I think I can understand how confusing this is for people. It took me a while to get used to Reddit originally, and now it is another different environment.

I am kind of running to here because I tried going to Discord and found myself getting rather confused with the many channels/servers (?). I am a tech-idiot. I just like to be in a place where I could see interesting threads to join and chat. I used to go to forums, but those forums slowly died after social media platforms came into prominence. I miss those friendly forum environment, and I struggle to keep afloat in a world that seemed to be moving a lot faster than my brain can follow. :(

>sign up for reddit just fine
>claims signing up for kbin.social is too hard
??? it’s the same process???

Honestly, I agree. I am not tech savvy, I am actually a pretty basic user of the internet. I just followed the link provided in a post, registered on Kbin, and started enjoying it.

Now, Lemmy did give me more trouble, and it’s the reason I am on Kbin, but even then it was more a matter of having to wait for confirmation. By the time it came I found I preferred Kbin “graphics” (don’t know how to explain it better).

Really can’t understand what people find so difficult. Even the fediverse isn’t a difficult concept: you sign up in one site, you can see posts from other sites too. Simple as that. There’s nothing complicated if you’re just an user and not someone who has to make it work

I don’t properly understand how all of this works.

But signing up to kbin on the weekend was just like signing up for anything else online.

And once I did, replying to posts - like this one - was more or less the same as replying on any other discussion forum.

So…I don’t get it, what’s so hard? Do you really need to understand the technical details underneath to start using this place?

That said, I would like to grasp this whole thing a little better. But I figured the best way to do that is to jump straight in and go from there! :)

A few weeks ago my neighbor (a nice older woman in her 60s) asked me to fix her TV. I walked into her living room and pushed the power button on the remote.

Sometimes it do be like that.

They are coming here because they are angry at Reddit. They are still angry when they get here. Being angry is not conducive to having a good experience of something new, especially if they didn’t want to leave Reddit in the first place. Kbin/Lemmy is being sold as a forced upgrade. It’s like if your word processor has all its icons moved around and put into a side bar that’s hidden until you know where to click. Why the fuck did they do that? We all hate that sort of shit, and that’s what it feels like being forced to come here.

If you are going to promote Kbin/Lemmy, you need to change their mindset before they get here or they will just see a forced downgrade onto a broken Reddit clone.

Did they initiate the process and ask for help or did you offer?

I’ve been teaching twenty years. If students get themselves to the point of coming with a question based on experience, odds are excellent that they will listen to what I’m saying. If they do something at my suggestion, they are not engaged and do not retain. Same is surely true for learning to use a new website.

So I dunno if this is a suggestion for you or other people reading this post, but consider directing them to magazines/communities that are an actual draw, since people are the actual draw. When they find they cannot post, then they will have incentive to pay attention.

This is so far true for “what is a photon”, “what is consciousness”, “how do you do a kick”, and “why are most metals thermally conductive” so I suspect this isn’t a unique thing. Dangle the incentive, then wait for them to ask how to get involved.

Again, not criticizing especially since I don’t know your approach, hopefully this can help others. The draw is the community and posts, so highlight that way before they ever see a signup page. They can browse the site without an account.

I just made an account and started browsing the threads. Easy. I still have absolutely no idea how any of this works. The info diagram that was posted around a week or two ago was not very helpful.

When one user is having problems, the problem is the user. When it’s multiple users, it’s a pattern and problem with the design.

The problem is that people don’t want to dedicate time to learn new, foreign things, they just want them to work. Because that’s how it is with the stuff they’re used to. Those things just work.

Also, fediverse isn’t ready. Servers aren’t always responding, design isn’t finished etc. So it’s no wonder people find it hard to use – because it’s an unfinished house or maybe more aptly a village.

The stoics (ancient philosophers) say: control what you can, but don’t worry about what you cannot.

It’s their approach to life, and it will bite them in the butt eventually, but there’s little you can do about it, so focus on what you CAN do instead?

e.g. you could tell your MIL, patiently (b/c otherwise she’ll feel disrespected & angry & won’t learn), “here, let me help you so that you’ll know in the future: you gotta press this button HERE, and make sure to aim the remote THERE, not over there where you had it pointed, b/c that’s how the signal gets established and it knows what you want it to do”. That’s the other, major part too - putting yourself in their shoes, like she probably knows what button to press, but it wasn’t working, so she immediately turned to you, and since you apparently will cave & do it, why shouldn’t she? IT WORKS!?:-) She may still get angry even then, but if she learns… then you accomplished what you set out to do? :-) But remember that you can’t control whether she learns - only how you offer to teach.

For the other, I’m not sure I know, b/c most people seem to not care about what happened at all, but for those who legit want to come here, maybe make a video walking through the entire sign-in process? “Click here, input stuff there, this is what it looks like”? There may be legit stuff stopping them though - I’m constantly seeing server outages, I had to try multiple times to make my own account even last week before the huge influx, and it’s legit a bit confusing to see all the stuff that’s constantly broken, or named differently or whatever. But if they can SEE it, it would boost confidence.

Though more likely they just don’t want to do it and it’s a mere excuse to begin with - and even once they create the account they’ll still barely use it after that, so again don’t worry about what is outside of your control.:-)

I hear you. People have very little pain/change tolerance. Humans want things easy the first time. Those who stick around the fediverse have higher pain tolerance. They are more cognitively flexible. They are principled. There’s a short time of adjustment that one has to tolerate.

I’m thankful for all those who have the strength to say “NO” to the likes of /spez. It’s a small thing but it shows some determination and character.

Let me put it…indelicately. We are filtering out idiots with nothing to share and who aren’t willing to put in effort.

That’s fine. Keep chugging along

So, please explain me, how can I search for subreddits(magazines , communities) that can be on different servers?

Do you want those people who can’t even make an account here anyway? Lol
In all seriousness, SSO is a thing and maybe the devs are already looking into it. Google, Facebook. Git, and more all have ways to sign in to services for you. I wouldn’t vote to use them given the ideals of why people are moving to these platforms, but if someone wants to use their apple account to sign in here and that makes it easy for them. I’d be happy for it’s implementation.

I can only assume that the people having trouble understanding kbin/lemmy are either relatively young, or relatively inexperienced with technology. Basically those people whose online experience really only started in the era of Reddit/Facebook/Twitter/etc. Those of us who were online in the early 2000s are familiar with web forums. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically just web forums that can be interacted with from any kbin or Lemmy instance that’s federated. Those of us who are even older and were online in the 90s (or earlier) are familiar with Usenet. Kbin Magazines/Lemmy Communities are basically Usenet newsgroups, with the particular instance you’re on essentially the same as your Usenet provider. Or for the really old folks like me, instances are like BBSes that are connected to each other with FidoNet.

It reminds me of people who get confused getting on Discord for the first time, when it’s really just a modern incarnation of chat-rooms or IRC. None of these ideas are new, and people were able to figure out these core concepts decades ago.