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:
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?
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:
or, more succinctly,
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, @[email protected]!
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:
or
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.
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: