For a sub that’s supposed to promote Reddit alternatives, there sure is a lot of pessimism on there. I see so many people dismissing Lemmy and kbin already for being too inaccessible, the UI is clunky, it’s hard to pick up etc and saying these sites will never take off. But why? Of course a platform in its infancy will have hurdles to overcome, and it takes time for devs to implement all the QOL features to make the site more intuitive. And when I see people trying to explain how Lemmy works, people just respond “Too complicated, I’m not reading all that etc.”
Do people expect a fully functional Reddit clone with all the same features to conveniently exist somewhere they can hop to? Do people not realise that Reddit itself was just as confusing when users migrated from Digg all those years ago? Do they not realise sites take time to mature?
RedditAlternatives is the only subreddit I still use because I want to help people make the jump, but it’s kinda disheartening seeing the attitudes there. Anyone has a more optimistic take on this?
These are all great points as well. There were a lot of different ways to interact with and use Reddit. I didn’t really live in any subs as much as use Reddit to see random things to pass my time and occasionally get help from certain subs.
Even in the knowledge based usage for me, i was usually around long enough to get the startup knowledge to waste time and money and storage space on a new hobby, ignore the subreddit that got me started as I explored the new hobby, then answer the questions that the old hands got tired of answering but I had fresh experience to answer without the exhaustion of answering the same questions over and over again.
I think Lemmy is going to hit my needs absolutely on target. I don’t think I’ll delete my Reddit account or blast my old comments, bit that depends somewhat on how spez continues to push forward. In many ways I’m glad I’m being pushed to try something new.
This is getting a lot longer than I thought I would go. I’ll wrap it up with saying I’m also noticing that without the critical mass of Reddit, the spamming, trolls, manipulation farms aren’t here yet that I’ve seen and it’s been a really refreshing experience to see the increased quality of posts and conversations. Even with shit posts and memes.
I feel like there’s a certain level of positivity and optimism here that I haven’t felt on Reddit for a long time. I hope we keep that.