Can I just rant a little to you all?
I’ve tried numerous times to help people from reddit set up an account and get started on Kbin (and lemmy), but 4 out of 5 times people can’t seem to grasp the concept of registering an account and starting to use this platform. Even breaking it down into 2 steps, with direct links… They get angry, and then ragequit their attempt in a huff saying how it’s too fucking complicated and it will never take off because it’s so hard.
Ok, I get that the fediverse is complicated if you think deeply about all the interconnectivity and federation etc, but there is no reason you even have to think about any of it to create an account and get started. Like, at all.
It reminds me so much of my 70/y old mother-in-law not immediately knowing how to work a tv remote and shoving it at me after 1.5 seconds saying “here, I can’t figure this out”. When in reality all she had to do was press the fucking big red button…
I’m just so frustrated with people’s complete lack of ability to help themselves.
If the concept of federation is confusing or daunting why would having it be more visible help? Genuine question.
Sign up, browse stuff, comment on stuff, curate your feed by subbing, all the other details are just noise.
Caveat: Unless you’re on a small instance that isn’t aware of the communities you might want. But let’s face it, if the concept of federation is confusing you you probably didn’t join some micro instance hosted by your mate Joe.
Because otherwise you end up with multiple copies of communities all sharing the same name with no clear distinction. It also adds context to any comments that are discussing things like site bugs, or are using conventions common to other platforms like Mastodon that translate strangely to Kbin.
Also it’s just kinda cool seeing what servers other people are from.
Thing is. That’s no different to anything your average reddit migrator would have done? This sub about topic slow? boring? full of trolls? Search for another. Oh look, there’s this other one with the similar name, it’s got more people on it, I’ll sub to that too.
The literal only difference is that now the alternatives can have the same name*
*assuming you ignore the @instance.domain bit at the end.