Comment on New to Lemmy. I have a couple of questions.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 months ago
Btw: It's good you signed up with a smaller instance. Ideally we want the users to spread across instances. So for example lemmy.world doesn't gain too much power (which it already has). So signing up on a different instance is a good thing for the Fediverse.
Asudox@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If 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 months 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 months 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 months 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 months ago
There’s also no fix to the “onboarding problem”. That “problem” is the design of federation.