Glitterkoe

Well, it's meant as an introductory paragraph. I think such a general paragraph should not go to those lengths since the vast majority won't be facing that issue. Most large instances that you would recommend for first timers are federated well enough that at least the civilised part of Lemmy is very accessible. I think that with:

• sensible defaults/suggestions
• easy to understand intro
• a help/link to a detailed article

you cover enough for users who can't be bothered, who want to be informed, and those who want to understand what's going on behind the scenes.

Yes, very much in favor of sensible defaults for first timers. Most frontends/apps support multiple accounts anyway so changing/adding more later on really shouldn't be a problem

I think they should stick to the "email provider" analogy. Whole paragraph should be something like:

The only thing you need to start interacting with the Fediverse is an account with one of the many providers, just like with email! Providers are freely available across the globe: pick one that suits your location or interests best! You can start browsing the content of nearly the entire Fediverse from whatever provider you choose. Don't worry, you can always create an account with a different provider later.

You could add a sentence or two about where to find sensible defaults or link an article that explains the more subtle things.

I think the emphasis on instances (and not naming them the more familiar providers) hinders adoption.

Someone's been binging 30Rock

But in the end it's just as with email: providers, spam filters and clients. Some providers have stricter spam filters (~federation), some might prefer another client. Has there been any significant reason to deviate from that terminology?

Meaningful discovery is a major issue in adoption, though. Pro: no search/discovery algorithm that serves some evil plan of world enshittification. Con: no search/discovery algorithm.

This would make it an instant favorite for me! I think most people would be fine with limited developer interaction as long as they can post/discuss issues, but would be more comfortable with the project being open source.

Thank you, very informative thread. I'm not accustomed to exploring the modlog, but this clears up some frustration. I'm grateful for the community having mods that care and can understand some issues just becoming to prevalent.

But what if the concept itself is the subject? Context: during someone's quest for a good OS keyboard, the FUTO one was falsely (or probably just naively) presented as an alternative. That comment thread was moderated to bits, but another user was interested enough to start a topic "Thoughts on FUTO keyboard?" which to me suggests they want to learn more about the matter and why it might or might not be OSI compliant. I dove into all mentioned articles in that thread to learn why and lo and behold the entire post was removed before I could thank the useful comment(er)s there. By removing that, other users can't benefit from that discussion if they weren't quick enough.

That was my first interaction, but I've noticed it for other topics as well.

That would be my last resort, indeed. I just want to try open discussion first.

Whoa, I found the discussion rather insightful 😕