As a new user I would like to point out some issues I encountered getting off the ground with lemmy in the hopes that ironing these out will help the network welcome more users.
- join-lemmy.org is really hard to find without the "join". On startpage.com there is exactly 1 link related to the link aggregator software out of 10 pages. And that one links to the github. You're gonna lose a whole bunch of possible users on this hurdle.
- join-lemmy.org doesn't do what it says on the tin. The home page is almost exclusively dedicated to get people to self host. In terms of overall population these people are a rounding error. The focus of a site called "join lemmy" needs to be to get people to join lemmy. To that end: explain what it is then move them along
- picking an instance to join is not something the average user wants to do. They want to join LEMMY. They do not have the information to make an educated decision at this point.
- there should be a short list or wizard to guide them. language? country? nsfw content yes/no/maybe? Then give them a few recommendations for ACTIVE instances.
- there needs to be accounting for the fact that if they register on a non-NSFW instance they will not be able to consume NSFW content. This is an important information regardless of what you want, as picking the wrong one means you have to do it all over again. An appreciable number of users will just leave at that point.
- there should be an option for users to move all their contributions from one instance to another. There will inevitably be instances that go under. I don't know about others but I would like to be able to take my history with me if I'm forced (or decide) to move.
- The initial content offered to new users is often suboptimal. Firstly, it defaults to showing only the local communities, which is fine if you consider instances as their own ecosystem but horribly disappointing for someone looking for a reddit replacement. There should be an initial community selecton like on reddit. A few busy quality general interest slices (group of lemmings) to get people started and engaged. Maybe have each instance curate their own collection? Then default to that.
- figuring out which new community to subscribe is annoying. There are currently a LOT of duplicate communities with little to no content. In addition to subscriber stats there should be an activity stat.
- community groups and collectives could help in this regard. Say you're interested in TTRPGs. There are currently like half a dozen communities (slices).
- If a user could subscribe them into a larger (personal) group they could check on each of them in one go instead of visiting each individually
- The communities themselves could organize into "collectives" in a similar way as hashtags are born. These could be a very useful first point of contact for the corresponding interest.
- auto reload pushing new content in at the top is hugely annoying. we have refresh buttons for a reason.