Sounds like you want a few new reddit features when this site is more modeled on old reddit as many people prefer that.

> On post listings images thumbnails are too small, and the post has no direct link to the image.

How big would you want them to be? From a quick check they seem to be about the same size as new reddit’s “classic” mode, about 100px wide by 80px tall. The main difference is lemmy doesn’t crop the image to make it fix that box exactly.

And they do have a direct link, you should see it when hovering on the thumbnail, and middle clicking will open it in a new tab.

> I am not using old Reddit design. I like being able to open a post, and at the end close it (click to the side of it) and be back to the listing. On Lemmy I have to work with tabs or back navigation.

Those are pretty different UX philosophies and I doubt Lemmy would go for the former. Personally that’s one of the things I hate about new reddit. All I can say there is middle click is your friend for opening new tabs.

> Comment upvote and downvote should be to the side, like on posts. That’d be more obvious and visually consistent.

The idea there is that you have to actually read through the comment before providing your opinion on it.

> Dropdown for reply language selection is suboptimal to say the least.

How else would you accomplish that?

> Edit should be a primary toolbar action. Not hidden within a collapsed section.

Yeah probably.

> But then visual separation is missing again between the different types of actions.

What do you mean there? There’s decent spacing and different icons. I can’t think of anything else to do besides color.

(As a note: I contributed a bit to the functionality of post listings, but I’m not a lemmy dev)

I’m curious what your problems with the UI are? To me it’s pretty close to old reddit.

Looks interesting, but not very good UX wise. As a start it should delegate file picking to the system’s file manager instead of trying to do its own.