For those that weren’t there for the mastadon growth, it came is several waves. the reddit blackout begins tomorrow 6/12. Are the Lemmy sysadmins expecting a second wave of growth? If so how big?
Not sure, but I hope hundreds of thousands come in. Realistically, I doubt it will be that many, and idk if the instances could handle that kind of load even if it did happen.
But we can hope all the above!
The join page is definitely the issue. I had already joined lemmy.ml before I read that they were encouraging people to join other instances. Perhaps I should have read the page more closely, but if it was that big of an issue, make the warning/request more prevalent.
I’ve seen this suggested elsewhere but a centralized “sign up wizard” website would be really useful for new users. Something that holds your hand through the process and explains each step. It could have you pick an instance by showing the list of federated ones, and would then hand you off to that website for the actual sign up process.
I’m wondering if there’s anything motivated users of Lemmy can do to help out and make the transition for folks easy.
I want Lemmy to succeed and fir people trying it out to like it and stay.
I think having the defaults set to global instead of local when searching will make it easier for new users to find communities and only show a few lemmy instances that are good to show for new users, the biggest complaint is that lemmy ( and all federated services ) are too complicated trying to find a instance.
I think there is, and that is just do stuff! Upvote, comment, engage, submit posts. Obviously helping confused individuals directly if you see them also helps, but simply using the service and engaging with it will ensure that more people join, and stick around when they see something worth returning for.
Most of the tech users that ditched Twitter for Mastadon when 3rd party apps were killed actually stayed, and still engage with that service. The other communities I followed on Twitter didn’t, and that’s because they joined a ghost town when it came to their interests. Lemmy is far behind where Mastadon was then in terms of overall capability and client options, so this is a big hurdle to overcome. Everyone has a part to play :)
Other than creating content and interactions, one thing I’ve been trying to do is make sure to search up and federate any cool new remote communities I come across, even if they’re not something I care to subscribe to myself.
In theory that makes it slightly easier for other people joining my instance to find things when they search, because I feel like the weird “search and get no results but then wait 15 seconds and it’ll change to pull results” behaviour is a major source of confusion for new people atm.
How do you “federate” a community, I like this idea and would like to help, but I don’t know how! :-)
One thing that will likely be a huge dealbreaker is the spam-stopping wait period that many instances are using, but this could be getting used to drive new users to low-sub instances. While the tactic is understandable, many will likely be turned off by it.
Personally, I think the learning curve is part of wanting to use Lemmy, and even Linux has been abstracted enough that it can be used by just about anyone now.
I agree actually, when I was joining Lemmy a few days ago I looked at a few instances and they all asked me to write a blurb why I wanted to join that instance. I get it and I think that’s a good way of curating a community but I wanted to switch to Lemmy right then, not in a few days when my application is reviewed.
I ended up on sh.itjust.works which didn’t ask for any of that and just gave me an account, but I think quite a few people like me won’t want to wait until their application is approved.
Agreed, although my application to Lemmy.world was approved inside about 5 minutes. However new users won’t know that, and you’re right it could definitely be off-putting IMO.
i dont think the wave has stopped yet
I predict a very small number sticking around though. Layouts and instances are a little too unintuitive.
Reddit was unintuitive to start as well, and had a pretty rough UI in its starting years but those are just growing pains and hopefully we will see the same with Lemmy as well.
I hope that the ones sticking up are attracted to the idea, grossed out by the unintuitiveness, competent and willing to contribute. Then hopefully it’ll get better.
In any federation based solution, the big issue is will server owners be able to afford the surge in popularity.
