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If LW admins really care about the fediverse, they probably should close their registrations for the time being, otherwise every newbie will start joining LW because it is the biggest instance out there.
On the flipside, that also scares people away. New users want to take part and immediately hit a barrier. The place where everyone mingles is closed off. They have to learn why that is and how the Fediverse is supposed to work, find some instance overview list and make a choice. Be angry for a short while until they understand the concept and realize it's for the better... I think that'd be detrimental to the cause. I rather live with the issues that come with big instances than with a complicated onboarding process. But I think people already complained about onboarding on the Fediverse in general. I think we need to solve that issue first and then we can go ahead and also add some mechanism to steer people towards a more even distribution. But I don't see anyone working on any of that for Lemmy. Until then, I'd say don't do it.
(And btw: I don't want to see lemmy.world shrink, which wold be the outcome. What I'd like to see is other nice instances come into existence and grow to a similar size. Because they're a nice place and people can identify themselves with the community there. It'd foster good behaviour if things happened because of some good reasons. Not just you grow because you're already the biggest. That doesn't foster anything. It's just like playing Osmos.)
Naturally. This is the fediverse, if newbies don't want to understand how it works even a little bit, they shouldn't be here.
And lemmy.world won't shrink. I said "for the time being", not forever. If LW keeps growing rapidly without giving other instances a chance, then it won't be any different than Reddit.
I don't think I agree. The big difference in total users and monthly active users tells me lots of people abandon their accounts. As long as that policy is in place, it'll naturally shrink because people leave and there aren't any new users anymore to replace them. The only question is at what rate that's going to happen.
And I also don't agree with people who don't understand the Fediverse shouldn't be here... People should be here because it's a nice place and they have a good time engaging here. The exact technology behind it shouldn't matter too much. If at all.
I never said "people who don't understand", I said "people who don't want to understand". I am satisfied as long as a newbie knows what the fediverse is, why it is here and what instances are. They are the basics, aren't they?
I'm also not sure about that. Do they really need to be bothered with that? Can't they just expect a social media platform to do whatever? Without learning anything? I mean they might just want to use something and not be bothered. And arguably they'll have more freedom here then they'd have for example on Reddit where this isn't any issue. I'd say design the software to get out of their way, cater for them and have them here. I mean ultimately there is a limit. Sometimes you need to know how things actually work to get anywhere. But I still refuse to accept your point. I think that should be kept to a minimum. And users should be eased into it at the point it becomes necessary to know. That can be done by good software design.
The reason is simply because this is not the kind of social media people have been using for years. Just like how they "learned" how the centralized web works, they also should learn how the decentralized web works. I'm all for the fediverse to grow but I also don't want ignorant people that don't want to learn anything about the tech they'll be using in here.
Quality over quantity or quantity over quality? Choose.
Yeah. I think in theory I disagree with you. But in practice I agree. I've seen people do exactly that. And almost everytime that behaviour comes from a place that also causes more issues. These people are better off with something else. I agree. And usually they're annoying (to me) anyways so I don't consider them a loss for the platform.
And I also regularly complain about the internet having become less than it used to be. Back then when it took some skill and effort to operate a computer and be on the internet, it was filled with intelligent people and people who were there for some reason. That meant they were motivated enough to go through all the hassle. You could engage with them in a different way than you nowadays do with the average user. Now everyone is here and lots of places and discussions feel different. It certainly affects things. So there is that.
It's the same question if I ponder whether Linux should be used by more people. There are some other dynamics at play with that. But in the end, growing to a broader audience (on the desktop) is certainly going to change it. And I'm not sure if in a good way.
There's also no fix for the "onboarding problem". That "problem" is federation itself.
Well, there are some proposals to change this. I'd say it's fixable by technology to some degree. For example instead of a sign up page that directly signs someone up with the specific instance, we could have a more general Fediverse signup page. Maybe ask the new user a few questions what they envision their instance to be. If they're more aligned with this set of rules or the other. If they want "free speech" or a place with more moderation and less argumentative people. And then make some suggestions.
Or instead of just signing them up with whatever instance they visited first, display a list of the current instance and 5 other random ones, shuffle them and make them deliberately click on one of them.
That'd all help. Of course it can't be solved 100%. But we could at least make an effort to do something about it.
That's what join-lemmy.org does. It asks 2 questions:
I know if offers options to people, but the majority of people don't want options, they want a single website
I guess a balanced approach would be to suggest Lemm.ee as a default option, and suggest the join Lemmy link for people curious about options
A default option is bad imo. We want a decentralized platform. Distribution will keep the fediverse alive and well. Maybe a dynamic "default" option would be one solution. One that just changes the default option to a different somewhat known instance once the current default option reaches a certain user count. For this to work, you'd need to lead people to join-lemmy.org.
Yeah. My proposal is to replace the "Sign up" entry on every single instance with a page like that. And move the actual sign up one level further down, so everyone needs to click through that process.
Why? That's really ineffective and just looks bad imo. That's just a solution to people linking instances to join instead of leading people to join-lemmy.org.
Because what the user wants is to sign up on Lemmy. We have to meet them at exactly that point. When they click on "Sign up". And then our motive comes at play. We want to say to them »Hey stop, In case you don't know, the Fediverse works differently than other social media platforms you might be used to. You have to make a decision here.« And I think it's super effective to do it at that point. Doing it later is too late, because then they're already signed up on a random place without being informed. And doing it earlier is inconvenient. They might not be motivated to find out yet. Or it's a hassle to gather that info yourself without even knowing it's a thing.
And why is the way the Fediverse works looking bad? If it seems that way to you, you're might be wrong here. So even more reason to prominently display these kinds of things.
And it doesn't have to be complicated. As with software design in general, don't overwhelm the user with options. Just offer a description on what's happening and why. And give some sane default options. Don't make it more than let's say 5-10. And it's just one click more in the process. It's not too hard for the user to click once more if it's for a good cause. And if done right, they could just randomly click on something if in doubt.
I'd just make it like in my earlier proposal. Add the page. Force the user to choose. Either they want to answer a few questions and get a tailored instance. Or sign up at the current instance. Or sign up at one of the 4 other instances we promote for a better distribution. And then continue to ask for a username and password.
That's extra work to be done when we already have a join-lemmy.org website by the official devs that does what you want. People changing the link in their comments from lemmy.world to join-lemmy.org is not hard, is it?
But why have an extra website? I just don't see the point. That's just extra work. And a good amount of people will never find out it's there and get here in a different way. We could just do away with all of that.
This way the Lemmy devs have to maintain a seperate website. Curate a list of instances. I have to agree with that. Everyone has to remember to always post links to join-lemmy.org. Users who're just lurking and deciding to go to the menu and just click "sign up" will miss that information. All of that to save someone from doing a single click?
Assuming most people use Google, when searching for "lemmy", it is the third search before some guy named lemmy and when searching for "join lemmy" (logically) it's the first. So we can conclude that people don't use it because most of the people link to lemmy.world and not to join-lemmy.org. Most likely not everyone searches for "join lemmy" anyways since most people come from Reddit.
I fail to see any connection with what I said. Sure. The name "Lemmy" is a bit unfortunate. Given that it's not discoverable via Google search.
Wdym not discoverable. Lemmy instances have been indexed for years