Ask Lemmy

Personally, I think the big thing is that we need a tool to see who is defederated from who. We don't want some poor sod somehow thinking that since they are leftist that Hexbear or Lemmygrad would be a good place for them.

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

It's easy to make statements, suggestions, and opinions, but it's really hard to actually do things in practice.

We all want more people here. The question is "How?", and simply saying "Make good defaults" is easier said than done (what are good defaults?) and "good defaults" is too simple of an answer to a very complex issue.

The conversation has been stuck here for over a year already as very few people are actually willing to develop and test these solutions which takes a lot of resources too.

The irony of the situation is that a lot of these solutions that have been suggested also need a central authority. For example, people have suggested creating a central hub where everyone can sign up to. Another example is creating a little quiz which begs the question "Who decides which instances goes there?".

The best effort I've seen in trying to implement a solution are Reddit mirrors which aren't well-received because nobody likes talking to bots.

As a personal anectode on "lowering the barrier of entry":

Since I started this instance (ani.social), my goal in mind was to make it very easy for users to sign up. There's no manual approval here (except when it's being flooded with trolls). Only email verification is needed -- just like every social media platform.

But sometimes when new users sign up, they comment or post on communities in instances that defederated from us.

Now I have to think about how I'm supposed to explain defederation to people, and the moment I do try to explain, that's a big turn off for many.

Trying to hide federation is impossible. The Fediverse demands a new kind of usership that understands how the network works.

Again, I'm not saying Lemmy can't improve (it can in a lot of ways), but it all boils down to developer resources and who's willing enough to test these solutions to see what works and what doesn't. On the other hand, it takes minimal effort to say "It needs to be better".

I miss being able to subscribe to posts. That's a good Reddit feature that I think we're missing.

We need to build a space for them to migrate into. Most of what I see on Lemmy is, frankly, whiny. If we want to grow we need to set a better example.

We just need to send them to a neutral instance and teach them the damn rules, especially about switching instances so they can go be in a place that fits their style. I vote Lemm.ee, as I agree with their “Administration, moderation, and federation policy”, and their site wide rules:

• No abusive language
• No bigotry
• No advertising
• No pornography

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...