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’m a reddit migrant, making a move on as many media platforms as possible away from corpo ones over to more decentralized or open source ones
Currently, it seems most Lemmy users are very technically inclined, there are a lot of software devs and sysadmins. I certainly don’t mind that, but I would love to see a more diverse demographic. I do feel like some people here seem to think that technical knowledge strongly correlates with the ability to have intelligent discussions, which I don’t.
Token math/systems-illiterate humanities person here, glad to be of service.
I can talk to computers but not people, we need all kinds here 🥳
I’m mechanically inclined, worked on cars profesionally for a few years, been in manufacturing for over ten years now. I can research enough to get around a linux terminal, but I learned compuers on apple IIe and commodore 64.
I’m something of a technophobe. If I can figure it out most should be able to.
How dare you assume we are all software devs or sys admins!!
… I am a software dev though hahaha ;p
Jokes aside, i agree. We are all humans and diversity is important so we dont alienate ourselves to the outside world and create echo chambers.As a sysadmin, I must second the claim that we are surely not all software devs and sysadmins.
…Right?
How dare you assume we are all software devs or sys admins!!
Yes indeed!
Lol same and you reminded me of this scene from men in black 3: https://youtu.be/GNOZhAc26I8
The more we can do to move people to the fediverse, thereby reducing corporate control, the better.
Subscribed.
This is probably in response to the thread here.
I know I said something that may be taken this way, and I stand by it so I’ll repeat it here:
There was something in retail I learned. There are people who will come in on sale days, and they will demand perfect customer service, and demand the lowest prices, and ask for more sales and bring coupons, all while talking about how they spend so much money there and that they’re so loyal. Then they’ll leave and you’ll never see them again
You can spend time and effort with them, the ones who only care about the cheapest place, or you can spend time with the customers who are actually there regularly. The ones who get to know your names, who are loyal, or enjoy a sale sure but also will be there even when there isn’t one.
I don’t want to attract users simply because reddit bad, and cater our experience for people who can’t bother to learn just the basic tenant of the fediverse. I want to cater our experiences for those who are here daily, and the ones who are genuinely interested. It’s the longer slower approach, but we’ll stay more true to our goals
I’m not afraid of saying that yes, that is my opinion. I’ve helped a lot of people migrate here away from Reddit, and I also hold the opinion that sign up is a bit daunting for users - but it’s not impossible and it’s gotten much easier than it was even just a few years ago.
What I see more often from people dipping their toes into the fediverse is constant complaining and whining. I’ve been through… 5-6 waves of new reddimigrants, and each time there are a quiet majority who pick up the fediverse and start running with it, and I’ve chatted with a good many of them. However, there’s also a major chunk of people who immediately start complaining. There isn’t feature parity, it’s more confusing, it’s less stable, why can’t it do video - all of which have been answered a thousand times and are constantly improving.
To me it’s exactly like the people shopping for sales. They come in, demand the absolute best service, complain that their niche communities aren’t thriving, and refuse to even stick around for a week to see what it’s like. If they aren’t willing to even do the bare minimum of finding out “What is an instance?” then they’re not going to stick around when we tell them that none of us can afford to host video, or that we will never have stability like Reddit, or this, or that. So I say let them leave. We came here to the fediverse because we want to build something different, and we know there are shortcomings that come with it.
If people want to join earnestly and help us build something here, curate small communities that we can be proud of, then I welcome them with open arms. If they can’t even bother to read the first two sentences on the joinlemmy page, well, you make your own success there.
I’ll never understand people who knowingly come to a currently bare-bones community (said with love!) and then complain that it’s bare-bones, and not bother to engage and help it grow.
Like no shit it’s nowhere near as huge as Reddit. Guess how content and engagement happen? By posting content and engaging! Ugh. /rant
I’ve quickly realized that many of them are people who wouldn’t participate anyway, they just want constant content for free and will never post or add to the conversation.
It’s well known that here on the fediverse there’s a much larger percentage of people who participate vs those on Reddit. We really do make our own way here. For others, they have to be willing to put in even just a little effort
Ever since I read this blog post, The Indie Web for Everyone, I can’t stop thinking about this quote when thinking about fediverse:
It’s like everyone has spent the last few years in a giant all-inclusive resort, screaming at each other for attention at the buffet. Now we’re moving into nice little bed-and-breakfast places, but we’re complaining because it takes slightly more effort to book a room, and the free WIFI isn’t as fast. Maybe its time to rethink some of these expectations. Maybe we need some of that early internet vibe back and be ok with smaller, closer communities. Maybe we can even get some of the fun back and start exploring again, instead of expecting everything to be automatically delivered to us in real time.
I think you are right, as much as fediverse is an alternative to the current social media, by its design it requires a completely different culture than how the general public has became used to interacting with the web - as a commodity.
This is amazing honestly, and should be repeated whenever someone comes in saying it’s not as great. It hits the nail on the head.
We should make one fully centralized mega instance and contain all the Redditors over there.
I thought that’s what world was supposed to be
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Diversity is paramount for social media, otherwise it becomes an echo chamber or worse.
Say what you will about the average redditor, but remember at a certain point they’re just the average person.
I mean, love me some Linux nerds and Germans as much as the rest of you but lemmy needs more.
Sure, but at the same time all of the worst comments I’ve seen have been from instances that were mainly linked to from reddit i.e. lemmy.world. Like, rage inducing misinformation. I prefer the much higher quality of discussions on lemmy which I would rarely see on reddit, but it is tiring seeing linux lotr star trek politics be 99.9% of the content / discussions…
In my opinion, everyone who is like “we only want more people who understand the fediverse” are stupid.
How are people supposed to learn and understand the fediverse if they don’t try it?
The more people we get off of corporate bullshit, the better.
☝️🤓
Everyone who is like “we only want more people who understand the fediverse”
areis stupid.Everyone are stupid❌Everyone is stupid ✅
Do not question my ability to England.
My England is very good quality.
I’ll admit that I don’t really understand it and I’ve been here since the start on various accounts over various instances. I don’t want to understand it, either.
I never got on with mastodon, nor really any of the other fediverse other than Lemmy. Simply because I never used their corporate counterparts. I also don’t really care about other instances within Lemmy. I hate the politics between them. Though I understand why it exists, it makes this place much less enjoyable due to the hostility.
I’m just here to keep me off Reddit because I’d been there so long that it became hard to walk away. Lemmy feeds that addiction, but it doesn’t provide the wealth of information that was readily available on modern Reddit. It feels a lot like old Reddit but with less rage comic and animal advice memes.
My comments in other threads are not intended to be isolationist, and when I reas others I fear you misconstrue many.
We are not saying “let them stay on Reddit and other corporate media”. We are saying “teach them, preach the benefit, and when they want to come, and are ready to come, they will.”
That is how you nurture a growing community, vs “make line go up.”
Who’s “we”? I don’t run a lemmy instance. I’m not against new users. I’m also not opposed to a lot of hard work and money going into making the experience better, but since I’m not providing either - who’s “we”?
I got my instance, but I’m not really sure how to handle it if people started living on it :-)
It’s all my hardware on a gigabit fiber link. Any advice greatly appreciated.
Lemmy.world users, and maybe other instances.
Its not about demanding new features from people who volunteer their time and money, its about the community being understood and maybe having some consesus about what we’d like to see because i do imagine the people who manage this instance care about what users want.
And its nice to talk about these things directly instead of having people speaking for the instance in a hundred conflicting ways in random posts.
Broader adoption of lemmy ensures more longevity, and likely better, more diverse development. Ignore the haters. Everyone was new here at some point and the last thing we should do is pull up the ladder behind us.
Change is good. Change is life. People who oppose change for its own sake are in favor of stagnation.
There are a LOT of haters though
Id like to see some polls tbh.
I’m one of those, and km not against it.
Seems like a pretty tiny minority you’re talking about.
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.
My only concern is this place is mostly friendly, as with Mastodon, I wouldn’t like that to change.
Having said that, I have never found lemmmygrad or Hexbear that bad.
I think as long as they don’t all come at once, but in a more staggered, September style, then we should be able to handle them with moderation.
Some more people are going to need to volunteer to mod, though.
Here is a tool to see federated status of instances.
Yeah agreed. Who am i cutting out by joining this instance
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.
I’m happy to stay in my weird little corner.
And thats totally valid and also i hate you
*snif*
I haven’t seen many comments not wanting people to join but more like, we are fine even if they don’t.
When I joined lemmy, I found it to be rather easy, so I never understood this barrier to entry.
I think it’s because someone just linked me to an instance, so I just went there and signed up like a regular site.
Ideally we want more users and for the fediverse to hit critical mass but idk how that can ever happen when corporate social media sites will always have a marketing budget.
So imo it’s not the difficulty, it’s like wondering why people keep paying for certain software when there are free alternatives, cause corporate software will always be more dumbed down.
Apparently redditors who are too dumb to register should stay on reddit?
This has come up on Mastodon as well. Mastodon has a default server, which is mastodon.social. It’s somewhat controversial. I think it’s helped adoption but it’s also putting the ecosystem more under Mastodon gGmbH’s thumb…which is not great. I myself am on mastodon.social because it seemed like a sane default. I’d have chosen differently if I knew what I know now.
I’m not as plugged into what the defaults are for Lemmy or if there even are any. I’m sure there is room for improvement, but it is fair to say there are a lot of people who willfully refuse to understand how federated software works and act like it’s so complicated that no mortal can possibly understand it.
Can we do a lot more to help people who wish to join decentralized social media? Yes, absolutely. Should we give people shit for acting like choosing a server is so hard and confusing that they’d rather be on fascist-aligned platforms? Also yes.
I literally picked my mastodon instance because it had a really high character limit. There was basically nothing differentiating Lemmy instances besides vague things like values or who they were defederated with.
You have media size limits with lemmy
Tbf, those two ate pretty big differences
I agree however when you are joining they aren’t exactly super informitive. Didn’t even learn you could find put that information until a week after I joined.
Check out !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com … people there are actively thinking about ways to help people migrate. To some extent also !lemmyapps@lemmy.world
I don’t think the barrier to entry is all that bad… if you install Jerboa or Boost you’re immediately presented with Lemmy content without worrying about creating an account… then you can get a feel for whether you like it or not.
It’s only a problem if someone is told they must choose a server and create an account to see Lemmy content at all. Ideally people would just be pointed to a server and told to select “Scaled” to get a sense of the smaller communities…
Thank you for posting it!
