The email analogy is really… boring.
Full disclosure, this idea is for a Lemmy client I’ve been toying around with making. I’ve gotten a bit in my head and would to run an idea by everyone.
The challenge:
Onboard people onto Lemmy in a way that makes sense to people that understands Fediverse and explains it well enough that typical social media users will understand it too
My onboarding flow idea.
As you read this, think of CARROT weather, an app with a funny personality.
You are an alien creature exploring the Lemmy Verse, a federation of social planets. You must chose a home planet, then you are free to explore its local communities or any of the communities in the lemmy federation of planets
I might give the alien creature a name. TBD.
Is this stupid?
Remaining challenges:
- I suspect a guiding the user to select the same “home planet” if they log out could be an issue.
- Should I explain that not all planets live in the same Federation? I’m thinking no.
Would love to reinforce this with animations that really drive the idea home. Almost like cut scenes from a video game. But that is beyond my area of expertise, for now.
I like it but I really think we spend too much time explaining the home instance. We should put a lot less emphasis on it because it’s stressful to people. Just invite them to join your home instance and they can change in the future if they want.
Very much agree with this, I think people really overcomplicate it.
“It’s like reddit, but community build and community run.”
And they you can just invite them to your instance
Remember this is an onboarding flow for an app. It has to capture the user and explain things well without losing their attention.
What I want to avoid is “hey, select an instance from this menu”. “Wtf is an instance?”
Voyager gets around this by defaulting to an instance (lemmy.ee I think) before you log in, but my plan was to have them select when they launch the app for the first time.
Picking a default instance seems like the right approach.
I just say it’s basically reddit but it’s community built and run instead of owned by a big company. And then if they wanna know more about how it works, I can explain the concept of it being distributed and whatnot
I very much agree with just inviting people to join your instance. Don’t overcomplicate it.
Funny personalities don’t make people laugh, and therefore aren’t really funny. They’re more patronizing and infantalizing.
Should I explain that not all planets live in the same Federation? I’m thinking no.
I think you’ve already gone astray from really explaining the (relatively simple) relationship between federated instances. It’s already confusing because you’re trying to make it fun.
I say, give your app whatever functionality you think is best, and the aesthetic/style/personality you think is best, but don’t worry about making the fediverse “fun.” Fun descriptions actually distract from the information.
Short answer: Yes, this is stupid.
yea that makes no sense and should be considered insulting to the listener
Alternative: just send them to World and do not even mention the whole federation thing. Federation is essentially a power feature for a few people who care about it.
For normies, the real killer USP will be something much simpler: no ads.
This. Pick and instance and roll with it. Most ppl won’t notice nor care about the federation.
What I could do is pick an instance at random and see if I can write that instance to app storage that persists on reinstall. That way, they don’t lose their account by not remembering what instance. That doesn’t solve the web.
The issue is password managers save username and password, but I need to save instance as a 3rd value. I wonder if I can prepend the instance to the front of their username in a way that the password manager picks it up, then slice it off later when they log in. But that’s kinda hacky.
Usernames include the instance, @moseschrute@lemmy.world
I’m so dumb. That literally solves so many problems. I just have to confirm that works with the login endpoint. Thanks!Edit: I’m not dumb. You can’t login with your instance at the end of the username. I also need to check if @ is a valid username character.
You know, I would pick instances that aren’t federated with hexbear or Lemmygrad.
I don’t think the fediverse needs a fancy explanation that is non-boring. Either you care about federation and the decentralized control of the fediverse and it makes sense to you. Or you don’t care and those features then become roadblocks to getting on boarded.
I don’t understand the difficulty in understanding the fediverse. It’s just linked instances (servers), that can share posts if they want to. Pick one you like and sign up. Done.
If that’s too hard for people they probably don’t belong here.
