digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
The problem with chiding people on "you should be more welcoming to newcomers to fedi" has always been that nobody ever bothered to ask those people whether they actually *wanted* the place to grow bigger, it was just assumed to be okay and then when people objected to this, those objections were immediately paved over
digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
"Bringing in new people without talking to the existing folks" is something you do when you're trying to do a capitalism, not when you're building or fostering a community
digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
Like, to be clear, I totally agree that you should be patient and welcoming to newcomers who need time to find their place, when you want to expand that community! It's crucially important, and if you're going to be trying to tempt people over, you also need to do the work of making it work for them.
But we never got to that point! We never even had broad agreement that people *should* be invited to move over here!
digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
@joepie91 There may not be consensus, but there are definitely a lot of people who want the fediverse to grow, and who invite people to join through active promotion, which at least gives the impression (at first) that one is welcome. Unfortunately, one only finds out that there is also a somewhat hostile contingent that does not want any expansion, and lots of opinions in between, after joining. But with the high threshold of joining,...
digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
@joepie91 ...the sunk cost fallacy kicks in. By the time one has picked a server, made an account, has read one or more of the newcomer guides, and has written an intro post, and picked a few dozen accounts to follow, they're probably much less receptive towards the idea that it would perhaps have been better if none of that had happened.
digging up some old meta frustrations that still bother me
@whreq My criticism is not so much towards the newcomers, to be clear, as it is to a specific contingent of people who just stormed ahead and started trying to Grow The Network without talking to anyone else, and basically trying to speak on behalf of the entire network with no acknowledgment whatsoever of the lack of consensus on this.
