For those that weren’t there for the mastadon growth, it came is several waves. the reddit blackout begins tomorrow 6/12. Are the Lemmy sysadmins expecting a second wave of growth? If so how big?
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Not sure, but I hope hundreds of thousands come in. Realistically, I doubt it will be that many, and idk if the instances could handle that kind of load even if it did happen.
But we can hope all the above!
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The join page is definitely the issue. I had already joined lemmy.ml before I read that they were encouraging people to join other instances. Perhaps I should have read the page more closely, but if it was that big of an issue, make the warning/request more prevalent.
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I’ve seen this suggested elsewhere but a centralized “sign up wizard” website would be really useful for new users. Something that holds your hand through the process and explains each step. It could have you pick an instance by showing the list of federated ones, and would then hand you off to that website for the actual sign up process.
Yeah, we shouldn’t fear centralized solutions when this is the type of solution they are solving
I would go one step further, not just a wizard that will explain. But maybe some “magic” that asks you a few questions, perhaps political orientation and how is your point towards specific topics. And will automatically choose an instance for you. Of course, this should be just something for new users and one that don’t actually care much about the federation concept. This could lead to a much better distribution of users. Some manual “tagging” of instances have to be done, but should be achievable. Best in a native app and maybe as well on the website.
Because based on your orientation towards specific (ideological) topics, you most likely will have problems regarding the moderation and content policies.
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I’m wondering if there’s anything motivated users of Lemmy can do to help out and make the transition for folks easy.
I want Lemmy to succeed and fir people trying it out to like it and stay.
I think there is, and that is just do stuff! Upvote, comment, engage, submit posts. Obviously helping confused individuals directly if you see them also helps, but simply using the service and engaging with it will ensure that more people join, and stick around when they see something worth returning for.
Most of the tech users that ditched Twitter for Mastadon when 3rd party apps were killed actually stayed, and still engage with that service. The other communities I followed on Twitter didn’t, and that’s because they joined a ghost town when it came to their interests. Lemmy is far behind where Mastadon was then in terms of overall capability and client options, so this is a big hurdle to overcome. Everyone has a part to play :)
I think having the defaults set to global instead of local when searching will make it easier for new users to find communities and only show a few lemmy instances that are good to show for new users, the biggest complaint is that lemmy ( and all federated services ) are too complicated trying to find a instance.
Other than creating content and interactions, one thing I’ve been trying to do is make sure to search up and federate any cool new remote communities I come across, even if they’re not something I care to subscribe to myself.
In theory that makes it slightly easier for other people joining my instance to find things when they search, because I feel like the weird “search and get no results but then wait 15 seconds and it’ll change to pull results” behaviour is a major source of confusion for new people atm.
How do you “federate” a community, I like this idea and would like to help, but I don’t know how! :-)
Search for the community’s url in your instances’ search.
Oh right, as simple as that? Nice one, thank you :-)
@neblem Really? So you don’t need to actually do a follow like you would in the Microblogging apps to federate?
Interesting. Presumably it must do some kind of subscribe/follow in the background?
If you don’t subscribe, it’ll still appear in your instance’s search results and “communities” page. But new comments and posts won’t start syncing.
One thing that will likely be a huge dealbreaker is the spam-stopping wait period that many instances are using, but this could be getting used to drive new users to low-sub instances. While the tactic is understandable, many will likely be turned off by it.
Personally, I think the learning curve is part of wanting to use Lemmy, and even Linux has been abstracted enough that it can be used by just about anyone now.
I agree actually, when I was joining Lemmy a few days ago I looked at a few instances and they all asked me to write a burb why I wanted to join that instance. I get it and I think that’s a good way of curating a community but I wanted to switch to Lemmy right then, not in a few days when my application is reviewed.
I ended up on sh.itjust.works which didn’t ask for any of that and just gave me an account, but I think quite a few people like me won’t want to wait until their application is approved.
Agreed, although my application to Lemmy.world was approved inside about 5 minutes. However new users won’t know that, and you’re right it could definitely be off-putting IMO.
Doesn’t help that my confirmation for joining midwest.social got kicked to my spam folder.
Ugh, what a pain! Hopefully this sort of stuff is just teething problems though!
i dont think the wave has stopped yet
I predict a very small number sticking around though. Layouts and instances are a little too unintuitive.
I hope that the ones sticking up are attracted to the idea, grossed out by the unintuitiveness, competent and willing to contribute. Then hopefully it’ll get better.
I am going to try and stick with Lemmy as a new user. Hopefully others do as well
depends on the mods and admins for that one. Most don’t seem very accommodating to new users.
Still much easier to use than the garbage official Reddit app.
Reddit was unintuitive to start as well, and had a pretty rough UI in its starting years but those are just growing pains and hopefully we will see the same with Lemmy as well.
We should roll out a new v4 UI for them
The AMA has led some subreddits to not only go private early, but to also state that it would be indefinite until there were changes. /r/videos is the biggest one I know. So we’ll probably have another wave if it gets bad enough / there is admin intervention.
In any federation based solution, the big issue is will server owners be able to afford the surge in popularity.
The reddit blackout make me realize that I would be willing to pay for a monthly subscription in return for ad-free access and to support ongoing hosting and development.
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Indeed. Do we need to repost some donation links? I feel making that visible to new people will be key
Since there will probably be a big increase in users, some kind of “allocation” mechanism would be great. Lemmy.ml already told people to use other instances because they are not able to handle the load. However, I guess the main problem will be that people new to the Fediverse will just try to join the biggest site.
I was also thinking about running my own instance to help but I am not sure how the whole legal aspect of it works. Like, if I’m responsible for all the content posted on my server. At some point it would just become impossible to moderate.
I’ve shared similar thoughts and concerns, particularly regarding legal aspects. The one downside of the federated environment is the lack of cash to afford things like legal and cyber protection that larger enterprises can afford. Donations can only do so much I feel.
