this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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General Discussion
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Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
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- [email protected] - The opposite of the above, for more laidback chat!
- [email protected] - Into video games? Here's a place to discuss them!
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I agree conceptually, for sure. I don't want a monopoly on any community or topic/subject matter. I'm enjoying the old school forums vibe I'm getting from the federated nature of Lemmy.
I'm having trouble putting it into words, and I'm sure this has been repeatedly explained better elsewhere, but I'll try my best...
The initial encounter with Lemmy is challenging for new/potential users. So many options for instances and little in the way that explains how to find the best fit, why there are so many, what the differences are, and why you don't necessarily have to join the biggest ones. I ended up with lemmy.ml but probably would have started out with lemmy.world had I seen it because it has a bigger number.
Once you get through that barrier and want to start building your subs, it isn't obvious to a new user that there even are multiple variations of the same community. Everything I searched for was only on my instance and I was unimpressed by the amount of activity and options. My default feed was just a flood of old memes and other posts from 20 hours ago.
This is a particular issue to those who are migrating from reddit looking for comparable replacements. Let's just say I wanted World News. On my instance it was essentially dead. I thought that was just it. A bunch of dead or floundering communities.
Casual users would stop there and possibly move on from Lemmy after that. As a slightly less casual user I figured it out. But it still bugs me.
Which, honestly I don't think it should. I don't need Lemmy to be the next reddit- and I don't want it to be. I do want interesting people posting interesting content and having engaging discussions, and not all of those people are savvy enough to figure out how and where to sign up.
Right now it feels like the early early days of when I joined reddit 14 years ago, mixed with present-day vibes. I'm extremely excited to be here and hope it grows organically into a net-positive place for entertainment, education, and information. When we finally get the reddit monkey off our back we'll start to see Lemmy's community personality become its own thing.
Cheers and sorry for the wall of probably incomprehensible text