This is my plan also. There is no real advantage to going "cold turkey" in fact it probably just really puts a huge load on the lemmy network for no reason as thousands of people are switching so completely in a matter of days. It's great, and it's a great sign for the future of this network, but in a practical sense it just makes it challenging for lemmy to keep up with the traffic and the registrations. Gradual organic growth or even fast growth is a lot easier to manage from a scaling and development point of view than huge sudden spikes like this. It's impressive that the system has scaled as well as it has.

But to focus back on the individual user experience, I think it's fine (and healthy) for your move to lemmy to be gradual. Content is not going to become available overnight, nor should it due to the scaling problems above. If you come here expecting all your huge firehose of reddit content to be replaced instantly, you'll inevitably end up disappointed, and then you'll stop coming here and end up back on reddit full time. Instead, consider this a first step to replace reddit over time, if it's already enough to become your go-to that's great! But if it's not, that's fine too, and you don't have to feel guilty or disappointed about it. Just make the commitment to keep checking occasionally and not forget about it. Add it to your bookmarks, or your homescreen, or your desktop, or wherever it's going to pop up to remind you to check it occasionally. You've planted the seed, give it time to grow into your life.

I agree, I too was planning to not be too drastic, but today I found out one of my favorite communities is migrating here on lemmy.world, that's exceptional for morale.

Don't get me wrong, I've been here for almost a week now and I already feel at home, I'm not missing reddit as a platform anymore, just a few communities among the many I was subbed to.

Knowing that at least one is migrating (that is, officially migrating, reddit mods are organizing that) makes me so happy I can barely contain myself :D

That helps a lot IMO in not wanting to go back anymore.

Out of solidarity with the blackout I'm staying completely off reddit until the 15th. After that I'll probably keep checking both. I really like lemmy and it's smaller community feel, but it has some bugs (the eternal scrolling of the "all" page for one) and it's very tech-oriented at the moment. There's not yet that many arts & craft or hobby communities yet, and those that exist are very, very quiet. Not that I need it to get as big as reddit, but more than 2 people active would be nice.

And I actually like the different feel of both, the fact that there's not that many bots (yet) floating around here, people actually discussing things instead of just downvoting you at the slightest disagreement, ... The scientific info on Mander is extremely interesting too, lots of great articles being linked instead of reddits' reposts every couple of days. So I think I'll stay active on both lemmy and reddit. They offer different things, and that's great.

That's the thing with sites that run on user generated (and moderated) content, there's positive growth/decline feedback. More users -> more content -> more users, and on the flipside fewer users -> less content -> fewer users.

I hope so, although you gotta admit the concept of Lemmy is a bit confusing, especially for causal people.

To be honest I've settled into using mlem on my phone surprisingly well from Apollo. Obviously I'd rather not have to change at all but if Apollo goes, I'm gone.