BTW, if anyone here has any connection with Voyager, let them know that their sign-up/application page needs different coloring. On my phone, the “Application answer” box — that the page says must be filled out — is literally invisible because the box is black, and the background is…basically black. I had to tap, and tap, and tap, and tap around before I got a cursor.

OK, so here’s the thing: I follow this link…

https://lemm.ee/post/33870928 …and I see that it’s from 10 months ago, and I see above you say “they’re still there, keeping the community active” — which is nice to hear… But looking at that page, I don’t have the slightest idea how to get from that post to the rest of that community. Apparently, I click “thebirdspapaya_snark@lemmy.ca” at the top of the sidebar — but that’s not readily apparent. There’s no name for the community that I can see — only what looks like an email addy, which is meaningless to me as a casual visitor. And while you say the community is “active,” when I do click that link, I see only 4 posts in the last month. Those posts do seem to have pretty good engagement, and lots of activity today, so I guess weekly threads are just how they roll.

But it doesn’t, on the surface, look like a place where there’s engaging new content on the regular. And the fact that the community name looks like an email address is just confusing — especially since both the community’s header and subhead are exactly the same address.

I can see how to you this might look like thriving example of average users on Lemmy. But what I see is everything that makes Lemmy confusing and off-putting.

There needs to be some kind of group effort — some kind of committee or something. Create couple general instances “co-owned” by 50 admins from 50 instances — something like that.

How the handful of “introductory” instances are created, chosen, and maintained is definitely an issue that needs to be worked out. But they could be instances that are deliberately as general-interest as possible, but feature content (possible in different colors?) from other instances. New users get their bearings, get a taste for what’s out there, and slowly wander away from the “museum lobby” to start exploring different “galleries.”

Ooo. I feel a metaphor coming on! going to do some brainstorming here:

• Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, et al are like a huge Walmart — you can find a little of everything there, but the experience is uninspiring and uniform, and the people running it are all about the profit, not about quality or a good experience, or customer care, and a single point of entry and exit
• The Fediverse is like a big farmer’s market — a lot of independent merchants coming together with their different booths, and food trucks, and stages, and all kinds of different merchandise and services. You can come into the farmer’s market from a bunch of different directions, and wander around or make a beeline for your favorite booths and hang out there all day.

Of course, that’s somewhat undercuts my suggestion of having a general-interest instance, but maybe it’s a farmer’s market with a main entrance or something…

/work in progress

That’s not bad. The graphics are immediately distracting, and if you don’t understand what they’re meant to symbolize, they’re just annoying. I still think a just a handful of general instances is a better idea because most people don’t think of social media a place they go for one or two interests, but a place they go for everything including those interests. Having said that, it’s a good flow…until you drill down far enough for it to become a cul-de-sac problem:

• Entertainment — OK, sounds good
• Movies & TV — so far so good
• Star Trek (and nothing else) — well, no, so…now what? I guess this isn’t for me

Yes, you can go back to the previous screen, but now you know there’s nothing here specific to your interests, so if you do stick around, you’re stuck just casting about for something to latch on to.

This is why it would be better to just have a couple general instances, get people onboard, then have them start exploring.

Good idea!

Federation can be explained at the 10,000-foot level by just saying something like, “You know how Reddit subs are moderated by volunteer from the community, and Wikipedia is edited by volunteers? Lemmy has volunteers all the way down. It’s coded by volunteers, it’s hosted by hundreds of volunteers, and all those independent instances connect together to make a whole that serves the same purpose as a Reddit or Facebook.” That’s just off the top of my head. I was toying with a a simile about cruise ships vs. a flotilla of fishing boats, but that one got a way from me. I’ll come up with better descriptions later. It’s something I’m fairly good at.

Very much agree with this. Multiple onboarding instances that all work basically the same way, routing new users to them based on geography and language to start, and maybe when the sign-up in complete, the first post they see is an automated very basic primer that includes something about that Lemmy isn’t owned by anyone, let alone by a giant corporation that wants to collect and sell their identity.

Who manages this, and who defines the criteria?

That’s exactly the kind of thing the Lemmy community needs to figure out together. There doesn’t have to be just one, but there should only be a handful, and they should work basically the same way. Ideally some consortium or committee would come together to agree on a simplified protocol for onboarding. I realize that’s easier said than done in the early, Wild West days of Lemmy. But if the Fediverse is going to take off and undermine the billionaire-run social media networks, it needs to be easy enough for your grandma to understand it, and be able to sign up and get around without getting lost of confused.

Actually, that Reddit post was exactly the thing that got me thinking about this in the first place. That is not a post for average people. It starts out with an attempt at a simple explanation — “No need to understand federation, servers, or any technical jargon” — but very quickly devolves into exactly those things it said you didn’t need to understand. For example, it uses the word “server” 21 times without ever explaining what the word means. And, as I mentioned elsewhere, explainers shouldn’t be necessary. What’s needed is a cleaner, simpler UX. I’ve started by suggesting a clearer, simpler onboarding process. The rest I’m still noodling.

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.

I’m sorry, but you’ve completely missed the point of this post. I wasn’t literally asking those questions (and I did literally say exactly that). That’s why each set of questions was couched in an [average user voice] “tag”. The point is that these are things nobody needs to ask when signing up for Facebook, etc. They are barriers to anyone to joining Lemmy for who isn’t already highly tech-literate.