I was invited to comment here by u/BlazeAlt on Reddit last week regarding ways to lower the barriers to joining the Fediverse for average users — so here I go.
I'm sure a lot of this has been discussed ad nauseam, but I do have some specific starting suggestions at the end.
With corporate, single-instance social media, there's one place you go sign up, and you're in. You can find things that interest you with a simple search, and you can find people you know either by their names (Facebook) or by a very simple handle ([at]nickname). And if you're trying to build up an online identity — say, for your new podcast — if you're handle is unique enough you can end each episode with "and you can find us at MyNewPodcast on all the socials!"
Federated social media requires you to choose an instance before you can even sign up. But...
[average user voice]
- What the hell's an "instance"?
- How do I choose one?
- Why do I have to choose one?
- What do their names mean?
- What does the instance I choose say about me? -Does choosing one over another have any effect on the experience I will have?
- How does someone on another instance find me?
- How do I find someone on another instance?
- How do I find topics on another instance? -Does my choice of instance affect my access to those topics?
- Are the rules different on each instance?
- Who sets the rules?
- Where do I find them?
- What if I want to change instances?
- Will anyone be able to find me?
- How will they know I'm still me?
[/end average user voice]
Federated social media also requires weirdly complicated handles. [average user voice]
- Why are there two @ signs?
- What does it mean if there's a "!" instead of a "@" at the beginning?
- What the hell are all these weird domain names?
- Why can't I be just [at]TheSameHandleIUsedOnTwitter?
- If I'm trying to create an online identity, what's to stop someone from using [at]MyHandle[at]SomeOtherInstance.url and posing as me?
- What's the Lemmy equivalent of a blue check?
- If there isn't one, how can anyone be sure someone on Lemmy saying they're me really is me? -I mean, other than starting my own instance with recognizable name — but then I have to learn how to host my own instance.
[/end average user voice]
To be clear: I'm not literally asking these questions. I'm just illustrating some of the hurdles to adoption I described above, and some of the ways in which federated social media is exponentially more complicated than corporate social media.
As for solutions, I don't have an all-encompassing proposal at the moment. But a good place to start would be to agree upon a single default instance for new users to sign up, so that instead of being faced with "first choose an instance," it would be...
Welcome to Lemmy.URL, where you can join Lemmy communities for any topic, all over the world! What do you want your username to be?
- [____________]
OK, do you want your username to use a common lemmy "instance," like...
- [ ] ____________ [at] lemmy.URL
- [ ] ____________ [at] lemm.ee
- [ ] ____________ [at] etc.
OR would you like more custom username connected to a particular Lemmy community, like...
- [ ] ____________ [at] sci-fi-fans.url
- [ ] ____________[at] knittingnuts.url
- [find Lemmy instances where your username is available]
- [I know which Lemmy instance I want to join first]
Choosing a community-based username doesn't affect how you use Lemmy — no matter what community you chose, you'll have access to all the same content, communities, users, and feeds.
The [find Lemmy instances] button would lead to a page where you check off various areas of interest to then get a curated subset of relevant instances with a reasonable amount of information about them to help new users select one.
The [I know which instance] button would have you fill in the name of the instance, check if your username is available, then take you to that sign-up page.
So...something akin to join-lemmy.org, but with a flow closers to what I've described above, with very few, easy, "common" default choices, and a little more help through the process of choosing a specialized instance (if you want one).
This onboarding suggestion doesn't solve most of the problems/questions in my bullet lists (ideas still forming), but it would help prevent what happened to me the first few times I looked into Lemmy, which was that as soon as I saw I had to choose an instance before I did anything else — with pretty much zero information on what that meant or how it would affect my use of Lemmy — I said, "I don't have the time for this."
BTW, as I write this, my first Lemmy post, I will also add that the comment fields need to be WYSIWYG for if Lemmy ever hopes to be populated by refugees from Reddit, etc. Creating the quote section above was a huge pain in the ass, that required multiple rounds of [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit] [Preview] [Edit].
Food for thought. Cheers.
I'm a technophile, been in IT 30+ years now, wrote my first programs in Fortran on punched cards.
I had these same questions, and had to search the web for them, as none of the instances I found had this info up front. Just a generic "create an account page".
Lemmy suffers from the same issue lots if tech does - it's driven by tech people, and we are notorious for assuming other people know what we know, plus, we'll be damned if we're gonna write any more effing documentation.
Ya want more people, gotta at least explain this stuff on the sign up page, hell, explain it everywhere...always have a link to "What in the world is this Lemmy thing?"
Your points are all correct, but I feel it's also important to remember that nobody owns and operates "Lemmy". It's entirely volunteer operated and while it has two full-time devs, they're paid by donations (and not very much). There is no budget or UX/UI department to do A/B onboarding testing or anything.
What I'm saying is that if there is something you feel needs changing nobody would stop you (in fact they would welcome you!) from rolling up your sleeves and trying to address it (like @[email protected] is doing with this community)!
Lemm.ee has this post linked in the sidebar: https://lemm.ee/post/37715
Fedecan, who manages Lemmy.ca has this nice guide linked in the sidebar as well: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
LW has a Getting Started post in the sidebar: https://support.lemmy.world/quickstart/
Not sure how to make those posts more visible than they currently are
Some of those are relatively decent explainers, but what's needed is simplification of the whole onboarding process and UX. Having to read a 2000-word treatise on the Fediverse doesn't solve the problem of the Fediverse being confusing in the first place. :)
To me, the solution is a streamlined onboarding, like I've proposed, driving most people toward one or two common, popular instances where they can just sign up and just find posts that interest them — then let them/help them discover how to further explore once they've got the hang of it.
You can't read about how to use Lemmy any more than you can read about how to ride a bike. And yet, most of the pople trying to drive Lemmy adoption are explaining, explaining, explaining instead of trying to make it simple.
I'm not saying those explainers shouldn't exist. I'm saying they only help people who want to understand Lemmy rather than helping people who just want somewhere to go for a feed of interesting community topics.
There's a need for balance between conciseness and details.
As you know, I usually go with
The issue is that if you only provide this explanation, people don't really understand why they should switch to what looks like a less populated Reddit while Reddit works fine for them .
The main feature of Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed vs Reddit is that nobody owns the website. You can tell that to potential new joiners. But it might confuse them even more. "What do you mean, nobody owns the website? Who operates it, then? Who pays the bills?" At that point, you might have to explain, even briefly, what is federation, otherwise you might just come off as a "trust me, I tell you it's better, but I won't tell you why"
IMO it's gatekeeping. I got the feeling there's a group in the threadiverse that don't want reddit refugees.
To them, it's a feature, not a bug
Lemm.ee has this post linked in the sidebar: https://lemm.ee/post/37715
Fedecan, who manages Lemmy.ca has this nice guide linked in the sidebar as well: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
LW has a Getting Started post in the sidebar: https://support.lemmy.world/quickstart/
Not sure how to make those posts more visible than they currently are
From my 10 year reddit experience, hardly anyone reads the sidebar until shoved down the throat.
I'm expecting the same from recent reddit refugees.
Although one could argue having a DM pop in right after sign up and they would ignore it as well. Projection from me, but that's what I did when I subbed to a subreddit that has a welcoming DM. I don't doubt others do to.
To the defense of the me turned instances, there's only so much admins can do. Leading a horse to the water and all, as the saying goes