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.
It’s really hard. Here’s my best shot:
A discussion platform for communities.
Sounds good, but I would keep the Fediverse in somehow, eg “A federated discussion platform for communities”.
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.
“Open source” would be good. That phrase is now widely understood by the layman. From my point of view, however, people are unable to keep a thought. The shorter, the better in the marketing world, I would say.
My friends still think fediverse are for federal agents.
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.
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: the Mastadon of Reddit.
Absolutely no way, this will never work. It should be “Lemmy: the Mastodon of Reddit”
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
Whatever works mate 💚
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.
It is what it is. I didn’t want to spend all day thinking about it so I posted what came to mind. If it helps, cool.
Lemmy: Wow that’s a lot of communists
I would honestly drop the “link aggregator” part completely and just call it “discussion forum” or “discussion platform”. “Link aggregator” sounds pretty technical and like it just collects links which seems almost pointless. And the links aren’t even mandatory when creating a post.
Yes I agree, others have mentioned the same thing. The purpose of this post is to gather concrete suggestions, so please edit your comment with a sentence that you would use instead.
Communities, free from corporations.
Share and comment in communities, free from corporations
Lemmy has limited federation with Bluesky and Threads. Lemmy itself isn’t being given with a non-commercial license so if any Lemmy instance grows large it’ll likely monetise and become a corporation.
The decentralized forum for countless communities
Too long; Didn’t read: Read last paragraph.
We need to understand the target audience if we want to get a good description. Speaking for myself, I would set the target audience to chronically online people who want to leave corporate walldoms, but I’d also choose a type of communication that focus on the actual service instead of comparing it to other serices. I’d not copy paste description from inspiration source. I’d be willing to reimagine what it is that we are developing.
I’d use communication that is less branded, and more understanding of the soul of the service. Its like saying “orange soda” instead of “fanta”, “search engine” instead of “google” or “car” instead of “Toyota”. The difference is by using this kind of language, we move ourselves away from dependency on the producers towards dependency on the tool.
Understanding the soul also requires that we have a culturally connected understanding of that which we discuss. That is to use less technical communication and more down to earth communication. To not play into sophistication. Less abbreviations, less techno jargon, more plain english, more understanding the equivalents of real life. For example, in the Gemini Protocol of small web, they use the word “capsule” instead of “instance”, which it feel more physical and more real. “Instance” on the other hand makes it sound like a computer thing and not related to reality.
About the soul, we should ask ourselves what the service feels like. Lemmy feels like small townhalls, or like a guy in the street yelling “Guys! What do you think of this drawing.” Perhaps a little gossipy or something like that. Ask yourself, what does lemmy feel like for you? Or what do you want lemmy to feel like? From here I choose “townhall” simply because it works for the purpose.
The above example also gives weight to the idea of physicality. When something feels physical, it feels real, and we feel drawn to it. In contrast, the abstract “instance” makes it more of a curiosity. We can talk of “towns”, “homes” or “hives” instead of “instances”. We can talk of “continents” of loosely connected hives instead of fediverse of platforms of instances. From here I choose “hive” because it distinguishes itself clearly to prevent misunderstandings.
With the physicality and smallness of “hive”, we can also encourage small scale thinking. Because no hives has a million bees. If you see a hive of a million inhabitants, you are going to be drawn towards smaller hives.
I’d also center the attention away from platforms and towards the hives and their interconnectedness. In this way we emphasize the decentralization aspect. The willingness to associate with other hives. I frame this as a hive being “open”.
This means we can talk of fediverse instances as open hives. Mastodon becomes shortletter hives, pixelfed becomes open gallery hive, peertube becomes open video hive.
So to be blunt, I’d suggest open townhall hive.
Lemmy is an open townhall hive that offers public sharing of links, letters and images.
Lemmy - Free federated open source social media. Find your community now!
I think the main problem is “link aggregator” which doesn’t make a lot of sense as the main function is discussion. For a minimal change you could go for “a discussion platform for the fediverse”.
If “fediverse” is too obscure; you could try just “a decentralised discussion platform”. Decentralised isn’t technical, you can’t fully describe the fediverse in a sentence but “decentralised” gives a clue.
“Decentralized” may not be technical, but still its a long and complex word. “Fediverse” seems friendlier to me.
I’d argue most people would know what centralised and decentralised mean, at least in abstract terms, while anyone that hasn’t encountered it before would have no idea what the fediverse is.
When I first heard “fediverse” I thought it was a joke about everyone on mastodon being a fed 😆
I get your point, but I agree with RobotToaster. We’re still at a point where the Fediverse is a very niche thing and a very niche term. For most regular people “Fediverse” is a nonsense word that tells them absolutely nothing, while “decentralised” (albeit a technical term) is at least a concept most people can grasp.
But if you tell them fediverse they can look it up and see there are tons of other sites that are part of the same group. If you say decentralized it sounds like you’ll be alone and separate
But how many will actually do that, though? That doesn’t really sound like how regular people would react. Like, if regular people were capable of reading up and looking into things on their own accord as part of the sign-up process we wouldn’t need to have this conversation about a snappy and succinct summary sentence about Lemmy in the first place.
Yeah I guess mastodon has it as ‘decentralized social media’ so it would be more in tune with that
I think the word “open instance” could be used in place of decentralized. So when we frame it as open discussion instance, it is a reference to how the instance is decentralized.
Forum for the fediverse
