Does federation have a bit of a learning curve? No doubt.

Is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.

But I don’t think that really justifies a lot of the comments I’m seeing in Reddit alternatives threads that it’s hard to figure out. The front page feed and sort options are very similar to Reddit. Searching for same-instance communities is not too difficult. Posting, commenting, and voting are all quite intuitive. What’s the problem?

Edit: I do think terminology is a bit of an issue. I can tell a lot of people don’t understand “instance” vs. “community” at first. “Magazine” is the biggest offender here. That’s a very unintuitive term.

  • Sota4077@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    It isn’t hard to sign up for. No one is saying that is the case. It gets confusing when people start talking about adding subscriptions from other instances and how you can copy and paste the link and subscribe. That right there is where 95% of the people on the internet stop caring.

    If the developers of Lemmy and the wider Fediverse ever get that fleshed out in an intuitive way I think popularity will go pretty fast.

    That and long term if there is a way for information to be collectively backed up so that if some owner shuts down an instance everything isn’t gone.

    • Zarxrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      What is this about having to copy and paste a link to find subscriptions from other instances? I literally just pull up the community browser and set it to “all” and then search.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Agreed. It still is a pain to follow subs on other instances, especially within Jeroba. I know you’re supposed to copy the !sub@instance into the search field, but it never comes up.

    • WhiteTiger@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      The first step is completely different from anything else you’ve ever done

      “Pick an instance to sign up for”

      This does not compute. What is an instance? Why do I have to pick? Which one should I pick? Compared to

      “Create an account at reddit.com” makes sense and is something everyone has done before.

      It doesn’t matter how simple the answers to those questions are, the fact that the very first step requires multiple explanations is huge, and will always be a barrier to entry.

      • RoboRay@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Even a low barrier to entry tends to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in discussions.

        So, I’m fine with people that can’t get past making a simple, almost irrelevant, decision as step 1 of gaining access… not gaining access.