSS bot’s posts, unless the users were subscribed, because it was spamming their users’ feeds and they didn’t want that. They’re clearly invested in their users having a good experience instead of, I guess, wanting to order them around? I’m not familiar but it looks like programming.dev is doing it right.

      I agree. The moderation on Lemmy is halfway to Reddit’s. There are random rules for no reason. I don’t fully get it.

  • XNX@slrpnk.netEnglish
    7·
    4 months ago

    People who are interested in and have knowledge on topics other than tech

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      I want to have artistic and photographic content and make the interface less GTK-like, especially on mobile, to try to make it acceptable to the normal people. I am techie so I think it will always have a significant tech vibe, but yes. If it had about 80% fewer people talking about Linux and US politics, I think that would represent a big improvement in the experience.

      • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
        31·
        4 months ago

        Never said there isnt anothet instance that has it, just that having ot eoupd be cool.

        Also that website runs an ANCIENT version of photon

        • Xylight (Photon Dev)@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          You have not seen some photon instances lol. lemdro.id’s admins have been really busy, so I don’t blame them for anything. they’ve also been early supporters from the start of photon.

          Here’s a list of ancient photon instances i’ve seen:

          reddthat

          lemy.lol (so old that it literally crashes on load)

          programming.dev

          lemmings.world

          I really dislike when people host photon on their own stuff, and I prefer people use phtn.app. There’s greater chance for error and old versions can give people a negative view of the client.

          • Ategon@programming.devEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            Programming.dev one is currently stuck on the last version we can upgrade to (and looks like lemmings and reddthat as well) since any upgrades just makes photon a white screen due to the tooling upgrade

  • Aa!@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    4 months ago

    I want an instance already established, very populated, and proven to last long term, so I don’t have to create another account

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      5·
      4 months ago

      I will not have this to offer to you, I think.

      I think it’s unrealistic for people to switch instances unless something has gone badly wrong with their existing one. New users are still a thing, though, and besides, if I know my instance is better than all the others, then I’ll still feel happy about it.

      • Elevator7009@kbin.run
        1·
        4 months ago

        I started on kbin.social to get my feet wet and once I figured things out a bit I wanted off the flagship instance so I could help with decentralization. Purposely sought out a smaller instance, but I, like the user you replied to, needed faith it would keep running. Server age is useful. How many people joined is also somewhat useful—you’ll probably have a harder time deciding to shut down an instance down on 100 active users than on 2, although it still happens (I used to be on kbin.cafe with around that number, the admin went inactive and the instance lived for awhile, but I checked now and get an SSL error. Shortly after the admin went inactive I went looking for somewhere new. kbin.run had around 100 active just like kbin.cafe, I went there, and clearly it worked out). I did not really need any fancy features, just for the instance to have a future while not being one of the biggest ones, and to not have a horrible reputation (like explodingheads does).

        You might get a new signup from me, already happy with my current instance, if your instance is devoted to an interest I like. If someone makes animals.social or bunnies.social and it gets more than 2 people to sign up, I’m definitely unsubbing from all my cute animal communities here and resubbing to them there. But I get the feeling you want to be general purpose. I don’t think I’ll need to make a new account anytime soon but if I do I’ll come checking on yours.

    • tomjuggler@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      I had to be burned twice before learning this lesson - instances went down and I had to switch.

  • Lemminary@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    Honestly, I only want to see the posts I’ve upvoted but this is more of a feature request. 😅

  • jared@mander.xyzEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    I want access to everything, fed users, customization, RSS integration, more and better tools. Hashtags that connect with mastodon like kbin would be cool.

    Problem is I use mobile apps for lemmy so I’d probably not be able use any cool features. I tried for months on kbin’s mobile site with and without scripts and it was still painful on my phone.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Mobile apps will always lag behind. You’re right, though. The Lemmy mobile interface is a terrible miniaturized version of the already not-great desktop interface.

  • baatliwala@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    4 months ago

    Honestly at this point there’s a fairly large number of instances so yours would need a selling point to even begin. And that’s before taking things like owner behaviour and strictness into consideration because the instance theme and tools will always be the first impression.

    “Generic catch all instances” are common. You can only build up a user base if existing people are willing to ditch their own. What are yours doing that the current ones do not?

    • Do you have a focus on a particular topic? I would consider posting a beautiful photo that I took on an instance dedicated to photography rather than the catch all one.
    • Is your UI unique/pretty? Which leads me to the next point…
    • Do you offer certain tools available/unique to your instance? 1) If yes, why can’t they be integrated with base lemmy? It’s open source after all. 2) If no for whatever reason (Lemmy devs slow to respond, low on their priority, will not accept, I don’t agree with their behaviour etc) is there a reason it cannot be included on other existing instances? Why is it exclusive to yours?

    And then I would start looking at the details like what would uptime be, how much are you yourself making an effort to contribute and expand, etc

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    The RSS feeds thing feels like a good one.

    Additionally, some feature where you can start a community but define it simply as a combination of RSS feeds … essentially a feed aggregator. But one that others can share and subscribe to.

    I think a bot could handle most of that.

    Hackable front end is interesting. You can already run multiple alternative front ends. Lemmy world offer 5 I think. Then, they just need to be scriptable if that’s what you want.

    Restyling the default one seems to be common though

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      The pondercat rss bot can already do that. You can create a community that gets posts from any number of RSS feeds.

      Well, you can’t, but I can. I don’t want to make it available for anyone to use yet, because I don’t want an explosion of RSS spam, but if you want to connect some RSS feeds to a community and it’s not going to become obnoxious, I can do that for you.

      Hackable front ends, I think, could be a huge deal. I don’t know how easy that is, but if it’s possible for someone to run a modified version of the frontend just for them out of a subdomain, without it being a security nightmare, that would solve a lot of these issues of wanting an extra button on the report page, but having to have it go from you to the site admin to Nutomic back to a code update to a PR and back down the chain and so on, before it can get done.

      With some web apps, that’s easy, and Lemmy’s frontend and backend are already nicely separated. I don’t know if there have to be privileged things running in the frontend, though. I looked at it just now but I couldn’t completely sort out how realistic it is. That might mean it’s not very realistic.

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          It is not, partly because it is still rough and just written, and partly because I’m scared people will start blasting RSS spam everywhere and it will be my fault.

          • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            4 months ago

            partly because I’m scared people will start blasting RSS spam everywhere and it will be my fault.

            That is fair. Might be worthwhile talking to instance admins and core devs about how best to make use of it? Putting it behind some admin approval or administration might be the best way.

            There was an instance a while back that was dedicated to something similar. Their system was to define the feeds themselves without any real user input, and it never really took off.

            Maybe a dedicated instance that provides more user control but is also set up to control and limit things could go a long way? One basic control might be limiting usage to user accounts older than a certain threshold. lemm dot ee does this for image uploads (4 weeks minimum age).

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
              2·
              4 months ago

              That is fair. Might be worthwhile talking to instance admins and core devs about how best to make use of it? Putting it behind some admin approval or administration might be the best way.

              That’s a good idea. And then, if it turns into a mess of botspam, it’s not my fault.