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.

  • rako@piefed.socialEnglish
    392·
    28 days 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)

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      28 days 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.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      41·
      28 days 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.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    231·
    28 days ago

    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.

  • cRazi_man@lemm.eeEnglish
    14·
    28 days 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·
      28 days 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.

      • concrete_baby@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        28 days 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

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
          4·
          28 days 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
            2·
            28 days 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.

            • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
              2·
              28 days ago

              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 :)

      • Endmaker@ani.socialEnglish
        4·
        28 days 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.

        • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          28 days 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).

        • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          28 days 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?

      • cRazi_man@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        28 days 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.

  • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    131·
    28 days ago

    "Lemmy has 47k monthly active users

    Feel free if you have any questions"

    Edit: voyager link

  • Glitterkoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    28 days 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.

  • .Donuts@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    28 days 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.

  • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    114·
    28 days ago

    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.

    • curry@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      28 days ago

      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.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    28 days 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.

  • nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    28 days ago

    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.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    3·
    28 days 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.

  • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    28 days 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
    3·
    28 days 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.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    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:

    • What service are you looking for?
    • Where are you located?
    • What languages do you speak?
    • What are your interests?

    This is just what I’d do if someone asked.me about joining the Fediverse and should help minimise decision paralysis.

  • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    28 days 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.

    • nutomic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      28 days ago

      Who gets to decide which instances match that description? Everyone will come up with a slightly different list.