What other social media platform requires you to answer open-ended questions about "why" you're joining? I can't really think of any. It's an unfamiliar concept to the majority of people.

Combine that with the concept of "federation" that may make many users feel as if they're signing up for some silo within the community, and it's a recipe for low adoption.

Like I said, I don't disagree with the concept or the process. I'm fully aware of the reasons, and I generally agree. I'm just explaining how this will be a major adoption roadblock for the vast majority of users.

I don't really have a good solution either; I wish I did. I don't think everyone and their bot needs to flood Lemmy, but I also don't want people too dissuaded from joining if the sign up process appears arduous, even when it's not.

[–] MyMulligan@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

There's many Facebook groups that have you answer some basics questions before letting you join. I'm thinking it's not as big of a hurdle as you think. One of the positives is that it will weed out those who don't plan to participate.

I tried one other instance of lemy to join and there were no questions to answer. That server was way too overloaded. It made me think the questions might also be there to slow down the registrations. The servers could then keep up.