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.

  • .Donuts@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    12 hours ago

    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.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    8 hours ago

    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

  • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    8 hours ago

    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?

  • pound_heap@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    3 hours ago

    I think this should be baked into client apps.

    The popular email analogy works here too. When you are setting up a new phone, you get a default email client app that offers you to log in or sign up to the default email service. And usually user can choose to log in with their service if choice, for which they have to sign up in advance outside the client app.

    Having a default Fediverse client on new phones is not happening anytime soon, but if someone’s mother installs a client app from the store link sent to them by a family member, she can get similar default onboarding experience.

    Default instance can be picked by geo location, or maybe the less used out of 3 most popular instances. Or even maybe an instance ran by the client app developers.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    7 hours ago

    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.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyzEnglish
    41·
    13 hours ago

    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.

  • Glitterkoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    12 hours ago

    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.

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
      32·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Glitterkoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        Yes, very much in favor of sensible defaults for first timers. Most frontends/apps support multiple accounts anyway so changing/adding more later on really shouldn’t be a problem

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      10 hours ago

      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.

      • Glitterkoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        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.

      • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        No, that’s not true. The big email providers absolutely block smaller and personal hosts. There’s a whole system of features and options you need to install and support in order to get through the door, thanks to spammers.

  • cRazi_man@lemm.eeEnglish
    211·
    12 hours ago

    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.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      12 hours ago

      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.

      • cRazi_man@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        Makes sense once there’s enough of a userbase…but currently there isn’t a huge amount of content of interest on Lemmy and sticking to a local instance just limits this even more. Currently I have to stick to “all” as even areas of subscription can run out of content with a quick scroll session.

      • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
        6·
        11 hours ago

        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.

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          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?

        • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          10 hours ago

          This isn’t always the case though. That’s just one example of difference between instances.

          Instances can change everything, from being able to view nsfw content, if you can downvote or not, and who you can talk to (big difference between instances federated with ML/grad/hexbear and not. (And then the BeeHaw Defeds make a difference too).

      • concrete_baby@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        11 hours ago

        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

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          11·
          8 hours ago

          But it’s better from many angles that they are. Discoverability alone. Consistency of instance level rules. Theme.

          It just makes sense on some level that sports communities would be on a sports-focused website, and such a website is where people whose primary interest is in discussing sports would have their accounts. From there, they can follow other topics they’re interested in, but their primary focus is still on, I don’t know, basketball or whatever.

          Same for cars. Some of the most active forums on the internet are car ownership forums. If you could access CivicForums from IoniqForums, then it would make sense to do so. Much more sense than finding people discussing Hondas on lemmy.world and Hyundais on sh.itjust.works.

          Just because you don’t give a shit where these discussions are taking place, doesn’t mean it makes sense for people to just shit them out anywhere.

        • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          10 hours ago

          There’s no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.

          It’s nice to have country or language-communities in the local feed of one instance. Feddit.org or jlai.lu are good examples.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
          2·
          2 hours ago

          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.

          • concrete_baby@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            1 hour ago

            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.

  • Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    11 hours ago

    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.

    • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      92·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Mac@mander.xyzEnglish
        31·
        9 hours ago

        I’m not sure your car analogy is a great one since most drivers are awful, don’t respect the vehicle nor the responsibility they carry by piloting one, and tens of thousands of people die in car accidents every year. lol

        Maybe we shouldn’t let any idiot drive a car…

        • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 hour ago

          Also everyone wants different driving experiences, the driving experience varies widely from country to country and state/province to state/province, and everyone wants different features and capabilities in their cars.

          Cars are a great comparison, although there are also people who don’t drive for a wide variety of reasons…

  • rako@piefed.socialEnglish
    501·
    12 hours ago

    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)

    • Thatuserguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      82·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
        4·
        8 hours ago

        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.

        • rako@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          5 hours ago

          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

      • rako@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        Thanks ! I’m active on the fediverse under other accounts, but I wanted to try the piefed experience as The Devs intended

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
      20·
      11 hours ago

      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.

      • Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        71·
        11 hours ago

        Default way to access the platform for the average potential news joiners is mobile

        Voyager, Thunder, Artic provide good defaults.

          • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            8 hours ago

            What is wrong with apps? I get a lot of great features from the one I use that I don’t get with the web client.

            • multi-communities
            • user tagging
            • drafts
            • keyword blocking
            • themes
            • customizeable ui
            • etc
            • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              7 hours ago

              Most of them space things out in ways I don’t like and I hate gestures because I do things accidentally all the time. I can keyword block througb ublock origjn, although I do understand it is easier in most apps.

              User tagging is the only feature I feel like I’m missing on default mobile lemmy.

              I have also hit app fatigue. Just fucking sick to death of having a massive number of separate things that could be done through the browser.

              • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                7 hours ago

                Fair enough reasons. If you’re doing custom ublock filters and such, you’re likely able to tweak a lot to how you want it without any outside help from an app.

                I see in you rother comment to someone you haven’t tried Voyager in a year. I haven’t tried that one recently, but I will say even over the last 6-8 months, so many of these apps have really matured from where they were a year or so ago. Very significantly so IMO. I think Summit is really the sleeper champ of the apps for my use case, and the dev is super helpful and responsive.

                To each their own though. I love we have such great variety in UI here. At this point, there should be a couple viable options for near anyone.

                • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  6 hours ago

                  Yeah, I loved rif as the mobile app for reddit because reddit’s mobile site has always been trash and the rif experience was so much better. I’m glad there are options for those who want them, and the desire for user tagging might lead me to trying something out eventually.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      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.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Decentralization is an essential element of the Fediverse.

    I don’t get how you would get around choosing a server. Maybe make the recommendation algorithm easier? Like, ask clearer questions, ask fewer questions?

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      I think there could at least be some kind of button or check box that says, “I don’t need to know how the Fediverse works, just sign me up!” and it would randomly choose one of the big instances.

    • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      A part of the problem is that there are multiple similar general topic instances/sites to choose from. If there were more dissimilar, specific topic instances/sites it might help reduce the choice paralysis a little.

      It might even better help highlight the perks of federation, as it would be easier to be like, “See, even though you’re on cuteanimals.posts, you can still check out and comment on stuff besides cute animals if you want.”

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Your mother would ask you what the hell an “instance” was and then think that picking one meant she couldn’t look at posts from any others.

  • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.todayEnglish
    2·
    8 hours ago

    This could be solved with a:

    Can’t make up your mind?

    Click here to choose a random general topic instance. Don’t worry, if you want to switch later you can.

    • dantheclamman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      They can’t really switch later, though. At least, all of their submissions and comments stay at the old account

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
    7·
    11 hours ago

    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?

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
      42·
      11 hours ago

      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