The honest answer is that we're still trying to get The Agora running, and a backlog developed in the process. We are working on it, it's just going to take some time to sort through the old votes. We've been focused on cleaning up the process so we don't have this problem moving forward.

This feels like a gross overreaction to the situation. Sure, I don't love the fact that TD has a tiny presence here, but I fail to see how that should be cause to defed a large instance. Especially when that community just popped up recently, only came to anyone's attention in the last day or so, and (to my knowledge) hasn't caused any real trouble other than the Agora mod vote thread getting a bit spicy.

I'm sure it's something we'll need to address internally, but it's just one item on that list. And for now, it seems like a low priority item.

Consider this another vote for Ubuntu or any of its variants. They're beginner friendly, and established enough that you'll find plenty of resources written specifically for them. Linux Mint is another one I'd recommend for beginners, it's designed to "just work" out of the box and be an easy transition for Windows users.

Then it's just down to using it some. First and foremost, leave Windows installed until you're comfortable with whatever else you end up trying. Whether you partition, or make a bootable USB drive, or even just a VM, use some kind of temporary space for practice. The terminal is a lot less intimidating when you aren't learning in your main environment, you can go break things and see what happens.

So far, we have a captcha on account creation now and it seems to be working (from what I've seen, anyway)

It'll be a tough balancing act though. Relatively frictionless sign-up has been great for us, and anything that deals with bots will also affect that. Whatever else we may end up doing will need to be carefully considered.

I don't even really think about it, I just comment if I have something to say. At worst, nobody reads it and I was shouting into the void for a minute.

But the Lemmy userbase isn't massive yet, so those week+ old posts still see more engagement than you'd think.

Lemmings is fun, but it also has decades of being used as an insult to contend with. I do hope it catches on, but I'm trying to stick to the boring/generic "users" until then.

You'd think that, but we're solidly in the "second tier" of popularity. Last I looked we were something like 5th most active users, 8th most total users among instances that are making that data available.

It's a perfect use case for Patreon, PayPal, and similar services that are easier to set up than any of the things you mentioned. And the stability of fiat currency is a benefit when we're looking at covering operating costs.

Crypto is fine as an option, but it doesn't seem like a great fit for the primary.

A lot of current users are young enough that they don't have any experience with those things, centralized services are all they've ever really known. The simplicity and convenience can be a huge draw for a lot of people.

These things sort themselves out organically with some time, but it looks and feels messy until then.

The attempts at indefinite blackouts could have more impact than we expect, even if admins intervene and reopen them with new mods. They're doing this very publicly and with overwhelming support from their communities, so the "takeovers" would just make it look even worse for Reddit.

That will not change Reddit's mind about their plans, but it could convince more users to move on to greener pastures (Lemmy or otherwise)

It's a nice lighthearted nod to the exodus, and also a nod to the subforums that came before Reddit. Communities may be the "official" name and I try to use it when talking to others, but they'll always be sublemmys in my head.

It's crazy that there are so any users already, but not a surprise. This kind of transparency is exactly what a lot of us were looking for, and it's the recipe for a thriving community going forward.

The "no porn" thing may upset some folks, but it makes sense. Porn can be a moderation (and liability) minefield, especially opening the floodgates right away. It could be a net-benefit at some point in the future, but until then it's easy enough to create an account on another instance that wants to take the heat.

And for what it's worth regarding the financial side, donations feel like the way to go. With everything Reddit is doing right now, and other platforms have done in the past, "outside money" is becoming the harbinger of doom for online communities. Plenty of us would be happy to pitch in to keep it in house, especially when you post those sexy resource graphs that would show exactly where our money is going.