The time to streamline Lemmy onboaring is now. Let's do it like mastodon did.
The time to streamline Lemmy onboaring is now. Let's do it like mastodon did.
Today we’re making signing up on Mastodon easier than ever before. We understand that deciding which Mastodon service provider to kick off your experience with can be confusing. We know this is a completely new concept for many people, since traditionally the platform and the service provider are on...
I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way. Combine this with server/instance selection analysis paralysis, and you get my point.
The linked mastodon blog post sums up my thoughts, but the TLDR is essentially this:
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't let dreams of decentralization interfere with the greater goal of achieving the network effect.
We should all be telling people to go to lemmy.ml and sign up. The devs should be too, and they should rethink/remove the questions and waiting period. Hell, just put a captcha. Discussions about servers and analogies to email as an example of federated service we all already use is a waste of breath. We shouldn't have barriers to entry.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn't ready yet, so desktop only.
https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin
I think this might be the better recommendation for newbies at the moment.
I think the main problem here is that there isn't a really accessible explanation of federation and how these social platforms differ from the other, larger options. There is lots of great documentation for interested users to acquaint themselves with, but it would be beneficial to have a more 'elevator pitch' version that can get people moving through the signup process with more confidence. Even just a short message saying: "hey, choosing your instance isn't as important as it looks right now, you'll be able to freely use any other instance once you sign up" could go a long way towards making on-boarding much smoother. Once a user is in the system, they can learn what details they care about through osmosis for the most part.
I do think that having a default instance would help with streamlining the on-boarding process, but I don't think that the idea aligns with the values of lemmy as a whole. It's important to keep services decentralized in order to keep things free and open.
I personally look at federation like email. Doesn't matter if I am using a Hotmail email address. I can still talk to everyone over at gmail, icloud, yahoo, Comcast etc....
email is the original federation service.
As a person new to federations, I have to admit that the mail analogy doesn't really answer or clarify much. Who decides what gets to go into a federation? Should everyone be in a single federation since otherwise there is no communication? Do I need a separate account per federation? Whats the practical limit on number of instances per federation?
I think first of all we need a really good FAQ.
A default instance would help people signup more easily, but afaik there's currently no way to migrate to another instance right? So this approach already causes problems on Mastodon but it seems like it would be even worse over here due to people then being "trapped" on whatever the default is.
You can't have a default server unless someone is ready to pay for it. (Idk how Mastodon does it.)
What I'd do is:
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have every instance list its most prevalent topics/communities/interests (technology, games, communism, memes...)
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when the user is signing up, have them select their interests
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try to find the ideal match. Let the user override if they want to, perhaps let them know if the community is tiny, requires approval etc, but other than that just show a "suggested instance: example.org, change link"
Mastodon is a company. A non-profit one, but they've had enough donations and funding for a while now to draw salaries for multiple people to the point that they were hiring earlier this year. The head of Mastodon even calls themselves the "CEO"! All of the instances that use mastodon software have to rely on their own donations from their own users. But mastodon, the central company, have enough money to hire and pay employees and run their own largest instance (by a long way) on the fediverse (which is not coincidentally the default instance to join in the app).
This is why it's insidious that they're brand has become so pervasive to the point where most don't know about the fediverse, only mastodon. It's heading toward a form of re-centralisation of some sort. And, with the current rate of user growth (checkout https://fedidb.org/), the majority of english-speaking mastodon users may in not too long a time be all on one central instance.
This would work well. Instance owners could add a few "tags" for things their instance is doing. Then a user could have a wizard-like experience that you could say "what are some things you're interested in?" and then it could give them some recommendations on servers to join based on that. With some big verbage that says "But don't worry, you can access everything else on Lemmy through here" and maybe display the blocklist too underneath it so they know what that server actively blocks.
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Oo, I hope this posts gains traction, you're totally right, although I speak from the perspective of someone who started out not knowing shit about fuck with federated social media, to being exclusively on it now.
i like mastodon's approach - its clean, simple, and easy to understand.
i think the fediverse is just a very hard concept for people to wrap their heads around if they aren't internet savvy or already knowledgable on these things. i think in general there needs to be an easier way to fully explain what it is and get it across to people.
lemmy should def adopt something similar here to mastodon. i think having a default server is smart and probably the right move (with the "Pick your own server" option or something similar right below, just like what Mastodon is doing, so users easily have the option), HOWEVER i think before that happens, lemmy does need to allow migrating and moving servers, and ik lemmy.ml is being overloaded really badly rn in general, so those issues probably need to be sorted too.
I think they need an easy wizard, some way to guide users to an instance they could use to sign in. Ask a couple questions and then bam here you are. The biggest issue then is "Well you don't go here to sign in now you use this url. " lemmy could add some sort of redirect though for known people?
I'm a new user, so my opinion counts as such. My first concern upon signing up was understanding which communities I was allowed to see from which instance. Maybe a page where people can search by communities first and then show them where they are hosted/federated could solve this issue. Also, improving federations between servers could ease the signup process too. If any server allows communities from most other servers to be viewed, choosing what instance to join will be more a matter of personal beliefs and tastes than else.
I'm afraid that setting a default instance could cause it to experience explosive growth and monopolization of the communities. As someone pointed out in a comment in another post, while users on Lemmy are growing, donations are not, so the bill for a single instance with all the people on it will probably be huge. Also, if all the largest communities are going to be on a single instance, how difficult will be to create new original ones to bring some people to the small servers?
Captchas are bad for privacy. They allow the provider to track users between websites, and they are also bad for people because they are generally hard to solve for people with impairments. Also, automated solutions to bypass captchas exist on the market.
Also, I believe a network with high-quality content is better than a bigger generalist one. A little barrier of entry and manual screening of people may serve well for this purpose, so I'm favorable to keeping it.
At the moment, the only tool I know is available for that is https://browse.feddit.de. It should be officially endorsed by the project and available on join-lemmy.org, imo. It crawls the network and allows you to search for communities and see where they are hosted!
As for CAPTCHAs, Lemmy does not use any third-party provider, but rather a little library that generates them given a set of noise functions to apply. I'm not entirely sure how effective the top difficulty ones are at stopping OCR bots and the likes, but they seem pretty good.
Another problem with "everyone just joins lemmy.ml" is that eventually it becomes the weakest link, and other instances will either accept the hordes for the volume/content, or be forced to isolate. It's much better if we hide the cost of decentralization from users but also keep the decentralization as much as possible. It's not an easy problem, but it's worth solving.
Great points. A signup that focuses on communities seems like a great idea, a lot of people will be looking for alternatives to their favorite subreddits. And 💯 on the accessibility problems with captchas.
Also, Mastodon's switch to making mastodon.social a default signup is leading to more centralization (signups have decreased significantly on other intances) and hasn't led to overall increased usage (total accounts and monthly active users are both relatively flat). So I'd be leery of using it as a model.
Well said. This is pretty much what it comes down to imo. A decentralized platform should avoid all centralization at any cost. Monopolization just hurts other instances and communities while severely limiting diversity.
My exact thoughts when signing up. So I simply picked the biggest and joined and here I am. I was hoping for an art / creative focused community. I would host my own instance but I'd need a way for images to be hosted on imgur, etc.
While this would get the effect of more users, it goes against what decentralized services are intended to do. One of the biggest things that decentralization brings is that Lemmy does not become another Reddit situation happening now in 7-8 years, if users are spread out over many instances, if Lemmy decides to pull a Reddit or a Digg, you can just go another instance instead of having to abandon it entirely.
Sadly it's not a problem that can be easily solved by pointing users to a single instance, because then, ironically, you fragment the fragmented community into an "us vs them" situation against the lemmy.ml instance if anything were to happen, with lemmy.ml always winning because that's where the users would be.
I think having a short list of general purpose instances, maybe 5-10 or so, where it chooses one of them at random and lists the others under an "other servers" button is the best compromise to this, as it spreads the load out across trusted instances, while also not leaving a single instance to become so big that they essentially control the entire network.
Any large and old instance going out will cause significant damage. Spreading across multiple instances won't solve that unless the instances approach the number of users. There's another way to do this. It's the Wikipedia way. Clearly license the user content posted on the large instance as CC and publish a regular backup or export of the data. That way anyone can bootstrap a copy of the main instance if it dies or goes rogue.
I completely agree. But lemmy.ml should sit in the default. Hell, I would even add a tool tip next to the drop down box for other servers that says, "Don't know what this is? Click here to learn more about decentralization, or just leave it as the default and click continue"
I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk.
Actually, it is not a superior signup option*. /kbin simply has no other English-language server! (remaining three /kbin servers are Polish-speaking)
*Well, corporate logins being available as an option actually are an advantage - for not-deGoogled users.
This is the same trap people are falling into with regards to Bluesky. "It's just easier" because no one else is running a server using that software yet.
As a new user, I think someone with a lot of experience with federated social media platforms and Lemmy specifically should create something that can be passed around which makes it easy to understand for incoming users.
An infographic or short video would probably help a lot.
I found the video here helpful!
While I agree, I almost feel the opposite, at least for initial signup. One they have an account though, sure! Check out my post edit.
I currently recommend telling people:
"Go to kbin.social and sign up with email, Google, or Apple."
I think that's all the sale that's required. Once someone has an account and is browsing, they are going to have questions like, "what the hell is beehaw? Lol." I think at that point they will be more receptive to learning more.
If you show people a ppt or video beforehand I think they'll checkout mentally and won't give it a try.
I can respect that, but as a user who has just made an account, I am hesitant to clog the place up with a multitude of questions, particularly when I expect there are others like me who would be asking the same questions at the same time.
I am receptive to learning more, but being new, I don't know where to ask and there doesn't appear to be a resource readily available I can go to in order to learn that.
As a result I would think being proactive versus reactive might save everyone some time is all.
Furthermore, most of the talk on reddit is to join via lemmy.ml at this point, so regardless of best practices, it should be expected this is going to be the entry point for most new people at this time.
I think Lemmy already solved this problem way better than Mastodon has ever done. The flow of wanting to "join Lemmy" to there actually being a join-lemmy site, and then you click join a server and there's a recommended one or two right at the top, with plenty of activity and are run well but not neccisarily the biggest kid on the block. i guess the one big stumbling point is that people might get stuck on joining versus hosting a server- maybe the instance list should be the front page of the site and if you know enough to want more info then you can go deeper, and if not you click the first one and go
yes please. This is lemmy's time to shine. If the servers can handle the load and people don't understand the Fediverse just yet, i say let people be directed towards one good location.
As far as i can tell, after people join and learn the basic interface they start asking questions about the broader capabilities of the fediverse on their own.
Yes! And the devs should then make a big blog post like my linked mastodon post. Then we can spread it all over reddit starting on the 3rd party app communities for Apollo, Reddit is Fun, Sync for Reddit, Bacon Reader, Narwhal, etc.
The users will flood in...just like good lemmings do
It should be by geolocation/language and to not confuse people, the instance should be a lemmy.xx domain by default.
I think it’s a great idea. Let there be an Ellis Island, accepting the tired, the hungry, the poor. As long as there are signs everywhere letting them know “you probably shouldn’t live the rest of your new life here, try somewhere else!”
If that's what we want to do, then there needs to be a straightforward way to move your account to another instance.
I think the way Mastodon is handling new users is pretty problematic. Not only did this lead to huge amounts of spam on the network because Eugen's instance couldn't handle the amount of new users, but also this goes against the very idea of federation.
Unpopular opinion: if finding an instance is too hard for you, maybe the federated internet just isn't for you. I see people on reddit still complaining about how difficult Mastodon is, and I'm sorry but if that's too complicated for you, just stay on reddit. Considering the level of discourse of both sites, I think it's a feature, not a bug.
Unpopular opinion: if finding an instance is too hard for you, maybe the federated internet just isn't for you.
I don't really agree with that take. With an attitude like that, Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc will never take off. You'll always be here screaming into the void because no one else will be around to chat.
Without making the on-boarding easier, Reddit, Meta, and Twitter will continue to screw everyone over.
There's nothing wrong with throwing someone in an instance to get them used to everything, especially when you are able to move your entire account to a different instance easily. It's not like you're locked down to the instance you were originally placed in.
I mean shit, I understand instances, but I gave up the first time I tried to join Mastodon because I was too lazy to sign up for an instance in my browser, and then copy the details into the app. Wasn't the lack of knowing, it was the multistep process that felt like a waste of time.
Didn't seem so hard to me. Pick an instance, fill out the sign-up form, click a link in an email, and that's that. It was actually significantly easier than usual because it didn't require me to spend an hour reading legalese.
Onboarding Lemmy wasn't awful either, but the “why do you want to be here” question was rather intimidating, as if to say I'm not welcome here until I prove my worth. The last thing we should do is give people the impression this is an exclusive club. We're trying to filter out toxic people, not shy or humble people.
Note that I onboarded using my desktop. If there are any issues with onboarding on a phone, I wouldn't know.
Yeah you're probably right. It's also not very healthy to have a barrier like this around a community. You wouldn't want just the tech savvy users on your site -- there's lots of interesting people who don't know or care too much about computers.
Still, I'm happy Mastodon hasn't yet been overrun by the masses like Twitter. shudders