Onboarding experience needs to be simpler for mass adoption
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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.
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Also everyone wants different driving experiences, the driving experience varies widely from clubtry 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 wife variety of reasons...
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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.
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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!"
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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.
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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?
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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
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I'd also like to know
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But there's this website that also tells you if other instances are defederated from yours: defed.xyz
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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
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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
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voyager is available as a web app if you’d rather use your browser vger.app
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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.
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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.
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Tried it a year ago and didn't like it.
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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.
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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.
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They should just add an automatic joining option based by location for the
Lazy assnew users with the option to manually join any instances. -
I'm not sure I'd like that. I kind of like there being a technological filter. It prevents the Fediverse from turning into Facebook or X. The public Internet has been around and part of society for 40 years now. If you still don't get it in 2025, that ain't everyone else's fault. People using the Internet in the 90s had to deal with way more than just figuring out what an "instance" is.
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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?
