This place has roughly 3,000 people and was intended to be an entire replacement for DaystromInstitute and StarTrek as they were going dark indefinitely. Well, within 4 days the moderators have walked back those statements and opened both subreddits up. I see no incentive for people to come to this website now and while a few may come here in the future, most people will go to r/startrek with 600,000 people.
Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded
Given the option between hanging out with 3,000 Trekkies who are willing to plunge headfirst into a strange new ecosystem and 600,000 Trekkies who find making an account to be an onerous process, I’ll take the former, thanks
The irony of being a Trekkie but fearing strange new worlds.
You’d think they’d all be excited to join this new federation
Cut 'em some slack, they’re probably just big fans of that famous Trekkie catchphrase “diversity, who needs it? one combination is enough for me!”
I mean it’s right there in the intro monologue: “to timidly stay where everyone has already been”
Limited diversity in limited combinations.
A little less Mariposan, a little more Bringloidi
Turns out they were really into Star Trek for the Ferengi.
“Starfleet was founded to seek out new life – well, there it sits, waiting!”
You’d be shocked at the amount of Star Trek fans who don’t “get it.”
It’s analogous to the gamers who complain about The Last of Us being “too political” while listing, like, BioShock as their favorite game.
Not even “it’s too confusing” or “I can’t find things” (both viable excuses right now but being actively worked on) but Signing up for an account is too hard.
In today’s world of literally an email and a password, and most browsers/password mangers will suggest and autofill and save… I just can’t even.
Fine, stay there and absorb ads and promoted shit to your hearts content. Not saying the bar for entry should be high, but goddamn maybe we don’t need the ones who can’t be bothered to create an account.
Let me walk you through my process. Go to join-lemmy and then realize I can’t just join Lemmy, I need to choose a server. So now why go to one place over another. I picked one initially that I didn’t like and apparently isn’t a big one. Then I try beehaw. Beehaw tells me I need to wait to be approved but I can’t even tell if my application went through. Still to this day I am not 100 percent sure if it went through.
Then I joinn sh.itjust.works and hey, great name. Shit just worked. From there it’s not terrible to figure things out but you quickly realize that Lemmy has some rough edges that are obviously going to be a barrier for the masses. Combine that with the fact that the communities simply aren’t quite there yet and it just makes sense. Lemmy is a great start with a ton of potential but I can’t fault the average user for not being ready to make the jump.
and that’s what I mean with the actual flaws that need working out, those are valid.
But the person in the comment was just complaining about needing a new account period. That’s nuts to me.
There are confusing aspects absolutely. Use Lemmy" is not enough. But, if you’re given an instance and a link to it, it’s really straightforward.
Honestly, coming over to Lemmy and the communities all being smaller has been a nice breather to how much noise there is on Reddit these days.
As a former mod at /r/StarTrek, let me tell you there is so much more noise than the average user even saw.
Same, at least we didn’t get as many crazies over at r/startrekgifs but it was still maddening at times to read
You guys did a bang-up job, I miss r/startrekgifs. Happy to be done with reddit, though, on the whole.
Appreciate that. In talks to bring it here
Seriously, aside from all the modding work that went on behind the scenes, you and the other HQG cadre drove so much traffic to reddit. I doubt I would have stayed as long as I did without all those wonderful gifs. Glad you’re here! And thanks for all the laughs over the years.
https://i.imgur.com/7peziOi.gifv
The old days of hqg were pure gold
Startrek.website doesn’t even have email verification turned on, it’s literally fewer steps than it is to make a reddit account.
I think they bring up a good point and just like Reddit isn’t going to die overnight, Lemmy and the like are not going to see widespread adoption until the product matures.
The difficulty of entry to fediverse will be the difference between being a reddit replacement and being a separate much smaller community. I don’t fault a non tech minded person for not putting in the effort to learn a new service that they have no attachment to.
I’ve been a member of reddit for 17 years and it took almost a decade before it became popular with the masses. People weren’t attracted to the format, didn’t fully understand how reddit worked, or were unaware of it’s existence for a long time, and as such reddit was more popular with the technically minded. I see the same thing here. I fully admit, I am completely lost here, and in fact, this is my first post. So it needs development, for sure, but I do believe that decentralised social networking is going to be the future … we are coming in on the ground floor. It’s just gonna take a long time before the fediverse is even seen by the vast majority, let alone accessible and understood.
Well put. Reddit’s corporate money grab was the last straw for me. I’m glad this community is here and can’t wait to see what awaits ya.
I literally don’t understand what is there to learn that everyone isn’t already used to in one form or another.
Kbin, lemmy, pixelfed, mastodon, beehaw are all pretty intuitive to start using right away. The account creation process is no different than what is available on mainstream sites.
The federation system sounds a bit intimidating but in reality, it takes about one hour of using your selected service to get used to.
As long as we direct people to instances with a stable stream of content from a large enough number of regular users, they should be absolutely fine.
I mean it’s fair to say that there have been many performance issues as most of the federations were not prepared for the mass influx of people, and for someone literally brand new and without context it’s hard to differentiate between temporary performance issues and fundamental flaws. I agree that all the bellyaching is laughably naive about how quickly websites and services come together and evolve, but we can’t pretend that the growing pains haven’t happened.
Growing pains are a separate issue than the problems associated with “non tech minded people putting up with learning a new service”.
The first is a timing issue. Give it some time and the issues will resolve themselves as far as the average user is concerned. The second one implies inherent difficulties arising from the “tech mindedness” of the users and its interaction with the service experience. I’m saying that the average internet user today is “techi minded” enough, even if they don’t consciously know it, to understand how to use fediverse services intuitively, unless we overthink the introduction and scare people away.
It’s not sufficiently intuitive yet because not everything you can do is reachable by a link. For example, this instance automatically shows us many communities from beehaw.org because users from here have subscribed to them. However, we don’t automatically see every community there, and even if we browse their main page from this instance we don’t have a link to browse all their communities. It didn’t take me long to work out I had to browse beehaw.org from a separate browser tab to see all the communities I could search from startrek.website and subscribe too, but that’s too many steps for most people.
If I browse to a beehaw community from here and click the posts linked from their sidebar I end up on pages on their domain that don’t know I’m logged into startrek.website. It just doesn’t work seamlessly unless you’re very web savvy or have even done some webdev before.
I say all this as someone who likes it here. I’m going to stay and I’ve pinned a browser tab here to replace my reddit tab, but Lemmy needs some dedicated work before people other than the rebellious, adventurous, and ancient net nerds like it.
yea the design of the federation aspects of it is particularly not well thought out.
I think it’s pretty complicated. They need to work on the default “home” page so that it’s populated and turns over. As it is now I’m seeing posts 2 to 3 to 4 days old, from small instances. Default really just needs to be the popular posts from the whole thing.
True, but that’s why I said we should direct people to instances with a stable stream of content and large enough number of regular users.
I’m on kbin.social, and there’s absolutely no shortage of content. The hot page always has content posted within two hours and as people comment on and boost threads, they more or less constantly update.
Ending up in a slow instance is a negative user experience, sure, but it isn’t exactly complicated. It’s no different than ending up on a dead sub on reddit.
I picked lemmy.ca which seemed like a middle of the pack one, which was advised. But they said it didn’t matter because you can see content from all. Can see it and seeing it by default seems to be different because now I have to track it down or something. This is the confusing part. Just give me a default front page. Then I can edit my own subscriptions as I learn.
I’m hearing ya. I’ve created three accounts now, thinking mastadon, lemmy, and kbin are different … which they are, but also they interact and I could just use one of those accounts to interact? But half the time when I click a link I end up somewhere where I need to sign-in to comment. I’ve learnt today, to search that same thing up on my own server, but I’m still well confused. However I’m also excited to keep trying at this unique new platform because I know I’m gonna have an “ah-ha!” moment eventually. lol. It’ll just take a little personal persistence, and I also believe the accessibility and features will evolve and improve as more join in.
Things make a lot more sense once you realize that “instance” is just a hand-wavy synonym for “website”.
“That community is on another website”.
“When I click a link, it takes me to another website”
Etc.
Watch the url. If it’s still showing you’re on the website you have an account on, then you’re working with locally mirrored content, and can comment without barriers. If it’s the url of some other website, then… It’s some other website,and you’re probably not logged in there unless you have an account on that site, just like following links to Twitter or Facebook from Reddit.
The only real differences here compared to centralized social media is that other websites will share the content directly with each other. If they’re asked to.
You can change the sort order, however I can’t figure out any actual sanity to any of the sort orders :(
I also found the whole thing pretty intuitive, but then I’ve been using the internet regularly for long enough that, as you say, everything here is kinda familiar.
But we have to remember that a lot of people are younger and used to apps that “just work” with not even so much effort as having to sign up for an account. When I went to uni in my 30s I literally had to teach the kids what copy and paste meant, how are people like that gonna grasp how to join new communities here?
Or there are people who aren’t as comfortable on the internet as a whole and have only really learned to use the handful of sites they need, anything else is wildly confusing to them even if it operates the same way as they’re used to. Even a site changing where its login button is trips up a surprising amount of people.
It’s not their fault, but the fact remains a lot of internet users are actually not very good at using the internet.
But we have to remember that a lot of people are younger and used to apps that “just work” with not even so much effort as having to sign up for an account.
If they’re commenting on reddit they’re used to the idea of signing up for an account.
Yes, but making an account is not arduous or complicated.
It’s just like how email in the 90s was seen as some insanely complicated thing only “whiz kids” could grasp. People will learn.
I agree with this, I didn’t really notice it that much on Reddit, but since coming to Lemmy I notice how pleasant it is to have time to actually engage with content before a thousand new posts are churned to the top.
I for one am here to boldly go away from Reddit.
@dbeardius @zabraven @GuyFleegman
Welcome to the jungle
I cannot speak to the internal decisions of /r/StarTrek, but I can speak to /r/DaystromInstitute’s decisions.
As of yesterday, noncompliant moderation teams are under threat from /u/Spez and his lackeys. We reached the decision to reopen, in a limited capacity, to prevent the community from facing a hostile takeover by those who do not properly appreciate its use or its value, and to hopefully funnel traffic here, and we intend that soon those will be the only purposes of the subreddit. In coordinating this move I trust my collagues on the other subs to act in the best interests of the community first, this instance second, and the profiteering bastards last.
Man, what a shit situation for the mods. Either open or you get removed and it opens anyway.
I can’t believe the negativity coming from the /r/startrek community regarding the blackout and the idea of switching to Lemmy. Forging a new brighter future free of corporate control should fit into the Star Trek ideals of every fan.
I mean, Lemmy if FEDERATED. If that’s not Star Trek, idk what is.
I also find that very strange. If you look at the upvote/downvote ratio on the original threads announcing the subs would be going dark, it seems like most are/were in favour. But probably the ones who are still commenting the most were against it because they are still there? Idk. Anyway, I prefer our c/startrek over r/startrek – especially atm.
maybe if you’re a federation citizen, but for a
redditorklingon, it’s about the empire!
That’s rather up to us, isn’t it?
I don’t have any data to support it, but it seems like there are a number of throwaway accounts on Lemmy posting about how the protest was a failure and how we should all go back. Feels like astroturfing.
Someone with too much time on their hands. They’re literally spending time in a place they don’t like, just to antagonize people.
Or are paid to do so
This place is definitely not dead. Quite lively, in fact. I’m not sure why there being a bigger star trek community somewhere means that this one would be useless
That is true. You got start somewhere.
i hope it does grow, as i hope all other lemmy instances grow. but this site was intended to replace the subreddits because of the protest, with both startrek subreddits redirecting here. i dont think there will be much growth here but im interested to see how things go down when 3rd party apps shut down.
I generally am happy if the instance provides enough conversation at a reasonable pace on the subjects that I want to talk about. Beyond that, it growing doesn’t necessarily make it better.
This was just the dress rehearsal, it seems like people forgot that. The protest isn’t the event, the policy changes are the event. The protest was just to let them know that the users do care about the impending policy changes. When those changes take effect, lots of people are going to discover that the app they use to browse reddit doesn’t work anymore. Some will install the official [cr]app and go on with their lives, but some won’t. It won’t be a mortal wound, but a lot of users will be lost at that moment. That’s when a wave of users looking for a new permanent home will arrive. Since Lemmy has been mentioned all over reddit, and in articles about the reddit drama, a lot of the trekkies among them will end up here. All we have to do is wait. Lemmy may not be the site/network with the biggest trek presence (yet), but i’m confident it will grow to a healthy size in short order.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are users, such as myself, who want to set up their own instances and play with the technology. The stats of what you see for user volume and using that as a metric to determine engagement is pre-federation thinking (both literally and figuratively). More numbers = more safety in a false scarcity environment right?
Anyhow, this site is federated and it’s not alone. I’m excited to be here.
yes, but i would like to add that the thing most people will get is bad moderation. I dont think the people will change 180° on the moment the changes happen but it will be a malicious long term effect where spam, shitposts on good communities and co will get stronger. And when people realize this they either have to accept shitty reddit or come over to an alternative.
At least i think the long term is the worst part for reddit.Edit: as you can see on the stats below the growth of lemmy slows down at the moment but they dont sink so there is a deciline of new new users but there is less hype because: we cant reach anyone, some of the blackouts are going online and we already joined.
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystatsYeah not all at once of course. I think there will be a noticeable wave right away, but greater numbers will trickle in over the following months. And hopefully in that time there will be some more mobile apps popping up that work with Lemmy.
When r/startrek went dark, thought at the time to be forever, I came here. I wasn’t looking for a new reddit. I was looking for a new home to talk with other Star Trek fans. And, that is here. Now that r/startrek is back open, I’m still staying here. I like it here. I don’t see a need for an us versus them showdown. How many r/startrek accounts there are isn’t important to me. How active is c/startrek is important to me. And, I think c/startrek is doing well. With more Star Trek fans finding their way here.
Do I think c/startrek is sustainable and will continue to grow? Yes. Because Star Trek fans tend to love interacting with other Star Trek fans, and with those new to Star Trek. I have my doubts about there being an all out rush back to r/startrek because the initial reason for leaving wasn’t a temporary oopsie, like a technical issue. It was, for me and likely others, because of Huffman’s actions and reactions. That was an eye-opener.
I think on some level many people know that they are just commodities to for profit social medias. The end goal is to gather valuable data, and concentrate eyes on certain spots to sell ads. Monetization. There’s a facade in place. I think problems arise when that facade is frayed and torn. For me, Reddit’s facade is shredded.
I like that here the main goal isn’t to target me with ads. And, I’m thoroughly enjoying the interactions here. Yes, there’s a lot to Lemmy I haven’t learned. Truth be told, I may never learn all or even most about it. However, it only took me a few minutes to figure out the most important things to me on c/startrek – how to read and make comments.
Reddit is gonna Reddit. LLAP, c/startrek.
It is incredibly refreshing to not be inundated with ads. Reddit absorbed all the web 1.0 communities one-by-one, then changed just slowly enough to boil the frog. The recent changes went overboard, rushing for the ipo. They showed their real hand. I won’t be going back.
But at the same time, I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to stay there. Hopefully, they’ll find their way here, but if not I wish them all the best.
Reddit is dying. Its goals as a growth-oriented corporation are inherently contrary to its original nature as a community center. I have to give them props for dragging it out as long as they have (and will). All the factors that made Reddit possible and desirable still exist; in fact, the ActivityPub federation protocol enables an even more powerful form of collaboration that transcends a lot of the negative aspects of Reddit’s design.
Give it time. Make content! Tell people about this wonderful new generation of media. Consider it an opportunity to engage with the glory days of a new form of internet media. Which it is.
Exactly, it’s going to be a long slow process. This will have slow bursts like we’re seeing now as reddit makes their app shittier and shittier, but we’re never going to see an exodus like Digg again, Reddit is 100s of times bigger now.
It’s going to look like Facebook, where over time people leave as they realize they don’t need it anymore, and eventually all that will be left are stubborn people, the people in admin/mod positions that refuse to give up power, our moms, the people who think Minions memes are funny, and the thousands and thousands of bots talking to each other about how great lysol cleaners are.
Honestly the only people that will remain there are, as you said, either very stubborn, or too young to give a damn. There’s a community that I was a part of for a long time that I loved deeply, it was a very warm and inviting place. When the sub went on blackout and took a poll to extend indefinitely, I made a passionate plea to the sub to really consider what’s at stake, even though so many of them felt like it was pointless. I wasn’t rude, I wasn’t callous or pessimistic, I just wanted people to know that whether something seems hopeless or not isn’t the point at all, but rather taking a stand for something you believe in should be the point.
I was promptly met with a barrage of downvotes and someone replying to me spewing vitriol and telling me to touch grass, with another person just shrugging and saying they just want things to go back to the way they were (by ending the blackout). It’s weird but I was honestly pretty hurt by that response. This community that I came to know and love turned on me the moment I suggested we take a stand.
There really is no persuading people like that unfortunately. But, hopefully, slowly, change will still happen.
I had the exact same response from my favorite sub too, was honestly pretty hurt by it. Then the mods removed it after enough downvotes.
Like guys I love this community, at least I thought I did, I just want to see it continue without being held hostage by Reddit. Same thing, I didn’t get angry, didn’t push people to switch over, was more like “Hey we have a community over here, if anyone feels like they need to leave Reddit, here we are”, like “here’s a safe landing spot for you”. I’d never seen my favorite community, where I had tens of thousands of karma from, get so angry.
Yeah for me I made the transition today feeling the same way as you. It sucks that just because mods try to go on strike, on behalf of everyone really, the users try to help reddit instead.
For me I’m making the change after being sure I won’t regret/miss too much the content on reddit. I might still go back sometimes for a google search (appending reddit), but for the most part, I’m not using it as a platform I browse.
Even if this fediverse stuff doesn’t pan out, I’m happy to tread these waters and see if it’ll be our future solution to avoiding these greed induced social media self destructions.
Today was the first day I just felt so sickened by how reddit just wouldn’t budge, no matter how disatisfied its users are. I just didn’t even feel good about using the site anymore, even if I love the content/lazy content there
Strikes almost always get people lashing out against them, and in favour of the Evil Empire. People just love being crabs in a bucket, dragging each other down, ensuring that nothing gets better, all because they don’t want to think long term about things.
All they see is that someone is trying to restrict what they can do right now. The reasons, or the long term consequences, be dammed.
My response to that would have been something along the lines of: Things going back to the way they were is what we all want, but the company’s changes mean we won’t get that again at reddit. So fuck reddit, join the growing communities elsewhere.
people who think Minions memes are funny
Wacky Tic-Tacs!
I don’t know if reddit it’s dying but it will be a worse place for sure (and it was quite shitty since years)
Yes, I regret using the sensationalized language. Reddit is not “dying” so much as it is “continuing its transition into the same homogeneous para-social media service as the other tech giants in that space.” The elements that made Reddit special are continuing to slip away in a series of predictable corporate moves. Everybody taking out their frustrations on Huffman is par for the course, but it’s not his fault. This is just the way of the Eternal September. It will come for the ActivityPub systems eventually. The people who created ActivityPub (the federation protocol underneath Lemmy, Kbin, et. al.) have actually already moved on to the “next next” generation of social media architecture: https://spritely.institute/
I wasn’t subbed to either of the communities that the op said this was originally for, and I found kbin whilst searching for a Reddit alternative. I like the whole federation thing, it’s new and interesting, for now at least.
Roughly 3,000 people in four days…
And yes the subreddit reopening was not part of the original plan, but there’s not much we can do about it besides make this a better space that users will feel comfortable signing up with.
didn’t reddit backtrack on the threats? Not that I expect them to hold to their word but I think they walked back. I tried searching but tbh federated subs are a pain to search I think.
Html in posts? What is the code base?
You know what day it is?
A good day (for Reddit) to die.
Qapla’!
Just have to be committed. Also remember that it’s not just your site, it’s all of lemmy that can participate.
I’m a strong supporter of decentralized stuff so I’m of course really hoping all of this works out. By the way, this is my first post, it seems that its visible on startrek@startrek.website when viewed on Lemmy.world, but when going to the actual startrek.website, my post isn’t visible. Did I post it incorrectly?
deleted by creator
@wonkothesane @zabraven @startrek Same and using the Mastodon app to read and reply
How? I created a kbin account separately from my mastodon account, I can’t figure out how to get to magazines through the mastodon app
@oforgetaboutit @startrek Although you can reach magazines on Mastodon, like so:
https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/
, blog posts will not show up on Mastodon at this time. If anyone wishes to correct me, feel free to do so.*Update*
Among that particular Magazine, I didn’t see any entries, so that’s most likely why. I do need to find a magazine with entries to confirm.
@oforgetaboutit @startrek @wonkothesane I didn’t have to create a kbin account. I followed @startrek from the Mastodon iOS app and was tipped off from this post https://friendsofdesoto.social/@forgottrek/110551322662672247 Haven’t figured out how to find other magazines yet
Looks like it’s all working as expected to me https://startrek.website/post/26854
Seeing you at kbin
More people probably will stay on Reddit, but I like startrek.website so much I joined the patreon which I’ve never done for anything before.
Lemmy is new and a bit confusing to start with but I really like it. It aligns with my morals and techie side much more than Reddit ever could.
I checked r/startrek last night at was a bit shocked at the hate the mods were recieving for doing what I consider to be morally correct. To each their own I suppose!
The people still using reddit are the ones that don’t gaf about morals. It’s better that they stay there.
@astroturds @samus12345 not necessarily. Some people may be stuck because they don’t have software for anything else.
True, true.
@samus12345 hold up, are you using something else? I’m on mastodon.
Yup, I’m on Lemmy.
@samus12345 holy crap, and I can still answer this?
Yup, all part of the Fediverse! Cool, huh?
I first joined r/startrek over 12 years ago when it was about 3000 subscribers. I had a lot of fun. Every post could be seen and not drowned out. No troll issues. Those early days were really nice.
Die? I just found this place!
Let’s fucking engaaaaaage
The change hasn’t even gone into effect yet. Let people deal with the ads and shittiness that is the official app. They’ll be looking for alternatives.
Yeah, it seems pretty obvious that their end goal here is to get people off of 3rd party apps and off of old.reddit so their eyeballs will be exposed to more ads. I now no longer really care how many more people there are on reddit. I’ll do some silly shit to avoid looking at ads. It’s almost like a religious thing for me.
You’re right, as of now it seems that a majority of users and moderators have gone back and using Reddit like normal but after the deadline I wonder what both sites will look like
