this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What did you find complicated about the onboarding?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Having to write a cover letter explaining why I'm a good fit for the instance.

It's not a difficult ask, but it's going to turn a vast majority of potential users away from the service.

I understand the need for it, but a typical user is going to be confused by:

  • Having to "sell" yourselves to some unknown individual, or group of individuals
  • Choosing an "instance", when most users have never heard of such a thing, and don't understand how a federated system operates
  • For the above: Understanding different instances and which one allows cross-instance posting
  • Simplicity. None of this is "simple" in terms of making a new account for a social media platform. This is unlike any mainstream platform out there.

Again, I understand the need for all this. But your average user, which Lemmy desperately needs more of if it wants to become the safe haven for Reddit refugees, is going to be incredibly frustrated and dissuaded by the whole process.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

All I put in my "cover letter" was "reddit refugee" and I got accepted on lemmy.ml, lemmy.one and beehaw.org, 2/3 with no email verification either. I don't think that it's hard to sign up here, it might just be unfamiliar to some people, who will hopefully grasp the simple concepts quickly.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys 3 points 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is just a "human test" to make it harder for people to register a lot of accounts or to programmatically register them.