If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.
My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”
For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.
You must log in or register to comment.
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 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.
The difference is that the email provider you chose won’t make it so you can’t send an email to your friends because your providers don’t talk to one another.
Well, it’s meant as an introductory paragraph. I think such a general paragraph should not go to those lengths since the vast majority won’t be facing that issue. Most large instances that you would recommend for first timers are federated well enough that at least the civilised part of Lemmy is very accessible. I think that with:
- sensible defaults/suggestions
- easy to understand intro
- a help/link to a detailed article
you cover enough for users who can’t be bothered, who want to be informed, and those who want to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.
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.
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
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?
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.
They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the
Lazy assnew users with the option to manually join any instances.eh.
