1d ago

My continuing attempts to make a lemmy.world account

A lot of us are in tech and we come across these problems and just troubleshoot our way around them and don't really think about them, so I figured a "case study" might be helpful. ~~Image unrelated.~~

Anyway, yesterday I tried making an alt account on lemmy.world. When last we left the situation, I had been notified that my registration application had been denied, but I'd been asked to confirm my email and https://lemmy.world/u/sergio had been created. A couple helpful commenters suggested my account might still be under review.

Today I tried logging in again. But when I entered my username and password, I got a popup that said "incorrect login credentials". Maybe I needed to verify my email again? I went to my email, clicked the "verify your email" link, and just got a page with text that said "verify email" and nothing else. Maybe it didn't like me using my username to log in? So I tried logging in with my EMAIL and my password, and still got that "incorrect login credentials".
Maybe something's wrong with my password? I'm using a password manager but OK, let's just try changing my password. I clicked on the "forgot email" link on the login page. I entered my email address and clicked "reset password"... and nothing happens. No feedback, and I don't get an email. (10 minutes so far).
maybe I should check https://lemmy.world/u/sergio ? Hey, that's no longer there, I just get an error! I check the user page of another lemmy.world user and it works, so it's not a server problem. Maybe my application really was denied? Was it really reviewed? What do I do now?

(my intuition is to try again with a different username, email address, computer, and browser from a different location at a different time of day...)

30 comments

Unfortunately the lemmy default interface is shit at telling if your account application has been rejected. That UI is thankfully being replaced. You can try using a different UI like tesseract which should provide more accurate information on why you cannot login.
But if your application has been denied, and you didn't receive a manual confirmation from the l.w. admins that it's been now approved, it's still denied. I don't know why people suggested to try again.
- I thought LW was trying to be some kind of big trusty default instance, what are the reasons they deny people? They can't scale further?
  
  big trusty default instance
  They sure are trying to be one. But I don't want people to think that there is a default instance for every platform in the fediverse. It's destroying the decentralization we have. I abandoned my 2 year old LW account last year and I only occassionally check in to see if I got any reports from !asklemmy@lemmy.world or not.
- I don’t know why people suggested to try again.
  When software devs do user experience studies, they ask the end users to "think aloud" (while doing something) or "tell us why you did that" (after the fact). So I agree with your comment, but in the spirit of a user experience study...
  although a message said "registration application denied", when I re-tried logging in I also got a message saying something like "too many users try again later". So I thought it might just be a server glitch or overload or something
  the "confirm your email" message, and the fact that https://lemmy.world/u/sergio had been created, suggested that my account had in fact been created
  I am not actually a bot or a spammer so I didn't see any reason why I should be rejected. I didn't want to give up just because I saw one "denied" message as part of the confusing experience. There wasn't much downside to just trying again a day later. (except I felt a bit of apprehension and it was kind of a downer when it didn't work again)
  
  I get where you're coming from, but this sort of qa should be done in coordination with the service provider to work well.

Just don't use lemmy.world I've seen lots of people having issues signing up with them, and they're overpopulated anyways

Don't know if it will help but I had an issue with piefed where my username had capital letters in it and apparently the system did not like that.

@MrKaplan@lemmy.world ?
- Hello @Sergio@slrpnk.net,
  our registration application system is completely automated and we're making it very clear on our signup page what text you need to provide in order for your application to be approved.
  Additionally, you should have received an email about your registration being rejected within a minute of verifying your email. Unfortunately your application fell within a window of these notifications being broken on our end, as we had to fix some stuff following our recent Lemmy update. Other users will generally receive this notification when their application is rejected.
  As you explained why you'd want to sign up on lemmy.world rather than entering the required text your application had been denied. Our application processing system is also purging accounts from the database when the application gets rejected, so the username is available again and you'll be able to sign up again with the same name.
  
  Unfortunately your application fell within a window of these notifications being broken on our end, as we had to fix some stuff following our recent Lemmy update.
  In the future, could signups be temporarily closed during these periods, or is it too difficult to anticipate when such a period might be?
  
  Oooh, that makes sense.... thanks for the info, fam!

I personally am abandoning my l.w. account.
from a content discovery and interaction aspect, lemmy.world has its fair share of federation fights. this would mean you wouldn't see content from instances that defederated them, nor will users from those instances see yours
and from the aspect of the software of Lemmy itself, it's not up to date. I personally am not sure what that entails, but it's probably not good
- Huh? I thought lemmy.world just had an update like Sunday.
  
  that's good news then. but it wasn't when I looked way back idk 3 weeks ago?
  that's not the main reason I wanted to jump ship though. it's the defederation that pushes me to try other lemmy and even mbin instances.

Option C: use the PC version to sign up and then use an easy mode Reddit-clone app, scroll the main feed and block all the communities you’re not interested in.
- Didn't have any problems with my lemm.ee account so far, and i can fetch all federal communities.
  What apps are there? I'm using Jerboa, and I'm very happy with it, but i want to know any alternatives.
  
  you can check out this community for a bunch of apps !lemmyapps@lemmy.world
  or at https://join-lemmy.org/apps they also list apps for web browser (front ends), android and iOS.
- Yeah, I should have mentioned I'm using the default PC web interface. (If this was a real user experience study there'd be a section with the versions of everything used.)

Yeah I've been on Lemmy for over a year and I have no idea how it works or how I even set it up in the first place. I use it on mobile and decided to try browsing it on my desktop but had no idea how to log in. What's my instance? Why does it seem like I have separate logins on multiple instances?Which user/password do I use?
Oh, and trying to submit things on mobile is impossible as well. I don't have permission to submit to some community because it's on another instance? I can't just, ya know, federate my existing login session? Well fuck me for trying, I guess.
I gave up and just went back to old.reddit.com. Reddit on PC, Lemmy on mobile.
- You need to access communities from the instance your account is on. Your instance is https://lemmy.one/ - < this is the website you need to use to access Lemmy. If you wish to use another instance, e.g https://lemm.ee/ you'd need to make a new account there.
  If you wanted to submit a post in this community for example, you'd navigate to https://lemmy.one/c/fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com - note the end of the url. community_name@instance_community_is_located_on
- What’s my instance?
  https://lemmy.one/ , same credentials as mobile
  Why does it seem like I have separate logins on multiple instances?
  You don't, there's a pinned post on !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca to help you about this as well as your other questions

I don't know whether it is due technical issues or the admins reject your registration.
I would go to another instace. Fortunately there is not one instance.
- You're advising a technical solution to a technical person.
  OP's not looking for a solution to his specific problem, he's showing that as a technical person he's faced with an issue he's unsure how to resolve - now imagine the average person facing this problem.
  OP's right - the sign-up process is clumsy and problematic on any instance for the average user.
  
  Yeah, maybe I should re-emphasize in the post that this is a "user experience" kind of post. Personally I have lots of hardware, OSes, and phones laying around (and an existing lemmy account!) so I'll figure it out eventually.
  FWIW a lot of companies don't do user experience studies. Apple is famous for it, but even big places like Google and Microsoft often skip on this.
  
  Yep the learning curve from logging in to finding communities took about 45 minutes or so for me.
  I can see that being a turn off for many users

Stop using Reddit 2.0, I mean lemmy.world
Terrible instance.

30 comments