Also found in a !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com post by @biltong@piefed.co.za : https://piefed.co.za/c/fedibridge/p/22233/post-on-r-buyfromeu-on-the-recent-surge-of-users-to-piefed
I like the way Voyager does it:
DeltaChat also has a very easy onboarding process: you just put your name, and that’s it. The app creates the password in the background and allows you to switch servers easily. That really helps with onboarding new joiners.
Piefed.zip could be a nice default choice. If there are others you see, feel free to suggest.
We should add a button that says “I don’t care, choose for me” that chooses a random server. Some of them will end up on Chinese Piefed, but most will be happy with their choice, and hopefully we can give the other two buttons good names that help people choose.
Judging by the discussion OP links to the text should probably read something like “I don’t understand the question, just sign me up”.
And those users need to be signed up to the site they are currently on, because that’s where they will return to to sign in later on. If you forward them somewhere else they’ll have no idea what’s going on.
It’s incredible how terrifying the prospect of a choice can apparently be to people who have grown up without any.
The problem isn’t the choice itself – it’s that we don’t understand what we’re gaining or losing when picking a server. There’s no explanation of what a server is on the selection page. Does it really not matter which server I choose? Are the communities the same across all servers? If someone posts something on one server, will it be synced to all servers? My wife doesn’t know what the word “server” means, and I think most people are the same. Or are we expecting only IT folks to use the platform?
In case you are interested in the full story:
It does not matter much to the user, but it does matter a little. Which is also why it gets hard to find a good solution.
The communities are the same, and posts are synchronized. However, each server (also known as instance, to make it more complicated) is responsible for its own moderation.
Say for example that it turns out quokk.au is run by the absolute worst people, and that they start encouraging vile content and hate speech on their platform. Or simply that they don’t moderate, and a lot of bad actors start signing up there and posting spam. Other servers might say in response that they don’t want to keep seeing content from quokk.au, as bad content keeps coming from there. Of course that would affect the users of that instance.
To a degree, these problems can result from size. Lemmy.world is the biggest instance of Lemmy, and while it’s generally decently moderated they have of course had greater challenges making sure their user base behaves decently as a result. So we want users to spread out so that each instance can have human moderators overseeing a manageable amount of human users.
This means that your instance can matter: if it is particularly poorly managed, you might be cut off from parts of the network as a result. And on the flip side, if you join an instance with stricter moderation, you might see less questionable content from elsewhere. Typical divides is whether Russia propaganda networks like lemmygrad.ml are blocked form joining the network, and whether porn is allowed.
The other big reason we want people to go to different instances is to keep the network healthy. If (almost) all of us are on the same site, that gets expensive to run, and leaves too much responsibility and power in the hands of the people running that site. If something happens to it it’s a huge problem, if moderation fails it’s a huge problem, and it’s just generally a weakness. We want people to spread out to a bunch of different sites so that the network itself is robust.
Over on Mastodon, an anarchist instance hosted in America had the police raid their physical location and steal all the data off their server. Obviously we’re also less vulnerable to these types of attacks if we spread out, though more often the problems are more boring and ordinary.
So in effect, when people ask to sign up at piefed.social, the good people at piefed.social wants people to join the network, but preferably the load should be put on some other server in that network in order to distribute the risk and workload, and strengthening the network as such. This is not primarily for the immediate benefit of the individual users—though it will materialize as such though more human moderation and admins that have the capacity to actually care about them—but for the benefit of the network.
So that’s why we struggle to find a good way to ask people to pick a server. The choice is not super important for the user—the recommended instances are all decent, and the little information provided should be enough to make an informed enough decision—but it’s important to the network that some users make a choice.
If you have any recommendations how to make this easier while distributing users around the different servers, feedback and ideas are super welcome.
Something like that could be a good place to utilize “trusted instances.” So, instead of just choosing a random instance of all of the piefediverse, it chooses a random trusted instance.
The feedback in this thread overall has been helpful.
Asking “what topics are you interested in” / “what communities do you like” and “what’s important to you” would also help.
Also, “I’m a returning user who did not like the first choice X because of Y” should be an option.
You didn’t like the moderation? Too many defederations? Wrong kind of weird? Bad server performance?
Then try to pick something for them that fixes those problems
This would also require many instances to set out in detail their location, focus etc and have a category system that recognises that.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances has exactly that.
The fediseer can help here both with the trusted instances and with finding servers based on tags
Trusted instances would have to be set on an instance by instance basis else the old accusations would come out of preloading bias.
This is already the case. Each instance sets their own trusted instances. There are no instances trusted by default. In
/admin/instancesif you click edit in an instance’s row, then you can check the box that it is a trusted instance. Also, these are one-sided relationships. Instance A can mark Instance B as trusted, but the converse is not required.
Sorry, but some of the people in that thread arguing about federation (something they still don’t understand) are not interested in finding out how it works.
You could literally make them an account on piefed.social, and they would still be confused on account of all of the communities and usernames from different servers.
I truly think it’s best to not put too much stock in one obstinate user arguing about it when 10 others quietly sign up and try it out with no hand-holding needed.
There is definitely some bad faith among a few of those commenters.
However, we should probably try to still improve the signup process. As I said in the OP, Voyager’s works already better, and that’s a Fediverse app.
One user in particular. And nothing will ever satisfy them.
“I don’t want a solution. I just want to be mad” if you are familiar with that mini comic
I just skimmed through the whole thread. That one user was the most vocal, but there were dozens of other people making similar comments.
We all have families that are not tech-savvy. My sister or my parents can use email just fine because the onboarding was easy, with defaults values that can just be used by most of the users without them having to make any choice.
I used Voyager’s as an example, but DeltaChat works the same: you just put your name, and then you can start chatting. And it’s federated and self-hostable, but it just hides it by default to make the sign up process easy
This is the point.
People signing up have just landed here, and have never heard or understood a thing about how this works. The community in here is talking like, oh well, if they don’t get it, that’s there problem. Well, no, that’s poor design. Unless that’s the intention and this is a niche type thing you’re aiming to create in here for coders or a community into geeky things?
But if the intention is to create a platform that is open and accessible to all, a Reddit of sorts, I feel something needs to be revisited because it’s super confusing when you just land here.
A platform, website should be designed to work like Google, or Apple, something your Grsndmother could click on and use.
I think the problem is that there’s two competing problems here: The federated structure of the fediverse and good onboarding. We certainly can improve onboarding, but trying to bypass it and just throw people into an instance sort of negates what the point of federation is. And I don’t think it would stop many people confused now, from being confused.
This is one of the problems – I saw your comment on piefed.social, but your link points to piefed.zip. When I clicked it, I couldn’t upvote or comment because I’m not logged in. Is the post you linked available on piefed.social? Why does your link go to another instance - are you on that one now? I tried changing the link to https://piefed.social/post/410688, but it doesn’t exist. Does it really not matter which server I choose? Will I be able to see posts from any user on any server while using my chosen server?
“I’m just happy to be here” is a fun archetype but unfortunately not that common lol
On the other hand, sometimes it might just be easier to go with the flow: https://piefed.zip/post/410688 . Seems like things are not that confusing is you just enjoy what there is without digging too much.
From experience, there seems to be three types of users
- people who are okay to just click on a few things and see how it goes (see the link above)
- people who are okay to look at the deep concepts to understand them (most of the people around here)
- the last one is like in the screenshot in the original post: they don’t know about the concepts, but instead of just letting go, they keep complaining that they don’t understand every single thing that is mentioned.
You guys are like mechanics in here, talking about cars under the hood. You’re coders, logic people, not design minded.
The best products are when form - meets function. The two must combine. Either one on its own it fails.
This thing is never going to work out. It’s fundamentally flawed. It’s a jumbled up mess.
Counter point: Bluesky is a well designed product where form meets function. However , Twitter is still the vastly more active micro blogging platform. The network effect is still at play there, and the established platform usually takes it all, even if alternatives have equivalent or better designs.
As the original post acknowledges, there are improvements to be made to Piefed. But let’s not forget that even a very sell design product will struggle to replace an established platform.
We all have families that are not tech-savvy.
I do want a replacement for Facebook where my family can share vaguely racist updates in exchange for also sharing baby pictures.
But I’m not willing to give this place up, in exchange for it. LoL.
Yeah, realistically, just get people onto a server (we can bike shed about which is best for that later) and then when they learn more about what they are/imply and what different ones are like they can move if they want to. I’m sure I’m preaching the choir here, but everything can be pretty easily migrated to your new account. The only thing that won’t be is your old posts/comments and replies to those won’t end up in your new inbox, but that’s pretty minor.
Mastodon is working on addressing this on their side, by trying to recommend instances geographically close to the user. Perhaps a similar process could be used here?
Yes, that’s what PieFed does now.
It would have been great if Mastodon had that sorted out before Elon bought Twitter. In my assessment, the confusion of picking a server is what made Bluesky win out over Mastodon as the Twitter replacement of choice
Honestly if this extremely low barrier keeps out the Facebook crowd then it’s doing God’s work.
Keep it as-is specifically as a barrier to entry for reddit user “icankillpenguins”
Is there a way to make it easier for literally everyone else but conversely making it significantly more complicated specifically for reddit user “icankillpenguins”?
They can try
This person is bordering on willfully obstinate. Any time you sign up for a service there are choices to be made. Social media will ask you to pick people or subjects to follow, sites will want you to pick communications preferences, etc.
Pick one server. Make the account. Don’t like it? Pick another. It doesn’t matter, there’s no karma here to hoard. Abandon that account you don’t like. Pick three. It’s like people can’t handle the freedom of choice.
Modern Web has spoiled the average user. You never have to choose a server.
Need an account? Link your gmail/meta/whatever.
If there is a little bit of friction, the average user won’t use it because corpos made sure that everything is a one click setup. And Lemmy is different in that regard, a bit old school.
Making choices is inherently stressful. Particularly if you don’t know how much the choice matters. If your goal is to onboard as many people as possible (which it may well not be) then reducing the number of choices is always preferred.
It should just default to the last instance cm0002 commented from.
Unsure which I have more of on my block list, *moe communities, or cmbots.
even way back when there were less and people asked about people you blocked it was like. well half of them are alternates of one account so should really just be counted as one.
I’m an European so I shouldn’t agree I guess but I do. There should be a basic explanation on why a server has to be picked and having a “recommended” choice to pick could ease people in.
Gonna say it again, but I like there being a minor barrier to entry on Lemmy. Like, if you can’t even be bothered to pick a server then we don’t want you here. If you want your social media to be spoon fed to you, fuck right off. If you want a reddit or Facebook clone, you’re part of the problem.
Having a basic understanding of the Fediverse should be a prerequisite. Having to choose a server is a feature, a bare minimum. And as much as I want to see more content and more engagement here, I don’t want to see it dumbed down either.
I don’t like the idea of a default server, because someday it will be the wrong one.
Much like recommending Linux I’m sure to specify “Linux Mint” and when I recommend XMPP I’m sure to specify jabber.org.
But it sounds like we could just be pointing newbies to Voyager or Piefed for awhile? I like various apps having a default, because we can always start recommending different app, if there’s issues.
The default choice is whatever instance you’re currently on.
From https://piefed.social/auth/instance_chooser:
“I don’t know, help me” scrolls you down to look at the instances (about 1cm, lol). I’m sure THAT could be more helpful!
Maybe the default join should be bigger, and leave the other options for people who really want to have a look.
Actually, now that I think about it, and based on the Voyager screenshot above, maybe it should be something like
- Big visible button “Join CurrentServer”
- Less visible button “Pick another server”
And then only if people pick the second option, then then list appears.
That would make it less confusing for new joiners (they would just go the default path), and still gives people the option to look around.
Yes, I agree
Voyager has damn good UX, we can essentially copy most of what they’re doing and it’ll be good
The problem with your suggestion is that it creates centralization. See Mastodon.social, matrix.org, etc.
The solution, I have posted before, is to ask instances to be opted into a directory, and then present the user with a random suggestion from that list. There should be some basic criteria like uptime and a proper set of rules laid out of course.
Lemmy.ml isn’t the largest Lemmy instance
Piefed.social will probably go the same way once rimu decides to shut down the registrations to keep hardware costs manageable.
Your suggestion would be doable if there was another long established, up-to-date , generalist, non-flagship Piefed instance, but as of now I only know Piefed.zip
Piefed.ca is Canadian focused
Blahaj is queer focused
Piefed.world is vastly outdated
Anarchist.nexus is, well, anarchist
Isn’t Lemmy.ml the default in Jerboa?
As it says in OP, none of that matters.
I’m not @ada@piefed.blahaj.zone , but I’m quite sure they prefer to avoid waves of new joiners from Reddit signing up on their instance without knowing it’s a queer safe space
We have an application process. If they don’t show recognition of the fact it’s a queer safe space, they don’t get approved. We’ve also got a matrix bot to help trusted users approve signups, so we can handle volume ok as well!
That makes sense
I used jerboa briefly and it didn’t make me use .ml
Good to know, I wasn’t sure anymore
Isn’t Lemmy.ml the default in Jerboa?
Okay, 1 app. Where is OP from Reddit looking? There’s no “Lemmy app”. Or “PieFed app”. That’s what matters.
I’m quite sure they prefer to avoid waves of new joiners
Then they can choose not to opt in.
Then they can choose not to opt in.
But then none of the instances I listed above would want to become a “default” instance except Piefed.zip
Again, if you can find me an updated, generalist, long established, non flagship instance besides Piefed.zip, I would be happy, but I don’t think there’s any unfortunately
none of the instances I listed above would want to become a “default” instance except Piefed.zip
Then .zip it is. For now. This is obviously a growing platform, but we should have a plan to decentralize for the future.
I can assure you that as soon as some ready-loaded, well designed and reliable piefed instances emerge that are ‘generalist’ in purpose I will promote them on piefed.social in an effort to spread the userbase.
I work in design and animation, is there somewhere I could contact directly about helping in terms of design and Ui?
I guess https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi
PieFed has its own chat rooms on Zulip. You can log in there with your piefed.social credentials.
@rimu@piefed.social and @wjs018@piefed.social are the main devs.
As someone else pointed out, Zulip is the place to chat
If you can code, the repo is below.
Great.
I’m not a coder, it’s the design interface, graphics, usability, layout that sort of stuff.
Also FYI there are other front-ends available such as https://blorpblorp.xyz/home / or https://vger.app/posts/piefed.social/all
What we mostly need is a front end dev.
Everybody kind of knows that the current interface is not ideal, but until we get someone able to code a better one, there won’t be much change unfortunately.
Ok, great, good to hear.
I do know someone who is a coder, and I will speak to him. I had asked him about Reddit, and what would be involved in creating an alternative.
Good news, thank you, let us know how it goes!
The Fediverse doesn’t need to optimise for appealing to the lowest common denominator.
PieFed.zip would make an excellent default (as long as the admins are okay with such).
Later, additional work could be done as people are suggesting - picking based on user ping, weighted by things like overall stability (itself influenced by aspects such as newness), and with a trusted filter to avoid bad actors - but we don’t seem really close to a need for that, I would guess, with the current levels of traffic? (It currently reports having only 164 MAUs, compared to PieFed.social’s 1775 and PieFed.ca’s 601.)
If PieFed.zip starts to become overwhelmed (although lemmy.zip never did? despite it being like the #5 instance with multiple thousands of MAUs, see https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and then the sidebar of https://lemmynsfw.com/ making it the real #2 despite not showing on the former list), then we could pick another instance to recommend as the default.
I suppose the main question, besides whether PieFed.zip’s admins are okay with this, is whether other instances would feel unfairly discriminated against? The other chief alternative, at least if the goal is to entice users from Reddit specifically, might be PieFed.world, although there are only 4 Topic areas listed at https://piefed.world/topics (and until recently I thought there were none) so I wonder how ready they would be for an influx if it were to happen immediately. Feddit.online gives me pause to see “Stability: Medium”, others such as PieFed.ca are more regional, quokk.au and Blåhaj PieFed etc. are more topical than general-purpose, and so on.
So that is why I think PieFed.zip seems a nearly unquestioned winner for now (though PieFed.world and Feddit.online might become more ready very soon), and then perhaps additional filters could be added at the top, to aid in picking e.g. regional or topical themed instances, like a series of questions asked of the user rather than having to simply read through the listing one by one.
Also, yeah remove the unhelpful I don’t know help me button, and I would add an explicit acknowledgement that those instances are sorted by ping? It really helps to know that one detail!! (Especially if someone is using a proxy, they may want to change those settings in such case.)
Edit: another thought, perhaps replace the icons that are not explained with more standardized and immediately recognizeable indicators, such as 2 green up arrows for rocketship 🚀, 1 up arrow for lightning bolt ⚡, etc.
As showed in the OP, Lemmy.zip is already the default for Voyager
I like the way that Voyager handles that as well, although one note there could be to change that from Lemmy.zip to PieFed.zip offering a smoother introduction for new joiners to the Threadiverse? (But that would be perhaps a post in the Voyager community !voyagerapp@lemmy.world rather than here.)
But also, I thought you were asking - and even if not then I am still suggesting - that perhaps we can borrow that same UX onboarding path by recommending PieFed.zip as a default on the webpage at https://piefed.social/auth/instance_chooser? Like, replace the unhelpful “I don’t know help me button” with one that says more simply “Join PieFed.zip”.
Your second paragraph is correct. I feel like having a “Sign me up on Piefed.zip” default button would drastically improve the workflow.
