If we are going to be mainstream, we really need an app that abstracts away most of the technical aspects of Lemmy.

Sure, you and I might understand federation and like it - your average user will see this wall of text explaining how it works as a brick wall and give up.

So an app that just says something like "pick a server, don't worry you can still see content from others, here's our suggestion" and then "create an account and login" will work as even many games work like this.

Then the main feed needs to be abstracted away, replace long URLs with "community name" and let users subscribe and browse without any subdivisions (unless they want to filter it out). Make sure the interface treats everything as if it were a simple subreddit, they see a group about a game they enjoy and they subscribe - no friction.

Guidance over complexity and choice

Better UI and UX - visual guidance, separation, clarity

Making links not redirect to other instances you're not logged in to

Honestly, I think the Reddit blackout already is pretty good. If the closed subs already had an alternative community or instance to recommend that would also be great.

Synergy with Mastodon would be nice. As far as I know Lemmy and Mastodon aren't completely linked but also not completely separate. Would be awesome if I could now also just follow people or hashtags there.

But all in all I think the current direction is great. The relevant projects seem to be getting a large influx of bug reports, feature requests and pull requests. We'll probably be seeing huge changes in the coming months.

The number one rule of getting people to change their behavior is to reduce friction. Someone needs to make a client that can mask a lot of the federation behind the scenes so that non-tech folks can just hop on and start browsing

Echoing others here, UI/UX is a big one, its SOOOO close, there are just some minor bugs (that might be major under the covers) that if corrected could really smooth over the end user exp.

Biggest personal complaint I have now is all the links that just pop me onto another instance. I am on a federated network, why should I get bounced to other instances when I click links on my own?

If for some reason my instance cannot get the content, THEN produce the real link and I can choose if I care that much or not.

I'd fix inconsistencies between instances. Like, I made this account in Beehaw and now I literally can't create a community anywhere until I make a new account. It shouldn't be like this.

It took me trying five different sites to join. Two asked for an essay, and neither have responded a day later. This is not tenable.

I'm a dev, and from the statistics I've gathered form abandonment is the largest factor towards failure to take an action. Having a form fail, having to "apply", or having a failure message makes people leave. We have to fix this problem to allow for better adoption.

There needs to be some sort of central system to join. A site whose sole existence is to house an app with four inputs, and a button. Username, password, confirm password, email, and sign up. After this it should take a list of sites that volunteer to take users, and randomly place them into one. If it fails, or takes too long, it should try another. It should then inform them of the site, email them, and finally redirect them to the site logged in.

This would be difficult to implement as it requires these sites to allow third party sign ups but this would solve the form abandonment problem. Allowing this would also allow for apps to do the same.

Yes, this is my first time. I was never really a fan of Twitter or similar social medias, preferring the subreddit and thread based nature of Reddit.

@ruud@lemmy.world created a sticky post that is a work in progress, however I believe it is something that answers your question

https://lemmy.world/post/37906

Explain to people how it works! The most difficult barrier for adopting the Fediverse is a lack of basic understanding.

What bothered me the most:

• I couldn't find the lemmy site without adding "join" to the search. On the third page there's finally a link - to github - which non-techies are immediately going to navigate away from. The remaining 6 pages had no more links to anything related to this lemmy.
• Once you ARE on the right page the majority of it is about getting you to host your own instance. This is where you're losing the next 90%. This content needs to be 99% dedicated to onboarding.
• If you're STILL in the pipeline your next hurdle is picking a site to join with no clue what this decision means for you. A whole bunch are gonna give up right there. There needs to be a curated short list of critical mass instances where noobs aren't greeted by crickets.
• If you manage to actually register an account you're then left with wondering how you're gonna get any content.
  • defaulting to "local" vs "subscribed" is technically sensible but very inconvenient for randos.
  • the fact that you simply cannot subscribe to NSFW communities if you happened to register at a non-NSFW instance is very unintuitive
  • there is very poor guidance to picking new communities even if you end up finding them in the search. raw subscribers is an insufficient metric considering how sparsely populated the space is. There should at least be another indicator for actual activity.

I'm not new to fediverse, but i found the same friction points like with mastodon

• which instance to pick (or maybe i should host my own straight away?)
• how to discover new communities - browse.feddit.de definietly helps with that
• links that redirects me to another instance