- cross-posted to:
- mastodon@lemmy.ml
I’ve seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy’s way. Combine this with server/instance selection analysis paralysis, and you get my point.
The linked mastodon blog post sums up my thoughts, but the TLDR is essentially this:
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don’t let dreams of decentralization interfere with the greater goal of achieving the network effect.
We should all be telling people to go to lemmy.ml and sign up. The devs should be too, and they should rethink/remove the questions and waiting period. Hell, just put a captcha. Discussions about servers and analogies to email as an example of federated service we all already use is a waste of breath. We shouldn’t have barriers to entry.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I’ve just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It’s just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn’t ready yet, so desktop only.
https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin
I think this might be the better recommendation for newbies at the moment.
Didn’t seem so hard to me. Pick an instance, fill out the sign-up form, click a link in an email, and that’s that. It was actually significantly easier than usual because it didn’t require me to spend an hour reading legalese.
Onboarding Lemmy wasn’t awful either, but the “why do you want to be here” question was rather intimidating, as if to say I’m not welcome here until I prove my worth. The last thing we should do is give people the impression this is an exclusive club. We’re trying to filter out toxic people, not shy or humble people.
Note that I onboarded using my desktop. If there are any issues with onboarding on a phone, I wouldn’t know.