Now that we have a mod team in place for The Agora, this is our next priority. We’re working on some preliminary guidelines based on previous discussions/votes that we’ll be discussing soon.

For now, just know that we share your concerns. We want everyone to feel represented here, not just a vocal minority.

Consider this another vote for Ubuntu or any of its variants. They’re beginner friendly, and established enough that you’ll find plenty of resources written specifically for them. Linux Mint is another one I’d recommend for beginners, it’s designed to “just work” out of the box and be an easy transition for Windows users.

Then it’s just down to using it some. First and foremost, leave Windows installed until you’re comfortable with whatever else you end up trying. Whether you partition, or make a bootable USB drive, or even just a VM, use some kind of temporary space for practice. The terminal is a lot less intimidating when you aren’t learning in your main environment, you can go break things and see what happens.

So far, we have a captcha on account creation now and it seems to be working (from what I’ve seen, anyway)

It’ll be a tough balancing act though. Relatively frictionless sign-up has been great for us, and anything that deals with bots will also affect that. Whatever else we may end up doing will need to be carefully considered.

I don’t even really think about it, I just comment if I have something to say. At worst, nobody reads it and I was shouting into the void for a minute.

But the Lemmy userbase isn’t massive yet, so those week+ old posts still see more engagement than you’d think.

Counterpoint: being able to drink a cup of coffee then immediately take a nap leads to the most restful 20 minutes of sleep you’ll ever have.

Sure I’d rather be affected normally by caffeine, but at least it isn’t a total wash.