Yes. I still don’t quite understand how moderating works with federation (and critically, defederation). The advice of “Pick an instance that aligns with your values” is the most WTF advice I’ve ever seen when signing up for a site. Even worse is the conflicting advice that it didn’t matter since they all talk to each other, then followed by a warning that you have to choose an instance that will talk to your communities.
As bad as it was, at least the advice of “Go to lemmy.ml and sign up” was simple and direct, and most people could follow that without getting overwhelmed or confused
Picking an instance that aligns with your values is fair enough – except that if you’re just joining for the first time then you probably have no idea what values each instance has; or even what kind of values you might be looking for; or how you might find out; or whether they are big or small; or reliable long-term instances or throw-away hobby projects.
… Like, most of what you need to know to make an informed choice only is revealed after you start using it - i.e. after you’ve already made the choice.
I’ve heard a suggestion of having a kind of ‘newbie instance’, where you just join by default to get a sense of what’s going on; and then later choose an instance that suits you. That would make it easier to make an informed choice later; but also probably be even more confusing - since you’d still be thinking about instances and stuff, and also that you have to move sometime… it probably creates more problems than it solves.
The most confusing part was getting started, especially at the beginning when no one really was able to give good advice. Once I figured out where to start and how to pick an instance (literally randomly) I explored around. A few days later I ran across someone talking about kbin and how it may see more than some Lemmys, so I searched it out (had to really dig to find it) and ends up that’s where I’ve “lived” since then. But I have my Lemmy account in case something goes wrong with kbin or Lemmy just ends up being a better application down the road. That’s the biggest advantage I see, you can always go to a different place if the one you’re at is a problem, the only think you lose is setting things up and maybe some connections you might make (although if account merging becomes a thing later on then it won’t be an issue at all).
Yes. I still don’t quite understand how moderating works with federation (and critically, defederation). The advice of “Pick an instance that aligns with your values” is the most WTF advice I’ve ever seen when signing up for a site. Even worse is the conflicting advice that it didn’t matter since they all talk to each other, then followed by a warning that you have to choose an instance that will talk to your communities.
As bad as it was, at least the advice of “Go to lemmy.ml and sign up” was simple and direct, and most people could follow that without getting overwhelmed or confused
Picking an instance that aligns with your values is fair enough – except that if you’re just joining for the first time then you probably have no idea what values each instance has; or even what kind of values you might be looking for; or how you might find out; or whether they are big or small; or reliable long-term instances or throw-away hobby projects.
… Like, most of what you need to know to make an informed choice only is revealed after you start using it - i.e. after you’ve already made the choice.
I’ve heard a suggestion of having a kind of ‘newbie instance’, where you just join by default to get a sense of what’s going on; and then later choose an instance that suits you. That would make it easier to make an informed choice later; but also probably be even more confusing - since you’d still be thinking about instances and stuff, and also that you have to move sometime… it probably creates more problems than it solves.
The most confusing part was getting started, especially at the beginning when no one really was able to give good advice. Once I figured out where to start and how to pick an instance (literally randomly) I explored around. A few days later I ran across someone talking about kbin and how it may see more than some Lemmys, so I searched it out (had to really dig to find it) and ends up that’s where I’ve “lived” since then. But I have my Lemmy account in case something goes wrong with kbin or Lemmy just ends up being a better application down the road. That’s the biggest advantage I see, you can always go to a different place if the one you’re at is a problem, the only think you lose is setting things up and maybe some connections you might make (although if account merging becomes a thing later on then it won’t be an issue at all).