I think part of the issue is trying to add subs from other instances.
Reddit Migration
### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
You way overestimate the tech literacy of the average Joe or Susie.
That seems to be what basically every person is doing lately. They act like there is no difference between Lemmy and Reddit. Sure, signing up is easy. But understanding subscriptions is a different situation entirely.
That’s why I’m asking about this. What am I missing here that’s supposed to be making it difficult?
How to find the established community you want to be involved in.
And humblebragging.
The only real issue I have is that searching for communities I know exist on other instances often fails, and opening them in their home instances doesn't offer a subscribe button to my host instance.
“Magazine” is the biggest offender here. That’s a very unintuitive term.
Lmao what? For people born after 2010 maybe? Magazines have been a thing for decades and anyone over 20 is going to associate "magazine" with "series of articles about a topic"
I think the implication is from the perspective of a long-time reddit user. I've already gotten used to posting "articles" in "magazines" and the nomenclature has clicked a little, but I certainly was pretty confused about it for a day coming hot off of reddit. For example, something like "community" and "post" could have been more fool-proof, albeit less interesting and unique.
I think that "magazine" is fine. As is "sublemmy". But I kind of am not enthusiastic about having two different words for them, unless there are future plans for them to act very differently.
From a user standpoint, unless he's talking about the internals of the server involved, there isn't really a difference. Saying "sublemmy/magazine" is just verbose and annoying. I'm on Kevin, but I want to be able to refer to magazines/sublemmies in a way approachable to all the people reading the content.
I do get ppl saying its complicated. A lot of people dont know much about servers just as a start? (Not that you really have to to use kbin or lemmy.) or know anything about federation or what it mean in this sense. If you ask them what is meant by instance, most people saying so probably wouldn't understand that in this sense even if English's their maternal language. Not even that those people arent smart, just like just because you dont understand a foreign language doesnt mean youre not smart: this is just an area they dont know about.
I think some people find it strange that people are confused, because maybe they dont often talk with people who arent as familiar with technology, or more used to being on 'tech' related parts of the internet where some people would understand these. It seems this way bc the community of kbin seems to be more into technology, like i seen programmer humor posts get popular a lot, and discussions about linux, and the technology magazine, and stuff like that.
If so i can see why someone being confused would be surprising. But know that: a lot of people probably wouldnt join other social media either if it was more user-driven (in terms of setup? If thats phrased right?) which is why stuff gets more simplified on official websites and app. Is important to remember that many people (even some my own age!) dont have any context for all of this stuff they would need to deal with and decide in order to use Kbin/Lemmy - dont know what is an instance. What is federation. Defederation. I would say its easy to understand once you try, but i know i speak for myself who already has some knowledge and interest about technology and learn fast. And not everyone even wants to use something that required them to figure it out as they go.
It took me a little while to figure out reddit. After migrating from reddit I actually found it easier to pickup this time around. I am sure some people might have some trouble but as long as we make this place welcoming and helpful for new users asking questions people will want to migrate.
In terms of people who didn't fully understand the fediverse, there are two kinds of people:
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those who want to fully get their head around it first so they can make optimal decisions
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those who are happy to just jump in and learn by doing
Consider that slight entry barrier to be a feature. Do you really want the Fediverse experience to be a 100% copy of Reddit?
Any website that doesn't have a simple sign up in two steps (username/email, password) and everything clearly explained to them like a 5 year old will receive tons of complaints about being confusing. It's just the internet
is Lemmy buggy as heck? Absolutely.
dunno, but this is the main reason I juggle between Lemmy and Kbin. Lemmy is more intuitive/similar to reddit, but it's buggy and has an ugly UI. Kbin has a better UI and less buggy, but has some questionable design
I asked someone who wrote a huge reddit post about it, and they responded with "idk, I just looked at it and didn't get it."
I think people are just resistant to change, and only want a system that they think is 100% a clone. Honestly, IDK how you look at lemmy and don't think it looks like reddit, but I guess it is just that browse local is the default option. I guess browse all should be the the default for now, but I actually like browsing by local first to see what is going on in my local instance before looking at the rest of the fediverse.