this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Mander

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Apologies if this isn't the right place to post this, please do advise

I have been very patient with some of the nuances / learning curves of lemmy. I think that In time these will be ironed out and we'll have a thriving user base. However, I do feel that these issues need to be resolved at the earliest because right now is the time many users are leaving reddit or looking for an alternative. If the situation arises that the issues that the community faces while using lemmy are not fixed in timely manner, then new users might simply decide to not stay here very long.

There are a couple of things that are bothering me, but among them are few that cause me to stop using lemmy after a while. I'll try to list them here simply for the fact that I couldn't find any space which felt suited for this. If any one of you knows where this will be better suited please let me know, or post it there.

Anyway, here's my list:

  • I'm unable to subscribe to some communities. With some of them I was successful after I k interacted with them, but others like technology or android communities are still pending.
  • after viewing a post, when I click back it often takes me back to the top. Facing the issue on both the web page and jerboa app
  • sometimes, mander.xyz is unaccessible. The webpage gives an error that such a page doesn't exist while other communities still show up. Not sure why this is
  • the main feed is still a mess. I have to visit the subscribed communities to get any real content from them, but the subscribed feed either shows old content or just spams from a few of them.

Other issues also exist, but I feel these are the ones that really need to be addressed.

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[–] Sal@mander.xyz 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

However, I do feel that these issues need to be resolved at the earliest because right now is the time many users are leaving reddit or looking for an alternative. If the situation arises that the issues that the community faces while using lemmy are not fixed in timely manner, then new users might simply decide to not stay here very long.

Yeah, I think that this is a big reason why the developers have been quite busy pushing for version 0.18.0, which has a significant number of fixes. But the reality is that Lemmy is still in a very early development phase, and I expect that bugs will continue to show up for a long time....

To address your points:

I’m unable to subscribe to some communities. With some of them I was successful after I k interacted with them, but others like technology or android communities are still pending.

This is a known issue that affects Lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1315 I think that the message appears but that the subscription does go through. But correct me if I am wrong, I am interested.

after viewing a post, when I click back it often takes me back to the top. Facing the issue on both the web page and jerboa app

I have not experienced it myself, so I can't help you write this issue myself. But if you know how to reproduce this effect, it would be good to open an issue, as I have looked through the issues and I do not see this one being reported. (Lemmy-ui issues, Jerboa issues)

sometimes, mander.xyz is unaccessible. The webpage gives an error that such a page doesn’t exist while other communities still show up. Not sure why this is

This one can have a few different explanations. Here I posted about an example of a case in which I may have managed to track the source: https://mander.xyz/post/771616

In cases like this one, this is a function of Lemmy's performance and the hardware in which it is hosted. There is still a lot of room for optimization in both fronts. At the moment, the hardware in which the instance is run is well above what is needed for regular use. It is sudden spikes in RAM usage that can cause the instance to blip, but I need to understand these spikes better before I can fight them. I see that other instances suffer of these too, so I suspect that optimizing the performance of Lemmy is the more significant way to progress towards stability. But I will also work on hardware and see if that helps.

Other explanations can be that I will sometimes reboot the instance - for example, if a user asks me to make a small change to the code, adding a theme, or for upgrading the version. But these are rare and short-lived interruptions, and I try to do it during times when I see low activity in the site, so it is not so likely that this is the reason. An exception may have been a few minutes ago when I updated to version 0.18.0-rc.6, and there was an unexpected delay due to a change in a configuration file.

the main feed is still a mess. I have to visit the subscribed communities to get any real content from them, but the subscribed feed either shows old content or just spams from a few of them.

The sudden spam of posts is quite an issue. I have updated to the newer version, and I hope that this problem is fixed now. Unfortunately, I can already see that updating to the new version brought with it some new problems too...

[–] operatorcalculator@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

This is a known issue that affects Lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1315 I think that the message appears but that the subscription does go through. But correct me if I am wrong, I am interested.

Regarding the pending subscription message, I have read in a couple of lemmy guides that this is the case. I can confirm it myself, I have a few pending subscriptions but I do see the content of these communities.

[–] utg@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for the detailed reply, I'll follow up on the remedies suggested and get back

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

I have upgraded now to UI: 0.18.0-rc.7, and I have noticed that version 0.18.0 does fix the issue of the feed suddenly getting spammed.

I also increased the RAM to 4 GB because I noticed that the spikes were back. But I really need to find the root cause of the problem, because adding a GB of RAM every three days will get expensive quickly, and that really shouldn't be necessary.

[–] TauZero@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Hi Salamander! Thanks for hosting us. Let's all have a great community!

Currently experiencing increased number of missing posts/comments/updoots from other instances, as described here. That user was on an instance that was blocked by the other one, but it even happens with instances that are not mutually blocked, are already federated, and communities already discovered/linked via the search box.

If I am reading a post and want to reply to a comment that I know is there (by looking at it on another instance) but is missing from mander, I can paste the comment's URL into the search box and that syncs it up. I can reply to it then and it will also start showing up in the post's comments page.

[–] macracanthorhynchus@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been having a grand old time on Lemmy, and am navigating the minor tech hiccups amd growing pains pretty well.

My only issue is that I "installed" mander.xyz as an app onto my Android phone's home screen (through Firefox) but since yesterday I cannot get it to open correctly and I have to navigate here from my open browser instead. Which is weird...

[–] Poot@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure if this is related, but back when Twitter did it's thing and I started an account at Mastodon, I did the same on my Android, and had wacky results after using it a few times. I ended up going the browser route instead as well. With Lemmy, though, I found Jerboa early on. It's worked well enough for me to drop a couple hard earned dollars to support that project.

[–] utg@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

just to add further, I was unable to add nsfw tag to new posts while on jerboa

[–] Sal@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

This is an issue with Jerboa, it is reported here: https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa/issues/679

I'm a reddit refugee and a very new Lemmy user. This is my first comment. It would be really helpful if there was an FAQ somewhere or a how to use lemmy guide for new users. I'm still figuring out how to navigate instances and find my way to discussions I'm interested in.

[–] operatorcalculator@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Since there's a mod kind enough to spend time answer questions, could I ask a couple of things as well?

Is there a way to see whether mander has defederated from other communities?

I understand that defederated community content won't show when I'm signed in to a community that is not in federation with said communities. But is it still possible to make posts to communities defederated from my home account (in this case mander)?

[–] racer983@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes there is. Scroll to the bottom of mander.xyz and you'll see a link for "instances." This will show you both who we're federated with and if any instances have been blocked. I don't think any are blocked at the moment. If mander were to defederate from an instance you would not be able to make posts there with your mander account. You'd have to make an account with that instance or a different instance that does federate with them. So I can post to beehaw from this account, but not if I had an account on the lemmy.world instance since beehaw defederated them. I personally hope that an export or sync subscriptions feature will eventually be made to make it easy to get new accounts up to speed in case there's a defederation event.

Edit: oh and one stipulation, if a instance defederated us, but we didn't defederate them, you could still make posts to it (and it wouldn't show up in our block list), but this wouldn't get sent to the "real" thread and would only be visible to other people on mander. We also would no longer get new posts or comments on those. So like right after beehaw defederated from lemmy.world there was for a brief time some ghost comments that only people from lemmy.world could see.

Also if we did defederate from an instance, and a person from that instance posted to a different instance that we did federate with, you still wouldn't be able to see their comments from your mander account. Basically defederation is hitting block for everyone on this instance to everyone and every post on that instance. If I'm wrong in any of this please correct me, I'm new on this too. But basically defederation is messy so probably best reserved for extraordinary circumstances.

[–] memfree@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

My issue is that when I comment from a non-mander login, it does not seem to show up (this is something of a test of that).

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