Exactly. To me, all this talk of whether Lemmy will replace Reddit is a distraction. 90% of what is on Reddit is (in my opinion) crap, I would be happy if it stayed on Reddit or went somewhere else entirely. All I want to know is whether Lemmy can reach a critical mass where there is enough going on there that it's worth visiting.
> 90% of what is on Reddit is (in my opinion) crap
And most people would likely agree with you, however they'll have labelled a different 90% as the crap part. It's the bleed-over between those different parts that makes Reddit's huge user population effective at keeping up momentum even in smaller backwater subreddits. (e.g. "I'm already here reading r/funny, so I happen to see when occasional new stuff gets posted on r/obscurethingnobodycaresaboutbutme too")
> all this talk of whether Lemmy will replace Reddit is a distraction
The question is whether it can become a default place to build an online community. Currently, the answer is no unless you have extremely strong ideological coherence that will get your users through the Kafkaesque onboarding process.
Beehaw.org has a difficult onboarding process by design. And I welcome their experimentation.
But Lemmy.world is... fine-ish? The main issue is the bugs. If the sending of the confirm email fails, the website spins forever without an error. (And it looks like so many "confirm emails' were sent, that Lemmy.world was getting blocked for spam by its provider).
If you have an underscore in your username, the signup process hangs and spins forever.
If your password is longer than 20 characters or so, the signup process hangs and spins forever.
Etc. etc. Its not the best process and these bugs need to be fixed. But if you're like me (who created at the right time with a typical password and typical username), you probably get in to https://lemmy.world just fine.
> Beehaw.org has a difficult onboarding process by design
Beehaw fine. It was deliberate and up front about its gating, and they processed within a day or two, which again is fine because that’s what they said they’d need. (There are still random login bugs and the content leaves much to desire.) The process of getting one’s head around why a server must be selected, what trade offs that entails and how to make a decision about it is almost proudly dismissed by the Lemmy community, which is frustrating.
> The process of getting one’s head around why a server must be selected, what trade offs that entails and how to make a decision about it is almost proudly dismissed by the Lemmy community, which is frustrating.
I agree.
Lemmy community seems to be "toxicly positive". They ignore the server choice because they are worried that informing users about servers will make them leave for other webpages.
It'd be more appropriate if they were just honest about the Fediverse. Fediverse puts server-administrators front-and-center. Choosing a server means trusting the local administrators: not just for your username, but with your posts (ie: delivering them), your communities you build on that server, and your words.
We know that on Reddit, the admins/moderators can modify your words, shadowban you and other such behaviors. And I expect these tools to be employed in Lemmy (not that I know how to use them yet, but there's nothing stopping a few PostgreSQL scripts from accomplishing effective shadowbans or other such behaviors).
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For now, I chalk it up to the various community members feeling the need to grow and being naive. Its something I'm keeping an eye on, I'm trying to find 'the adults' in the community and trying to evaluate them myself.
But the only way to do that is to join up and make test posts / test discussions.
I don't know that I'd call it kafka-esque but I think they make a good point about friction - the signup process also includes learning about this new thing, which is going to throw people.
Especially, I think, because there is a gulf between what the service intends to be and what people want it to be.
