I’m getting a lot of comments from friends that they can’t make an account. I went to make test accounts on both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and both are throbbing indefinitely (didn’t see any network traffic either).
Upvoted for throbbing indefinitely
Did they select a language? Mine did the same thing on various instances. I tried a few things at the same time, so I don’t know what finally let me register, but I learned a few things in the process.
For example, the most likely explanation is that the username is already taken. The back end fails silently when that happens, and there’s already a bug open in GitHub. I figured I’d try a shorter password and selecting a language, and that worked.
Hopefully that helps your friends.
There’s no language selection
They will do that if the username and/or email address is already taken. I’ve seen it on my own instance. There are possibly other reasons as well.
If that’s the case and it’s just a bug that there’s not feedback on the sign-up page then that’s cool. Probably need to track an issue for that. But right now the new user is experience is pretty bad for even technically literate people.
I agree. I’ve submitted a bug report already about the username/email address issue.
Yeah I tried making a personal instance this weekend and the registration page is broken on it. Not sure how to fix it.
lemmy.ml closed registrations. As for lemmy.world, it’s probably overloaded. The point of the fediverse is to spread out the userbase to reduce the power of any single instance, try to register on a smaller instance.
There are three things wrong here:
- These are the top instances in most (Hey Join Lemmy) documents and evangelism posts.
- There’s no indication that registration is currently closed on any of these instances.
- “Choose a smaller instance” is not a replacement for load balancing. When it comes to selection a new user will not want to tie their account, subscriptions, history, and overall experience to “Joe Bob’s” instance.
stop using big instances, there is very little value to it, the more people pile onto these instances the more you will have issues like reddit.
Avoid redditoization of fediverse, stop using big instances.
The main issue I have with Lemmy however is the profound lack of discoverability for communities. This is exacerbated on smaller instances. It is human nature to want to be where many people are, and Fediverse instances are no exception there.
I had the spinning wheel issue when trying to sign up at midwest.social this morning. I left it for an hour and it was still spinning so I copied my answer, closed the tab, and reapplied. After 3 attempts it went through instantly. YMMV with other instances though ¯\(ツ)/¯
I hope it didn’t send multiple requests but considering I applied to Beehaw.org a week ago and left it spinning all day and never got a confirmation email, I assume it didn’t.
Try different instances cause Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world are some of the more popular ones and i know world has temporarily closed all sign up to deal with spam so i think is better to try some of the less populated ones.
I had the spinny hang too. Disabled ublock origin for the site then it worked right away
