This place has roughly 3,000 people and was intended to be an entire replacement for DaystromInstitute and StarTrek as they were going dark indefinitely. Well, within 4 days the moderators have walked back those statements and opened both subreddits up. I see no incentive for people to come to this website now and while a few may come here in the future, most people will go to r/startrek with 600,000 people.
I also found the whole thing pretty intuitive, but then I’ve been using the internet regularly for long enough that, as you say, everything here is kinda familiar.
But we have to remember that a lot of people are younger and used to apps that “just work” with not even so much effort as having to sign up for an account. When I went to uni in my 30s I literally had to teach the kids what copy and paste meant, how are people like that gonna grasp how to join new communities here?
Or there are people who aren’t as comfortable on the internet as a whole and have only really learned to use the handful of sites they need, anything else is wildly confusing to them even if it operates the same way as they’re used to. Even a site changing where its login button is trips up a surprising amount of people.
It’s not their fault, but the fact remains a lot of internet users are actually not very good at using the internet.
If they’re commenting on reddit they’re used to the idea of signing up for an account.