Asklemmy

Yeah, that's been my experiance too. The platform only has about 12,000 active users on it. Mastadon, in comparison, has 1.2 million active daily users. it's alot more than previously, but still nothing in the grand scheme of things. More people are coming in though and it is still growing but at this rate, what I believe to be 3,000 new active users in a day, it'll take a bit.

In the mean time, thank you for taking the initiative and posting. To others be the change you want to see, try posting a bit.

Edit: up to 19,000 now

I've been happy overall with it. I was lost at first but I set my feed to All severs and New posts. I have found some cool communities this way. I plan to stick around and I hope others do as well!

My biggest pain point right now is that the iOS app is unstable, crashes constantly, and the web app is slow as molasses and inconsistent, randomly becomes unresponsive.

I think if they could work out the bugs, stability and inconsistent performance, and push stable working apps to their mobile platforms, there would be far more engagement and the Lemmy community as a whole would flourish.

Most of that is just a function of smallness. I'm not sure there's a Reddit alternative that works for post doomscrolling yet.

I've spent many hours reading comments on here already, though.

I mean, you're being realistic, and nobody can fault you for that. The jank is going to be too much for some people, they'll come here maybe but won't stick around. Other people will come and think that the positive aspects are more important than the negative ones and they'll migrate.

I'm a FOSS nerd and advertising makes me physically sick, so I'm more than willing to put up with the frustrating things about Lemmy.

My one advice is, if you want to see more content then post it.

I mean having 1 less thing to doomscroll on is good innit

I know what you mean. The biggest issue I'm having is finding and subscribing to communities that are not a part of the instance I joined with.

I kept seeing links that listed communities I was interested in subscribing to, but then it would ask me to log in, I'd put in my credentials, only for the log in to not work. I finally realized I had to make a new account with that instance, and then i could log in and join it. I don't want to have to juggle between 3 or 4 accounts to enjoy content, plus much if it is duplicated as some instance are linked, but others are not.

Also I use Jerboa to browse lemmy, don't have a PC, and would rather use an app than my web browser(Brave).

Its hard for readers early on. You need lots of people to fill the feed. Get busy or wait for people to get things addressed and pipelines running.

Its mainly UX, it will come in time.

important to note, none of this made itself (even reddit); it took people using and contributing.

I agree, I think it has a lot of potential, but the difficulty in discovering other communities is a barrier that most won't want to cross. Having to manually search a specific string in order to subscribe is just too cumbersome. I hope that improves. I think if discoverability was better, everyone would be here and interacting. But it's too different that I could see most giving it a quick try and then giving up. Im an addict though so I'm muddling through it. I think people here don't really realize what the average user is like, and how most don't even know that third party apps exist.

I'm warming up to it. Actually, I was never not warm to it, but the learning curve is real. I am on the website right now because the iOS app MLem, which is in beta, doesn't (as far as I can tell) have a way to search for other communities. But I want to shout that creator out, because I think it's difficult, thankless work, and I really appreciate their effort. The fact there is an app for iOS at all is a wonderful start. Who knows how solid it will be a year from now?

The long and short of it is that it is rough around the edges, but it's a good foundation that can get better over time. It definitely needs some UI improvements and better onboarding

I’ve had old posts pop up a few times, but not often.

I mostly lurked on Reddit, because it felt pretty useless to comment in larger subreddits. So far, it’s a lot more pleasant to comment here and see how communities might grow.

Getting out of the habit of doom scrolling has been the most positive change for me. I pop in a few times a day and check active and then new, then find other things to do. It’s better for my mental health and I’m more productive.

I mean the user base is less than 1% of reddits. So of course you're going to have less posts. You're relying on people for browsing, you either can chose to be content with how much people are posting, or get to posting yourself.

people need to remember that apps like apollo were around for years. iterating and improving to produce an incredible product.

it wasn’t always like that. you’re at the cutting edge. like reddit was 10 years ago.

This stuff takes time

Something that improved my experience was changing the sorting from most active to hot. I see much more variety now.

Be the change you want to see. Start posting in the communities you enjoy for others to check out. If you're here just to scroll and not contribute, Lemmy won't improve quickly. If you wait until it gets to be another Reddit, you're not helping out the community.

I like it. So far my only issue is the convoluted manual search for communities, but that'll be a non issue as we spread out and get everything linked up. The other stuff is just bugs, like phone pics getting turned sideways when posting.

Overall I like it. I prefer a more intimate community and quality discussion as opposed to one line reactions comments and petty confrontation.

Newbie question, can we just use the standard Mastodon application for IOS?

It's not going to replace Reddit overnight. Those communities have to be built here. If people stick around, it will happen.

+1, as many have said, participation is key. Make communities, posts, and comments.