Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.
I agree. Here's a mockup I made of an alternative design that I think would be much more effective at attracting new users. Instead of presenting user count as a raw number, we should instead present it as a level of network traffic, which is a more helpful way of thinking about it that won't push prospective users away.
Thinking more about this as I respond to other people... Another good thing might be to present some of the most active communities on different instances. It would give people something more concrete to entice them into the ecosystem then the abstract "join this server that's aspiring to be a safe space." What does that even mean?
I also feel like new users (me) will get intimidated by having to choose a server, without knowing what it means. Are you stepping into a walled garden? Does the server you're on matter? If it does, why? How do I choose where I should join? I think there is too much choice and not enough pertinent info for a new user.