A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
I've said it before but join-fediverse needs to ask a few simple questions to walk new users through a decision tree that offers them a couple of instances at the end of the process:
This is just what I'd do if someone asked.me about joining the Fediverse and should help minimise decision paralysis.
You're welcome to improve the text. That said the site is in large part aimed at instance admins and technical people. For normal users it's better to link them directly to a specific instance.
I think the replies in this thread are doing a good job making OP's point honestly 😓
I think everyone agrees that the fediverse experience is highly different from the centralized experience, but I disagree that the fediverse must necessarily hide what it is and reproduce such a centralized system.
We've been fed the lie that tech is "easy" when it isn't at all, but that is not a problem. Driving a 2 tons box around at hundreds of km/h takes some skill, some time to learn, but we don't consider it too hard and skippable. I think we should put our efforts into simplifying the explanations, showing what it brings and what you lose, if we want more people to join (and I do)
We just need good defaults.
Sure driving a 2 ton box around takes skill, but we should still make it as easy and smooth ride as possible. Add Power Steering, Climate Control, ABS, Navigation, a Radio etc.
We shouldn't give people a shitbox and expect them to enjoy driving it, especially when they're used to better.
If we don't fix our bad UX, we're going to filter out all non tech savvy people, and create a bubble.
Default way to access the platform for the average potential news joiners is mobile
Voyager, Thunder, Artic provide good defaults.
Honestly to a certain extent I think being decentralized is somewhat beneficial. Perhaps it's just the fact I've been visiting forums for like 20 years and feeling jaded, but I never liked that any knuckle dragger could easily make an account and act like an ass.
It's not a very high bar to clear to figure out how to sign up for lemmy, so if you can't even figure that out, maybe it's for the best to help prevent polluting the user pool. If you're gonna be an ass, you should at least have to work for it.
Being decentralized and there being a significantly higher bar of entry aren't intrinsically linked. The only things easier about Reddit compared to a phpBB forum are that Reddit a) generates you a username, and b) has a mobile app that only works with reddit.com. Name generators can be included in the signup process, but we can't really drop having to point an app at a particular website in a distributed model.
The fact that "Lemmy" isn't a website or a single, definable place on the Internet is where the friction comes from. You can point to Reddit, and say you "saw x, y, and z on Reddit this morning" and it be a meaningful statement. You can't substitute "Lemmy" into that sentence, though, because there isn't a Lemmy.
There's a thousand Lemmys.
Spot on. Focusing on the software is the most tech-centered approach one can do, unfortunately tech people suck at make something excellent for non-tech people.
People don't like it but we need to put more focus on the fediverse as a network, say the AP word exactly once as to not confuse, but always operate in that state of mind.
And tech people must build a web extension to do fediverse stuff while being somewhere on the web ! That's what a User Agent is for, doing stuff for me
Can you expand that last line? I don't understand clearly what you mean.
Browsers are not supposed to be only "html document viewers". In spec parlance, they are supposed to be agents for doing whatever the user wants to do: that's why they also offer facilities for passwords, for example.
The fediverse is a bunch of web servers each with the accounts on it. When I am subscribed on instance A and go on an account on instance B, today the browser acts as a document viewer: I can see what the profile wants to show me, hopefully it has a button that properly redirects me but then I leave the context of the message I was looking at.
What I want instead is for the browser itself to offer me fediverse actions: like, comment, reply, directly from where the content I'm interacting with is. I don't expect browsers to do that soon so the next best thing is web extensions
Good tech is easy an intuitive. Computers got popular after you could use a mouse and got a gui. Ipods dominated over the competition because of how dumb easy it was to use. Reddit was easy to move to from Digg because it was pretty much a clone in how it worked. Zero learning curve.
Popular tech is almost always easy.
That’s why I when I recommend the threadiverse (aka. lemmy or piefed or Mbin) to people I just send a link to an instance I think they’ll like. Instead of explaining the whole thing. If they join the instance with time federation will start to make sense to them and they might migrate later on.
This.
There are rough edges to the actual onboarding experience, of course, but the joinlemmy and joinmastodon and joinwahtever websites really aren't a part of it. They're more of an ad for admins, demonstrating that there's an active network of sites already using the product. The fact that not even the product develoeprs seem to understand this is a real issue, though.
Honestly, we need to stop sending people to "Lemmy" or "Mastodon" or whatever. Those are website engines. It's like sending someone to "WordPress" when you want them to read your blog.
I look at it this way. If my grandparent asks me how to do “the email”, I’m not going to explain to them how they could choose protonmail or nextcloud or whatever. I’m just going to choose and send the one I think is easiest for them to set up.
I'm pretty techie and I've been here for months. I still don't fully understand why it matters and how a different instance would have changed my experience. The fediverse is so fragmented, it would be dumb to stick to one instance. My app is always set to browse "all". Everyone commenting seems to be from different instances. I'm certainly not going to start reading about different instances at signup when it presents the fact that you will be able to access all instances anyway. I picked randomly from one of the most popular choices. This whole process of a selection of an instance sounded good to software engineers, and sure this is how the technology fits together.....but these are "back end" issues that I (and other normies) don't care about at all. Users do not want to get into the weeds of how the back end works and it is certainly off putting.
Different instances that have a unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed, and can have a tangible community as you recognize names from your instance. That's the main difference.
unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed
Then selection of interests and themes should be included in the onboarding process, instead of the mumbo-jumbo about choosing instances.
The onboarding process should be happening after this point. People shouldn't be going "I want to join Lemmy!", because that's kind of a non-sensical statement. Lemmy is a website engine. They should be going "I want to join awesomewebsite.com. Oh, and look, I can see stuff from anotheraweseomewebsite.net, too! That's so cool!"
If the website itself cannot provide a compelling reason as to why someone should sign up for it, then why should they sign up for it? So that it can be a dumb-terminal for some other website?
Unique interests can be already be self-curated by subscribing to certain communities. All apps have the subscribed feed. There's no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.
Edit: typo
It's not that the local tab replaces your home 'subscriptions' tab, it's that it's nice to have in addition to it.
My instance, slrpnk.net, caters to solarpunk topics only, and we're small enough that it has a tight community of regular posters whom I recognize. In my local tab I can see at a glance just the stuff posted to my community, with my other subscriptions not mixed in and cluttering it up. I also see in my local tab what's being posted in communities I'm not subscribed to, but will often have comments from our members since we all collectively view our local tab. It's like a sort've town square feel that my all and subscriptions tab don't have.
I like having access to both.
See, this falls apart when there's another instance that focuses on solarpunk. When some communities on that instance become more popular and active than the communities in your local instance, you'd want to be subscribed to the solar punk communities on that new instance too. Now, your local feed is only showing you solarpunk communities hosted on slrpnk.net but not solarpunk communities on other instances. This distinction is not meaningful because where a community is hosted can be totally detached from the content. The users you know by handle can also be very active, if not more active, on other instances talking about solarpunk than slrpnk.net.
I don't think the existence of a second solarpunk instance would negate my experience with the first instance. It would still apply, there would just be another place where that same phenomena is happening for a different group of people.
That's not to say that I couldn't subscribe to their communities and get to know the regulars there too, but it would be more norrowed since I would only see the ones I specifically subscribe to, where as with my local tab I see the totality of what's posted to my 'home'.
If you personally don't care about that specific experience that a local tab can bring and think your curated subscriptions is just as good if not better, awesome, more power to you.
But for me specifically, and possibly for others as well, it's a noticeable difference and a welcome addition to our experience :)
"Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"
Edit: voyager link
Vger.app isn't an instance, it's an app.
I'm well aware, but it's the only one available on both platforms and looks better than the default UI on mobile
I actually usually point to https://vger.app/settings/install so that people have links to their versions
This keeps coming back from time to time. imo we need an instance or method to sandbox newbies.
My old comment:
A custom feed that allows new members to see a variety of the best that Lemmy has to offer would be a good start. Then, when they are comfortable with the platform and its dynamics, they can customise it further, or swap the newbie feed for their own custom filter (which practically would come down to community subscriptions, I suppose?)
Now instead of making this comment very long, I’ll put in an video game anology to make it a bit more digestible:
What we need is a tutorial area that showcases all the different things that the Lemmy endgame has to offer. Creating memes, sharing news, the art of shitposting, being a lurker, actual discussions vs just scrolling to see the funnies: all these things are enjoyed by different types of people, and before they can reclass and enjoy the wild open world of Lemmy, it would be good for them to get comfortable with the controls and settings in a relative safe space.
I think they should stick to the "email provider" analogy. Whole paragraph should be something like:
The only thing you need to start interacting with the Fediverse is an account with one of the many providers, just like with email! Providers are freely available across the globe: pick one that suits your location or interests best! You can start browsing the content of nearly the entire Fediverse from whatever provider you choose. Don't worry, you can always create an account with a different provider later.
You could add a sentence or two about where to find sensible defaults or link an article that explains the more subtle things.
I think the emphasis on instances (and not naming them the more familiar providers) hinders adoption.
That's a great analogy, but it's too big a barrier for many, most give up before picking a instance, we should set good defaults and then the users can figure it out once they are used to the platform.
Never considered it like that, good analogy
If people can’t understand what federation is then just send them directly to .world or lemm.ee or another big instance. If they have common sense then send them to join-lemmy and let them pick an instance. If someone is unable or unwilling to learn a very basic concept then they probably are not going to be a very good neighbor to have on the fediverse.
I agree that the discoverability of communities needs improvement. I think that most instances should add starter pack like features with the most popular communities for people to choose to subscribe to when onboarding new users.
In my opinion, finding the right and active communities to subscribe to is the biggest onboarding hurdle, not picking an instance. If picking an instance is a hurdle, that person wasn’t willing to try another site in the first place
lol not happening. Lemme just say it again: Lemmings are completely disconnected from reality. They can't fathom that some people can't or don't want to spend time figuring that out. They will argue for days that "it's not that hard" and people should just learn how to do it or stop being lazy or whatever before doing anything about it.
Edit: I hadn't even read the other comments in this thread before I typed this. There's someone literally saying they want to gatekeep the fediverse from people without tech knowledge.
It's the same with linux distros. One of the instances could get a critical mass of newbies but we will still have die-hards trying to gatekeep the entire fediverse.
Oh, I'm sure the Venn diagram between Lemmings and Linux users is a circle.
Do we want 'mass adoption'? and if so, why? and what would that look like, if we had it? how would we know that we had got it, and what good would the getting do us?
Whether or not we want mass adoption I can't say, but what we don't want is to have a filter that only tech savvy people get past.
We want all kinds of people on Lemmy, not just tech savvy people that push through the bad UX
They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the ~~Lazy ass~~ new users with the option to manually join any instances.
What if instances could be tagged with their focus?
Then during an app user creation they could click a few "topics" and narrow down the choices to a much shorter list including member counts?
If what instance you chose truly didn't matter this wouldn't be as big of an issue. Unfortunately defederation causes a tangled mess of netsplits.
Indeed, I see people saying "we should just randomly assign an instance from the top 10", when hexbear (RIP) was in the top 5
Also top 10 ( https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list )
I made a more complete analysis in this post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37336391 (pinned on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com ), nowadays I basically go with:
" Lemmy has 47k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"
Because yes, the USA/EU question appeared during the Luigi announcement in LW.
It just isn't possible, and we should want to dumb down the introduction too much. The Fediverse is not a centralised medium, and to participate in it, its users should understand that, analogous to how you would instruct people before using motor vehicles. Some things are just essential and need to be taught. Not teaching the stuff doesn't make it disappear. If some people cannot get behind the idea, then either find novel, intuitive ways of conveying it, or just accept that they cannot be a part of the Fediverse.
I've seen people using Voyager for a year and not even knowing what their instance is. They seem content, vote, post just like on Reddit.
People can drive a car without knowing what type of engine it is. They turn the wheel, it turns.