Comment on New to Lemmy. I have a couple of questions.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks agoIf LW admins really care about the fediverse, they probably should close their registrations for the time being, otherwise every newbie will start joining LW because it is the biggest instance out there.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
On the flipside, that also scares people away. They want to take part and immediately hit a barrier. The place where everyone mingles is closed off. They have to learn why that is and how the Fediverse is supposed to work, find some instance overview list and make a choice. Be angry for a short while until they understand the concept and realize it's for the better... I think that'd be detrimental to the cause. I rather live with the issues that come with big instances than with a complicate onboarding process. But I think people already complained about onboarding on the Fediverse in general. I think we need to solve that issue first and then we can go ahead and also add some mechanism to steer people towards a more even distribution. But I don't see anyone working on any of that in Lemmy.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Naturally. This is the fediverse, if newbies don’t want to understand how it works even a little bit, they shouldn’t be here.
And lemmy.world won’t shrink. I said “for the time being”, not forever. If LW keeps growing rapidly without giving other instances a chance, then it won’t be any different than Reddit.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
I don't think I agree. The big difference in total users and monthly active users tells me lots of people abandon their accounts. As long as that policy is in place, it'll naturally shrink because people leave and there aren't any new users anymore to replace them. The only question is at what rate that's going to happen.
And I also don't agree with people who don't understand the Fediverse shouldn't be here... People should be here because it's a nice place and they have a good time engaging here. The exact technology behind it shouldn't matter too much. If at all.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I never said “people who don’t understand”, I said “people who don’t want to understand”. I am satisfied as long as a newbie knows what the fediverse is, why it is here and what instances are. They are the basics, aren’t they?
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
There’s also no fix to the “onboarding problem”. That “problem” is the design of federation.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 weeks ago
Well, there are some proposals to change this. I'd say it's fixable by technology to some degree. For example instead of a sign up page that directly signs someone up with the specific instance, we could have a more general Fediverse signup page. Maybe ask the new user a few questions what they envision their instance to be. If they're more aligned with this set of rules or the other. If they want "free speech" or a place with more moderation and less argumentative people. And then make some suggestions.
Or instead of just signing them up with whatever instance they visited first, display a list of the current instance and 5 other random ones, shuffle them and make them deliberately click on one of them.
That'd all help. Of course it can't be solved 100%. But we could at least make an effort to do something about it.