Brutkey

Bandar Baru
@bandarbaru_1@fedi.my.id

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services I think, I may disagree with you, but feel free to discuss as Im not into the debate :)

months ago, I wrote what I call a simple guide to join & use Mastodon in Indonesian and for newbies.

in my written guide, I suggest the peoples to join mastodon.social first. the reason is always the overwhelm over the plenty choice of instances, & also to get the newbies immediately jump into onboard of Fediverse.

immediately telling them about how decentralization & federation works, makes them more overwhelmed too, as they're used into the centralized system. my main expectation: let them to be in mastodon.social (or any big instances) first. as the time passes, they'll slowly learn what is Fediverse, decentralization, federation, etc., than immediately told them, and they're overwhelmed and get bored easily.

I think, this is how "the blue butterfly" platforms does that they can got more sign-ups in the name of "decentralized", where seems their decentralization system is still "over paper", and when something bad happened, user still had no or less options to left from the same network.

where in Fediverse, of course, if something bad happened in mastodon.social, peoples can easily migrate and jump into any instances.

in my written guide, I only explain them a little bit how decentralization works, but didn't force them to understands fully. of course, as my guide is written for Indonesian audiences, I also suggest fedi.my.id as the second instance I recommend after mastodon.social as that instance is created by Indonesian for Indonesian. and also I include a guide how to migrate account from mastodon.social into other instance, example: mstdn.party.

we may have disagreement over this, but again, I also thanked much to you too, for providing a complete guide about Fediverse for who wish wanna to learn about it more that I simply can't cover in my capacity. and I already include your site in my guide as a "Further References" 🤗

https://github.com/bandarbaru-1/Panduan-Mastodon-Indonesia

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@bandarbaru_1@fedi.my.id

I understand not wanting to overwhelm people with choice, but why not just suggest mas.to instead of mastodon.social?

It's just as easy to sign up on mas.to, and just as easy to use, but it would be a much better option for the health of the network.

Mastodon.social is currently 20% of the network while mas.to is just 1%, which makes mas.to much healthier for the network as a whole. (You don't need to tell new people this part though if it's overwhelming them.)

Bandar Baru
@bandarbaru_1@fedi.my.id

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services yeah, I think my main reason why I suggest mastodon.social is its simply "officially" managed by the Mastodon gGmbH, the main developer of the Mastodon itself.

as I previously said, as my written guide is for Indonesian audiences, I also suggest them to join Indonesian instances such as fedi.my.id and/or misskey.id (powered by Misskey, connected with Fediverse), as signing up into English instances may overwhelming them too, like they'll only found English/German speaking posts that shares European/American affairs that may irrelevant for Indonesians.

and also I didn't forget to told them to check the official lists, so they can look other non-Indonesian speaking instances if they didn't wish to join the bigger mastodon.social. its good too, if at the end they can end up into mas.to, mstdn.party, mstdn.social, etc., and I told them they can still use & follow my guide as the process & the interfaces will much likely same too like Im signing up into mastodon.social, and not need to worry if their friends will end-up in other instances as they'll eventually connected each other, regardless about the instance :)

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@bandarbaru_1@fedi.my.id

"I think my main reason why I suggest mastodon.social is its simply "officially" managed by the Mastodon gGmbH, the main developer of the Mastodon itself."

I don't understand why that makes mastodon.social a server to recommend?

Bandar Baru
@bandarbaru_1@fedi.my.id

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services thats it, like mastodon.social is kinda like "defacto" & "main" instance of Mastodon, that organized by the developer itself.

maybe, I can add this answer: my main approach while writing the guide is, how if me being positioned as a newbies? like:

let say, I didn't need to know over the choices. choices can be overwhelmed me. when lookup "joinmastodon.org", its immediately recommended to join mastodon.social. wanna to pick other server? okey, I need to join Mastodon ASAP or I need to compare the plenty of instances one by one? I think mastodon.social & mas.to have its advantages and disadvantages? should I took that for consideration? oh look mstdn.social, should I join mstdn.social then? oh look toot.community, should I join toot.community instead?

with this approach, I can see, newbies might wasting time and overwhelmed over choices, or joining the ship first ASAP, although for first its was the bigger mastodon.social. I agree the part if the mastodon.social is too big and might unhealthy, but I believe, as time passed, the newbies can learn about the choices and migrate later when they found an instance that they see its fit for them (or even good if they can selfhosting for themselves)