Yeah, that's not what I'm getting at. I'm basically saying that as long as the hurdle to clear just to get started is this high, this is never going to be anything but some sort of relatively tiny insular circle of people who managed to clear the hurdle just to get to what might be the interesting stuff. I mean, it's basically the same problem you identified - it's difficult to bootstrap the "Y axis". Basically I'm just trying to wrap my head around the model (which I seem to have more or less grasped, you didn't really tell me I had anything wrong, just filled in some blanks) and use that to figure out whether it can grow to a reasonable size to where there's actually content worth looking at more than once a day - and this bootstrapping issue suggests to me that the answer is no, people will just leave because it's too hard to get going and there's not really obvious value up front. Which means this won't ever be more than a site I'd refresh once a day so therefore it can't ever replace reddit for me. Obviously, reddit shows the danger of "defaults", but I'm not sure if it isn't the intersection of "default" plus "community" (as opposed to "default plus "content") that's the problem there. (Side note: voat.co, despite its brokenness at the moment, is a known quantity - it's a reddit clone so it's obvious that it's easy enough for people to jump into and start using. The question is just whether there's enough community/content there for me to make the jump once the site starts functioning again; the system obviously works well enough to last a while. I don't need my reddit replacement site to have 10 million users or whatever, especially considering how shitty the large subreddits become; but I do need it to have something like 100k users with 5k-10k in some of the tags so that there's an actively generated amount of content. I can wait on it to grow - I started /r/tf2 from scratch after all - but it has to have the possibility of growing.) you're basically saying "I've been here half an hour, it's not what I'm used to, change it for me."
you were one of the pile-ons during my witch hunt if I recall correctly.
Incredibly difficult to find any context considering how hard it is to go back in history on reddit. If you were abusing your power as a moderator of a sub I used at some point I probably called you on it, but other than that I really can't say much.
We actually like that the barrier to entry exists. You are right, there are people that will likely not want to put in any effort to experience a new place/community. Those people will likely find another alternative. Perhaps, as you suggest this is Voat or any number of other alternatives. Those that take the time to learn how Hubski functions have historically found that it works for them. Most things worth while in life take some effort. We are looking for those willing to put in a bit of time figuring out how the place works. This isn't our first large influx of redditors. What we find is that some get bored quickly and leave. Those that stay have been amazing and our community has benefited greatly from it. So, the barrier to entry exists intentionally and has served us well. Now this does not mean that we aren't open to new ideas on how to better the experience and help new users understand functionality etc. We are always open to new, specific ideas. What isn't terribly helpful is "this is hard." What is always helpful is, "this is hard and here is how it could be better..." I'm not a redditor, so I have no idea who you are over there, what your function there is. Here, you are a new user and I welcome you. Let me know if I can be of help. Cheers!