Whenever barrier to entry is discussed for lemmy, and reducing confusion for different servers is brought up, all of the isolationist comments come out of the woodwork.
Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?
We have a platform that seems to be working and slowly growing. Shouldnt we want good defaults in place to give the best possible experience with minimal user effort?
I don’t think Lemmy is going to catch on. There’s too much friction every step of the way, at least in my experience with it. I still enjoy using Lemmy, but I can see why the majority of people won’t end up making the switch
What friction is there compared to besides picking an instance that works for the user?
Too often people say “There’s too much friction every step of the way” when it’s literally 1 extra step. That extra step might be a big pain itself, but don’t exaggerate and make it out like there’s more steps and pain than there really is
Isolationism occurs in any functioning group because people fear losing it, or being drown out by the new users. There’s also the small sect of people who seem to have the vocal attitude of “well I figured it out so you shouldn’t need my help,” which I’ve run into in varying forms.
I remember it happening on Reddit too. First when the great Digg migration occurred. And at various times later in some subs that shot to frontpage level popularity.
I think we should encourage migration. Lemmy isn’t going to shoot to Reddit levels overnight, we’re probably seeing a growth that will plateau, then shrink as people miss their niche communities (which we have too few active users to have thrive). If we’re very lucky the folks that stick around will grow Lemmy 10ish%. But every time we do that those niche communities become that much more viable and Lemmy in generally becomes more appealing lurkers.
Check out https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats&months=24
Monthly active users are actually pretty stable over the last 2 years, while posts and comments are steadily rising. While monthly active user growth would be better, I don’t think we’re in a bad spot right now.
Granted, all of Lemmy should strive to figure out how to get more people on the platform so more niche interests can hit critical mass. My point is that things are currently stable so the sky isn’t falling
Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?
How else do you use a service but register? How are people supposed to help others that can’t even register? Didn’t they register for reddit? How can they register for reddit, but somehow fail at registering for lemmy?
It’s like telling people “if you want to join lemmy, go to the join lemmy tent”. People go to the “join lemmy” tent, see sign-up booths with “general”, “LGBTQ”, “French”, “German”, “Italian”, “art”, … and just turn around going “OMG THIS IS SO COMPLICATED!!!11!1!!!1!”. Seriously, you tell me, what the hell can be done? Are they not self-filtering at that point? Do they want the server to be picked for them? They just open joinlemmy.org and are redirected to a random server or something? What if it’s directed to hexbear?
Is having the freedom of choice really so complicated? I do honestly do not understand…
Perhaps if the differences between servers could be codified into one place then someone could create a “quiz” to help users narrow in on servers that are a good fit. Like this website: https://www.dumbphones.org/dumbphone-quiz
They already have a quiz on join-lemmy.org. they ask for interest and language, and filter instances based on that.
Granted the filtering could be better, as the top one recommended to me was sopulu.xyz. I like the Fins, but I can’t speak any of the language. I had to scroll down about 10 to get to lemmy.world
In reality we should.
To many in lemmy are to happy to stay in their special little corner.
Its just confusing to me because lemmy is made to give anyone their preferred corner.
Asking for low barrier to the largest instances (entry points for new users) seems like a different ask than for professional lemmings to give up their platform.
Asking for low barrier to the largest instances
And what defines a low barrier for entry? I just checked the sign-up process for Lemmy.world, and it’s just email > password > agree to ToS > complete a Recapcha. All on one page. How is that any different to any corporate social media site?
The big hassle for signing up for Lemmy is finding an instance that matches your preferences, but I don’t see how that’s possible to get around. The only thing I can think of is streamlining join-lemmy.org to better direct people to a fitting server.
I know I’m being combatative here, but the thing that bugs me people keep parrotting the same complaints of “there’s too much friction” when that problem has pretty much been fixed. Please focus on the currently existing problems instead
I support it because I want more people to talk about shows with
Okay so how is there no nerdy subs for stuff like this?
There isn’t that few of us, I think we just keep getting drowned in politics.
Unfortunately, nerdy =/= tech literate, and it’s mainly tech literate people here at the moment. While there’s likely a higher concentration of nerds here, many fringe interests still haven’t hit critical mass
