If the fediverse is to be adopted by the masses, the onboarding experience needs to change. A new user can’t be presented with a choice of instances as part of signing up or at least the process of making the choice needs to dumbed down a lot. I don’t know how or if this can be solved, I just know as someone involved in app development and UX that the current experience won’t work.
My mother would not know how to handle this paragraph: “Lemmy.world is one node in a network of hundreds of Lemmy instances. Before you sign up here, take a moment to explore all the instances at https://lemmyverse.net/. You may find an instance with a regional or topical emphasis that speaks to you! Don’t worry about being left out; Lemmy instances are interconnected so users from each instance can participate with communities on other instances.”
For mass adoption it needs to be so simple that even non-techie older people can get through it without feeling like they might be doing something wrong.
I’m pretty techie and I’ve been here for months. I still don’t fully understand why it matters and how a different instance would have changed my experience. The fediverse is so fragmented, it would be dumb to stick to one instance. My app is always set to browse “all”. Everyone commenting seems to be from different instances. I’m certainly not going to start reading about different instances at signup when it presents the fact that you will be able to access all instances anyway. I picked randomly from one of the most popular choices. This whole process of a selection of an instance sounded good to software engineers, and sure this is how the technology fits together…but these are “back end” issues that I (and other normies) don’t care about at all. Users do not want to get into the weeds of how the back end works and it is certainly off putting.
Different instances that have a unique interest or theme will determine the type and feel of content in your local feed, and can have a tangible community as you recognize names from your instance. That’s the main difference.
Then selection of interests and themes should be included in the onboarding process, instead of the mumbo-jumbo about choosing instances.
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!”
If the website itself cannot provide a compelling reason as to why someone should sign up for it, then why should they sign up for it? So that it can be a dumb-terminal for some other website?
This isn’t always the case though. That’s just one example of difference between instances.
Instances can change everything, from being able to view nsfw content, if you can downvote or not, and who you can talk to (big difference between instances federated with ML/grad/hexbear and not. (And then the BeeHaw Defeds make a difference too).
Unique interests can be already be self-curated by subscribing to certain communities. All apps have the subscribed feed. There’s no need for communities of a certain type to be on one instance.
Edit: typo
It’s not that the local tab replaces your home ‘subscriptions’ tab, it’s that it’s nice to have in addition to it.
My instance, slrpnk.net, caters to solarpunk topics only, and we’re small enough that it has a tight community of regular posters whom I recognize. In my local tab I can see at a glance just the stuff posted to my community, with my other subscriptions not mixed in and cluttering it up. I also see in my local tab what’s being posted in communities I’m not subscribed to, but will often have comments from our members since we all collectively view our local tab. It’s like a sort’ve town square feel that my all and subscriptions tab don’t have.
I like having access to both.
See, this falls apart when there’s another instance that focuses on solarpunk. When some communities on that instance become more popular and active than the communities in your local instance, you’d want to be subscribed to the solar punk communities on that new instance too. Now, your local feed is only showing you solarpunk communities hosted on slrpnk.net but not solarpunk communities on other instances. This distinction is not meaningful because where a community is hosted can be totally detached from the content. The users you know by handle can also be very active, if not more active, on other instances talking about solarpunk than slrpnk.net.
I don’t think the existence of a second solarpunk instance would negate my experience with the first instance. It would still apply, there would just be another place where that same phenomena is happening for a different group of people.
That’s not to say that I couldn’t subscribe to their communities and get to know the regulars there too, but it would be more norrowed since I would only see the ones I specifically subscribe to, where as with my local tab I see the totality of what’s posted to my ‘home’.
If you personally don’t care about that specific experience that a local tab can bring and think your curated subscriptions is just as good if not better, awesome, more power to you.
But for me specifically, and possibly for others as well, it’s a noticeable difference and a welcome addition to our experience :)
It’s nice to have country or language-communities in the local feed of one instance. Feddit.org or jlai.lu are good examples.
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.
Makes sense once there’s enough of a userbase…but currently there isn’t a huge amount of content of interest on Lemmy and sticking to a local instance just limits this even more. Currently I have to stick to “all” as even areas of subscription can run out of content with a quick scroll session.
Your instance is defederated from four other instances, so yeah it has an influence.
Where/how do I check or know what impact that has? I think this just further strengthens the point that Lemmy is not welcoming to normal users at all and is just for specialist nerds.
Lemm.ee/instances
But there’s this website that also tells you if other instances are defederated from yours: defed.xyz
I’d also like to know