Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?
To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
This brings up a good question: Do we really want everyone we can get?
On one hand, it’d help flesh out fledgling communities and keep threads and feeds more active.
On the other hand, the more people who come here, the more likely we are to see lower-effort, lower-value, and even counterproductive content and comments.
There’s probably some magic number, an adoption level where communities thrive but are not watered down. I have no idea what that is, though.
True. It would also mean more lurkers though, and lurkers up-voting and down-voting stuff adds to the perceived value of the content and makes the community feel “alive”, for a lack of a better word
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As someone who tried their damnedest to help make VOAT work and watched it die first from extremist trolls and then from inactivity… we don’t want EVERYONE we can get, but we do need a lot more than we have. We should have several 5000+ upvoted posts per hour, and we’re nowhere near that.