I stated a similar sentiment elsewhere. The reason the discussions on reddit became less rigorous and interesting over time is a case of Eternal September. As you make a site more user-friendly and accessible, you actually are inviting a lot of users who are would have been unwilling to learn a slight learning curve, whether technical or social. Maybe it's remiss of me to say, but I think it speaks to their unwillingness to change their minds or being willing to view a new perspective about much.

As an older person here who was on Slashdot and left for Digg and then left to reddit, I genuinely think having a slight learning curve prevents people who would otherwise be shitposters and nothing else from joining the fray. I really would like to see high quality discussions online thrive again like they often did in the early days reddit (and where they often still do on its predecessor, hackernews), and as elitist as it is to say, I think having it be a little more technical and confusing isn't a bad thing.

Also, as an older person here, if people are willing to figure out the initially quite confusing way that Discord works, they can figure this out, too.

I was a little perplexed to begin with but quickly got the hang of it. My biggest gripe is its difficult to link to or find communities outside of your instance.

I've been trying not to say it's easy, but I can't help but want to counter the claims that it's too hard/impossible for average users.

That was me two days ago, and after a bit of confusion, it's fine. Am I an expert in federation? No. Do I need to be to enjoy Lemmy? Also no.

The two words I hate in anything remotely instructional are "Just do" (as in, "Just paste it in the search bar" or "Just pick an instance"). In 99% of cases, that "Just" there is doing so much it's almost unreal, yet most writers don't exactly see that viewpoint as they're already familiar with whatever they're writing about.

@ozoned exactly! I'm working on a revision, can I add this as a quote to the "Don't tell peole it's easy" section? You say it better than I did!

Yes almost all guides and introductions goes into activity pubs and feds. General users don’t care. Just point them to a “website” to sign up on and how to reach the content. Eventually we all will learn about the cool underlying tech.

Information overload is a very real thing for new users.

That is how I did it as well.

Wow the comments are are all nested under the same parent, without hierarchy.

See:

document.getElementById("comment-517862").getElementsByTagName("p")[0].innerText
// and 
document.getElementById("comment-517862").parentNode.getElementsByClassName("comments")

It reminds me of Silicon Valley when they have to explain the UI for their new internet.

The curse of knowledge is strong in all of us.