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?
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:
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.
Ever since I read this blog post, The Indie Web for Everyone, I can’t stop thinking about this quote when thinking about fediverse:
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.
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