On join-lemmy.org, the project is described as “A forum and link aggregator for the Fediverse”. In the previous post, multiple people mentioned that this is not a good description. However I have a hard time coming up with anything better.
So please post your suggestions below, and upvote the ones which are both accurate and easy to understand for new users. Later I pick one of the most upvoted options for the website.
By the way the second title “Follow communities Anywhere in the world” will likely go away (see the pull request for frontpage redesign). After this is decided I may also make another post to get suggestions for the longer description text below (“Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. …”).
Edit: Please only post concrete suggestions in top-level comments, and use replies to discuss. And here you can see how a few other Fediverse projects do it:
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I collected the ones which subjectively seem best, here is the list for a quick overview:
- An open source discussion platform for communities.
- Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities
- Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
- A decentralized network of forums
- Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.
- A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
Based on these suggestions and the discussion, the best option seems to be: A decentralised discussion platform for communities.
I will keep making more updates to join-lemmy.org based on this post and the previous one. Once that’s done I will likely make another post to show the results and gather additional feedback.
Drop the “Fediverse” verbiage, or even “federated”.
You may be speaking to potential instance admins but only those familiar with AP know what federation means. Otherwise it’s a term with no meaning.
Ironically, even “Lemmyverse” means more than “Fediverse”, so “linked together through the Lemmyverse” actually works better.
I would rework the other stuff, like the whole branding because all that hacker green doesn’t help in feeling the communities. And the images for the same reason… Also there are some features that are worthless listing like “you can have an avatar”
Also the censorship thing…
Let’s say that the homepage kinda reflects the state of lemmy people as a group right now and it’s not so nice imo
Focussing on being a clean forum with nested answers and human curated algorithm and idk, just pointing some low hanging fruits
On a side note I wonder if having the page as onboarding for users instead of explaining the software is the right target. Ideally it should be communities trying to outreach to have people on their servers, not the software asking to join people who use the software (?)
But I digress.
On a marketing level point of view, while we are clearly the small fish, it’s not bad to leverage being enemies of Reddit. Like in the past we’ve seen much more Apple vs Microsoft while now they ignore each other.
“Reddit if was not owned by venture capitalists who keep ruining your life” lol (too long)
Anyway, is there any kind of data to know if people actually join lemmy by joinlemmy site?
A community poll for Lemmy users would be good.
Youre right, the whole website could use an update and redesign. As none of us Lemmy maintainers are designers, its very hard to do this well.
There is no tracking/statistics on join-lemmy.org, but some new users mentioned it, and mentioned that the site could use improvements (which I’m doing now).
“Discuss interesting topics and join communities on the Fediverse.”
IMO it’s better than “link aggregator” because we don’t only share links here, but also images and text.
Lemmy - Free federated open source social media. Find your community now!
Forum for the fediverse
“You remember when people were generally nice on the internet?”
It’s really hard. Here’s my best shot:
A discussion platform for communities.
I very much like the simplicity of “A discussion platform for communities”. If one wants to highlight the one feature that sets Lemmy apart from others, then adding “decentralised” would do the job for me. As others have already said, I am not using “federated” because that can only be used when “federation” is a known word, which it absolutely is not. If you understand “federation”, then you probably already know about Lemmy. So,
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
“Lemmy, a decentralised discussion platform for communities”.
I like this one the most out of all the ones I’ve read here up to now.
Not bad, but I personally don’t like centering the attention on platforms because then we are drawing attention away from the instances. By centering attention on instances, we normalize instances and allow them to thrive.
I’d say something in the direction of Discussion Instances for communities.
people don’t know what instance means. they aren’t all object oriented programmers.
Sounds good, but I would keep the Fediverse in somehow, eg “A federated discussion platform for communities”.
My friends still think fediverse are for federal agents.
I think leave the federation out, it just confuses new people. People who don’t know what the Fediverse is won’t understand what federated means, and those who do understand likely don’t need to be told Lemmy is federated.
Still its the main feature. Plus the sentence is a bit short like this. Or mention that it is open source instead.
The best sentence will depend on the target audience. Is there a way to know who would be that audience?
Also, responding more directly to your question, I’ve got a frame challenge: What about two or three short sentences, like what Mastodon does?
A platform that is truly democratic. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
A platform where you’re truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
A platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
That third one I like, because it’s a differentiator that Lemmy has in comparison with ButterflyX or whatever Jack the Twitter Guy is working on right now; Lemmy is not at risk of enshitifying, unlike ButterflyX.
Also, if it’s important to differentiate Lemmy from Mastodon or other Fediverse platforms, the sentences could start with “A discussion platform”.
Also, here’s a take where I tried to make no reference to electronics:
A bustling room filled with tables, each filled with people talking about what they find interesting, where the conversation topics are always chosen by the table and always changing, and where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.
or, more succinctly,
A bustling room filled with tables, where each table is filled with people talking about what they find interesting, a room where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.
Also, I just realized that every time that I edit this post you get notified becase I @ed you. Sorry!
And, finally, happy cake day, @nutomic@lemmy.ml!
The target audience is basically anyone who comes across Lemmy somewhere, looks for it via search engine and ends up on join-lemmy.org. So in other words, anyone really. Including people without any prior knowledge, nor technical knowledge.
On joinmastodon.org I only see a single sentence at the top: “Social networking that’s not for sale.”
Btw I didnt get any extra notifications from this comment, so no worries. And thank you!
Ah. Thanks for the target audience explanation.
What I mean with Mastodon is that, immediately after “Social networking that’s not for sale”, you see more sentences: “Your home feed should be filled with what matters to you most, not what a corporation thinks you should see. Radically different social media, back in the hands of the people.”
I think the technical details, such as open source and federation are not going to click with people who don’t know those ideas. However, open source and federation can create something that, for those people, is valuable.
So the question is: what does Lemmy offer that clicks with people who don’t know technical details?
This is up for discussion, of course. But I’d argue there’s “freedom”, “choice”, “human (and not corporate) communities”, “made for people, not for profits”…
That leads me to my suggestion:
A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed, not a corporation. You choose where to set up your account, not a corporation. You choose what communities to be a part of, not a corporation.
or
A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to set up your account. You choose what communities to be a part of. You choose, not a corporation
The bolded text is like Mastodon’s first sentence. The rest of the text is like Mastodon’s other sentences.
The technical details can be explained later in the page, just like Mastodon does it.
Ah yes there is the short description at the top. At the moment it talks a lot about “it”, good idea to make it more focused on “you”. How about this?
Lemmy is a discussion platform that is truly free. You choose which communities to be a part of and which posts to see. You can use extensive blocking and filtering tools to sort and curate your feed. You are in control and not a corporation, so there is no tracking, advertising nor secret algorithms. And you can follow the development in the open, or get your own ideas included.
I’d love to edit my previous post but I don’t wanna spam you.
As to target audiences, I think it could be helpful to specify the personas that we’re building the sentences for. Does the persona know what the Fediverse is? Do they know what enshittification is? Do they know what open source is? Do they have strong opinions about surveillance capitalism (even if they don’t know the word for it)? Or are they clueless regarding all of these topics?
My suggestion assumes some knowledge of these topics. To be clear, if I’d single out a suggestion of mine, it’d be:
A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.
Since the redditors came? /pol/ but worse. Before the redditors? The golden era of fediposts.
People will not understand anything technical about a website. They will only understand what content is readily available.
leave it be. there ain’t any one reason for the influx of new users or the absence thereof. do your thing to the best of your ability and if you happen to stumble onto something better along the way, that’s a job for then. for now, it does its job.
Lemmy: Wow that’s a lot of communists
Your own discussion network
… but actually one cannot describe Lemmy’s pitch in one simple sentence, because its main difference is: Reddit but no Spez, fora but connected to each other (and we call this “federation”), and Mastodon but with better topic and content discovery. Any attempt to shorten this will be more or less inaccurate.
So, main Lemmy features, listed under the “Join an instance”, “Apps”, “Explore random instance”, etc., IMHO should look like this:
No ads. No tracking. No meddling.
Posts and comments on your feed are determined only by your settings and users’ votes. All moderation actions are public and viewable using a modlog. We do not block third-party apps. Lemmy is a free software and you can check it for yourself.
(we are practically saying Reddit without Spez)
No single overlord. No isolation
There are dozens of Lemmy websites and you can choose your experience with different vibes, topics, regions and moderation approaches. Yet every instance connects to other ones (forming the Fediverse) and allows you to seamlessly talk with each other, even outside of control of Lemmy creators!
(fora but not siloed. Discussion viewable regardless of where you are logged in)
Know the entire discussion on the topic
All the talk on Lemmy happens on communities. Subscribe to any of them and you will receive complete threads of conversation, regardless where you are signed in. A search, which actually works.* Decentralised, but not fragmented.
(Mastodon but actually not fragmented)
All three “features”/“upsides” of Lemmy are related to each other, somewhat like rock-paper-scissors. All form one pitch of a platform which combines the best features of Reddit, fora and Mastodon solving downsides of these at the same time. It would make sense to display these on the carousel.
*does the search on Lemmy work better than on e.g. Reddit? A “better search than on Mastodon” claim would be plausible, anyway
Good suggestion, thanks!
The decentralized forum for countless communities
Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums, allowing you to interact with a federation of sites where no single entity holds total control.
Edit: I think it flows a little better without “next-generation” so I removed it.
This one is too long, I would only use the first part:
Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums
I’m not saying your sentence is inaccurate, but send that description to a regular person and it will either cause their eyes to glaze over or cause them to run in the other direction.
