Reddit Migration

Two examples:

when you're browsing your follows on mastodon, and click on their follows, the list is not true to their follows (because your server hasn't fetched them).

and, when you first subscribe to someone's posts, you can't see older posts (say they've got 100, but you see zero).

I'm aware that there are technical reasons (you weren't subscribed), and open source reasons (nobody has the time to volunteer to fix it), but these are insufficient to help an anxious new user who's undecided about the platform.

That's only Mastodon, which has 7 years of refinement. Don't get me started on the litany of federation-related edge cases of Lemmy's UX failings.

I get both sides. Just the act of having to create a new login/password is too much for many who've gotten used to signing in with their Facebook or Google accounts and they want things to be as friction free as possible and I think that's fair enough. Personally I really enjoyed the process of learning about the Fediverse, figuring out how Lemmy works and understanding its strengths and limitations. But that's not most people. I know one redditor I tried to describe it to said they gave up after the first sentence. If I really simplified it they will understand but in doing so you might misslead them about the world of instances, how they can all differ slightly, how they may or may not fully interact with each other. Me, I'm like holy crap! I'm on this tiny little instance in a corner of the world and I can not only read but like, comment and subscribe to all these other much bigger communities!? Let alone interact with kbin.social which isn't even Lemmy at all!? It just works! But I'm also very tollerant of times when things may not work as expected, but I don't care, because at least it's not reddit ;-)

Back in my day we had to walk uphill both ways to sign up for BBS forums. Kids these days.

Eh, fuck 'em. There's only so much you can do, and it sounds like you've made it very easy. Move on and spend your time on those who are out of the loop but of a growth mindset. Who do you really want here anyway?

Anyone got a good tutorial to share for folks who want to jump?

Seriously, the Internet was better before it was so accessible. I might sound arrogant, but I don't care. I want people here who actually have half a clue about how to operate a computer. If someone doesn't even know how to sign up to a website and rage quits, I'm quite glad they aren't here.

My hot take: I'm okay with a barrier to entry (right now).

Getting setup on the fediverse isn't necessarily a super simple process and there is a bit of learning curve for how it works.

That's okay. I actually like it. Here's why.

It means the people here want to be here. It means the people here understand what it is and more importantly what it isn't. It's not a reddit clone. It's not even old school forums. It's this.

And "this" isn't even it's final form. I fully expect for the fediverse to evolve over the next few months and years. As a community develops and the technology is refined, I am sure it will all get simpler as we knock off the rough edges.

In the mean time, this tiny barrier to entry keeps a lot of the whiners and naysayers away. It keeps people that only want a reddit clone, away. If you want reddit, use reddit. It's not going anywhere anytime soon.

It's a balancing act, because we don't want to turn so many people away that we can't build a reasonable community, but you also don't want a bad copy of a system people are leaving.