this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Unfortunately according to my own experience that page is not exactly welcoming for new users. It's just not very clear what it is all about and confusing. The community list page on the other hand is easy to understand and the "Subscribers" stat is convincing.
A lot of people feel the same way. The good news is that there is work underway to imporve https://join-lemmy.org as we speak, hopefully new users will start seeing some improvements there soon!
I wosh we had an alternative site together, so as to avoid newcomers immediately seeing a) lemmygrad and b) that one NSFW instance that bills itself as "shota/loli/cub friendly". That turns people away, understandably, especially because it's not clear from the outset how easy you can avoid interacting with those instances at all, or that the rules and culture between instances can be totally different.
Downfall to the fediverse: You know what your friends see when they look into this stuff? Oh, wow, they use that site that has the pedos on it.
It's a serious issue. Most people don't and won't understand the decentralized thing. When these come to light in the media, and stuff like this ALWAYS comes to light in the media, someone is gonna say at some point "Hey didn't pigeon suggest that site to me once?"
I like using this as an intro guide:
https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-find-subreddits-communities/
Also I generally point people to lemmy.world if you want unrestricted access to everything, and beehaw if you want a tighter, more curated and family friendly experience.
I agree, that web page is awful and even as a generally tech-savvy person it steered me away from Lemmy. Only joined kbin after reddit banned it and I had a clear "join this thing, reddit doesn’t like it" sign.
While the ideal may be spreading users out across instances and federating, I think the fact is that reddit refugees probably just want to be directed to something popular they can join and get content from without hassle.