It’s easy to discover communities on my instance via the dedicated page in the hamburger menu. But let’s say I want to follow a community on another instance, such as [email protected] . I might have found its name mentioned in a post or comment. When I click on the provided link, I’m thrown on that instances web page, from which I of course can’t subscribe.
So what I instead have to do is to copy the description of the link and paste it in my instance’s search bar. Which isn’t easy, since it’s a link, so there isn’t even a straightforward way to select the link text without clicking the link. This seems very unintuitive and makes the process of joining a whole bunch of communities tedious. Is there a better way?
Think about everything you hate about Reddit—the kids, the trolls, the spam—and be thankful Lemmy requires a little more effort.
This is the way Reddit used to be when it first came out.
In my experience there are many good and positive casual users on reddit as well as toxic and obnoxious techies. Knowing how to navigate an obtuse UI is not a mark of good character.
No, of course not, but the added…intentionality that it requires weeds a lot out. Remember, trolls usually go after that which requires the least amount of effort. So it’s not about being able to navigate a UI, it’s about effort.
Or maybe that’s just a bunch of bullshit. 4chan is pretty arcane from a UX perspective, and look at the cesspit that place is. I don’t know. It was just a thought experiment.