Fediverse

I disagree that this is a concern. If you are already exaggerating about federation wars, chances are you already tried lemmy and know a good bit about selecting instances. The average user will not care as much as you do.

The average user will go to join-lemmy site, will not care at all about the different instances and likely choose the biggest one or first one they see. None of them will think "oh no this one is involved in federation wars" because thats not something you find out before knowing some about the fediverse.

Good keep those numb nuts away. Reddit sucks not only because of Spez and his greedy overlords, many of the users suck as well and I bet there is a big overlap on the Venn diagram between people who suck and people who think lemmy is confusing

Good UI (in my android app) is the reason I came to Lemmy.

When reddit was coming up, a big issue people had was it was too confusing with bad UI. People didn't know which subreddits to follow. Its very similar, theres just a whole other layer.

Just find a popular instance that is federated with similar instances. And making accounts are easy too, so just do it in two or three instances. Yeah it's a bit much compared to reddit, but it's very very easy.

Could there be an option for a sorting hat that could either: look at the redditor's post history and determine a good server for them or simply spin the wheel. Either way would get the lazies shit posting without them having to learn anything about fediverse. I know I would have just spun the wheel.

I think Lemmy needs a higher-level sign-up procedure that hides the complexity of the fediverse. This could be a webpage with a simple, clutter-free interface that handles picking and registering on an instance from a curated list semi-automatically, for example, by asking you 3-4 questions before giving you a suggested server that fits your responses (which you can change) and a button to register there. The procedure could also handle the occasional additional sign-up requirements that some instances have.

IMHO, 90% of users will never interact with the "federation" aspects of Lemmy after that, and they also don't need to. I personally don't feel like Lemmy being federated has much of an impact on my user experience day to day.

I tried to join Lemmy during the API debacle, but then it asked me to choose a server. It didn't explain what that meant or how it would affect me. I could read a long, confusing explanation of it elsewhere, but that illuminated nothing. So I gave up.

Eventually I tried again and just chose lemmy.world, since it was the largest. After that it was smooth sailing, and I like Lemmy a lot more than reddit. It turns out it didn't even really matter which server I chose. (Although now I see some comments from people saying there's something wrong with lemmy.world.)

You just need to hold the new user's hand a little. Anyone who has ever designed a UI for an office environment would know immediately that the server question is going to be an impenetrable wall for many users.

If you mention Lemmy, point someone towards a specific instance so it's not so much of a shock. Then they can slowly learn about what it is.

Uh yeah. I’ve got no clue how to find new communities? Instances? Groups? Whatever the hell the equivalent of a subreddit is called. It’s not user friendly at all.

LEMMY IS FUN PLEASE

imo this friction will erode as larger instances come into play; people will join a large, main instance without even knowing of the others, and-- if they have a problem with the instance they joined-- they'll find they can easily jump ship there.