Definitely not critical. As you said, familiarity can be quite important in a genus-differentia kind of way. For me it definitely was: being familiar to Reddit I could think that Lemmy is just like it but better. Same with Twitter and Mastodon.

Good post, but still raises the issue to a new level: above lemmy, there’s another choice: which flavor of the fediverse do I want? twitter-like ? reddit-like ? etc

This worked :)

The point is there is no clear path to use lemmy… Just because there are so many options.

Just like going for the first time to a Starbucks and asking for a coffee. Some people just want a coffee… Not the whole headache of choosing.

In this regard, probably a paragraph saying :“here, try this server - it’s fast because it’s not overcrowded (or any other reason, if any), and try this client - find it on your favourite app store”

This offers the user a baseline for his experience. After he gets the hang of it, when he feels prepared to try the other options, he can do it at his own pace. Not needing to figure out too many things before even trying.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really hoping this will overthrow proprietary platforms, but right now this is my two cents on onboarding. Cheers

And when you get there, you’re overwhelmed with options:

Should I use this server? Or this one? What are the differences? Does it matter? Should I create an account on each of the servers I think I’d like? After all… I can… but is this how it’s supposed to be used?

Well, what is each meant to represent? Should communities be constructed around the concept of topics, or should there be a server for each topic?

And please don’t use any variant of “everybody can do it whichever they want”, because this just avoids the responsibility of offering a personal answer and shifts it to them.

Personally I think the first (communities=topics)., while servers should provide voluntary redundancy for each other in case one of the servers has an inconvenient change of policies or circumstances for the users.

But I am not on the creative team of Lemmy, so my vision might differ from theirs. Also, I’m willing to change my belief if more solid arguments are presented.

This only states the multiple ways of how one can use lemmy, but neither envisions how one should use it. And vision is important for the non technical user, especially when exploring new grounds, because vision makes him go further. Not infinite overwhelming possibilities, technicalities and potential headaches. It’s simple or it’s complicated.

Actually, what they got in return were partners that were democratic and aligned in principles and values. Now the US has diverged from democratic values in favour of authoritarian ones. In consequence, the US starts attacking democracies and befriends other authoritarian regimes to which they aspire to.

Just scroll to minute 11 and 25th second, and it’s the guy standing behind you on the screen

This seems to cine around to the topic of merging communities across servers

I was thinking this cold prove necessary in the context of different servers policies. Got example, if my server would change policies to something I am not willing to agree, then it would be nice to migrate to another server

Eternity Android client allows grouping communities into a multi community, but it only helps on getting consolidated feed, not necessarily reaching the same people

Is there a way to move myself as an user from one server to another?

What’s the vision for using lemmy? User should create an account on one server, and use all? Or should create users on multiple servers? The first one seems like the way to go, but it wasn’t quite clear for me when I signed up

This should be among the first priorities. It would really help kick things off. Not only niche communities, but bigger ones as well. They represent topics of interest. I think I’ve seen a thing like macro community in one of the clients?! Could that be it?

Hello dumb! I’m dad

Isn’t Reddit or Lemmy pretty much just a structured forum?