Agreed. I think it’s important to manage the learning curve somehow. One big barrier in front isn’t ideal, and I think (if possible) we should flatten out the curve and allow users to learn bit by bit, and later on, while actually using it. That’s also way more fun and hands-down.

I like PieFed as well. I think it shows that PieFed often times wants to make an effort to do the right thing. Pay attention to what people need, try to remove obstacles, give moderators what they need, and generally foster good behaviour and bake that into the design if possible. It often feels (to me) like things aren’t just an afterthought, but laid out in a way that make sense.

And yes, onboarding is a bit difficult. There are still some low-hanging fruits left, IMO it could be way easier, especially on Lemmy. And even with things like manual account approval, we still get spam on the platform. So I’m not even sure if that’s the correct tool. I don’t think it’s a big concern, though. People can usually wait for the amount of time it takes, if their motivation is genuine. We might want to re-evaluate this though, I’m not sure if anyone has done some statistics on whether it really adds to anything, because it certainly is a mild annoyance.