Brutkey

Watchful Citizen
@watchfulcitizen@goingdark.social

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services I’d say the approval flow is just bad UX all around.

It’s not about users being lazy or entitled. The experience breaks momentum.

You’ve just discovered something new, you’re curious, you want to join, and suddenly you’re being asked to write a little essay for strangers. You don’t even know what kind of community it is yet or what they expect from you. Then you hit submit and the whole thing goes quiet. I don’t hate moderation, it's the uncertainty.

For new users I think it’s even worse.

They’ve already had to pick a random server from a bunch of names that make no sense, read a page of rules that assume they already understand federation, and then they’re told to justify why they want to join it.

That’s a huge ask for someone still trying to figure out what Mastodon even is. It’s the same reason UX study's shows steep drop-offs with multi-step forms and unclear feedback. Users don’t finish what they don’t understand, and they don’t wait when they don’t know how long the wait is.

The design makes them feel like outsiders before they’ve even walked in the door. IMO I think a trial period would be a much better middle ground.

I opened a feature request about this exact issue yesterday that I think would solve the issues.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/36747