Just noticed that unlike mastodons join page, lemmy doesn’t have a “join” or “create an account” button. It’d be nice to have one, it would be more straightforward to join.
Or perhaps there is a reason why it doesn’t exist?
I feel like with lemmy and how differently the instances are from eachother, it’s probably better to look around an instance and decide if it’s right for you before you join. I feel a lot of people go into any then get shocked when they inevitably break a rule and get banned.
I guess there’s a nice idea behind the process. But tbh, I don’t even remember what instance I joined. I tried joining a tech instance but my application was rejected … I’m really not that interested in applying like it’s a job or something. (Though I understand lots of IRL groups have application processes)
I have a PR out for this now. Keep in mind that we’re usually too busy developing to keep up with a lot of these posts, so its always better to create an issue for feature requests / bugs.
You can create an issue for this on the joinlemmy-site repo.
Don’t make it easier to join. Having a technical barrier to entry, even a minor one, helps keep the idiots that ruined Reddit out. History has shown, repeatedly, that when technology is easy for anyone to adopt, then every idiot imaginable will use it and drag down the average, and the interfaces tend to be dumbed down and constantly reinvented to enable said idiots easier access. Then you’re stuck with enshitification and “graphic design is my passion” feature and UI changes that nobody wants.
Lemmy has a huge onboarding problem. Instead of trying to make users learn about instances they should be able to join a default instance directly.
Yeah, this is one of the main problems impeding lemmy’s growth. Normies don’t care about “instances.”
Maybe there needs to be some rough IP geolocating to just pick one for them and redirect.
which default instance?
Preferable a smaller rotating "general’ instance such as zip or sdf to prevent the clustering around large instances.
A major issue is accounts are bound to instances. It would be amazing if there was a way to migrate accounts from one instance to another if a user so desires later on.
Another major issue is there are no real instances where the admins are not actively trying to enforce a certain political point of view from the top down which means there are no “real general instances”.
It should choose a general instance, based on region and if not possible to pinpoint by IP, it should be a curated list of instances of which it just chooses one by random.
