Approaches that might work better involve integrating a good instance picker into the signup process, or an onboarding flow that treats the initial instance as a "starter instance", a base for exploring that makes it easy to move to another instance. Realistically though it's not clearly how likely it is that Mastodon gGmbH will prioritize the work that's needed to support either of these -- which isn't an argument against pushing for them, just that we should be looking for other alternatives as well.
In general it seems to me that might be better to focus our efforts in terms of making it easier to join communities in fedi as a whole, not just Mastodon. For many people something other than a Mastodon-based instance may well be a better choice. Of course that still leaves the problem of people who search for "mastodon", or have read an article about Mastodon and followed the links to either the Mastodon app or joinmastodon ... but I don't know how to address those without Mastodon gGmbH's cooperation,
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org I'm personally also quite intrigued by the idea of treating the default as a “tutorial server”. Video games manage to design sandbox areas that anyone can use to try out new toys, but that naturally get boring after a while unless you leave them and explore. I think trying to translate that concept to fedi servers could be fruitful, albeit difficult.
@julian@fietkau.social @thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @FediTips@social.growyourown.services very much yes to the tutorial server idea (I think of it in terms of a paddling pool…) and the idea would very much be you get funnelled out if it once you’ve got a basic understanding of what choosing a server actually entails and to what extent it does (and doesn’t) matter.
(but if all we have is a default server then it would still be better they rotated, and default servers should also be exceptionally well moderated to qualify…)
@UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org' has also brought up the idea of something similar to a "tutorial server" with limited functionality ... it's intriguing. one challenge is how to get enough interesting stuff there for people to decide it's worth exploring further. If it's just a tutorial that people have to go through to get to the next stage, then the risk is that unless folks are really really committed they're likely to lose interest.
@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social
"Rotating the default doesn't seem to me like it would address the :"good experience" aspect of the problem."
It's not about that at all, it's not about UI or UX.
The problem is about what happens to the network if it centralises. There are many important reasons why the Fediverse is decentralised: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/
All these reason get squashed if mastodon.social becomes over 50% of the network. The network would eventually "enshittify".
@thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social
"Rotating the default doesn't seem to me like it would address the :"good experience" aspect of the problem."
It's not about that at all, it's not about UI or UX.
The problem is about what happens to the network if it centralises. There are many important reasons why the Fediverse is decentralised: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/
All these reason get squashed if mastodon.social becomes over 50% of the network. The network would eventually "enshittify".
We're looking at things differently.
From my perspective, .social's steadily increasing percentage of Mastodon users is only part of the onboarding problem. Any improvements are going to require either a significant change of attitude from Mastodon gGmbH or a completely different way of thinking about onboarding -- or both! So I'm more interested in trying to address the issues more broadly.
You're separating it into different problems, which is also a valid way of looking at it ... but if the problems are interetwined, then there's no guarantee that the effort put into making progress on one problem gets things noticeably closer to an overall solution. My guess is that we have different intuitions about how decomposable the overall problem is.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social
We're looking at things differently.
From my perspective, .social's steadily increasing percentage of Mastodon users is only part of the onboarding problem. Any improvements are going to require either a significant change of attitude from Mastodon gGmbH or a completely different way of thinking about onboarding -- or both! So I'm more interested in trying to address the issues more broadly.
You're separating it into different problems, which is also a valid way of looking at it ... but if the problems are interetwined, then there's no guarantee that the effort put into making progress on one problem gets things noticeably closer to an overall solution. My guess is that we have different intuitions about how decomposable the overall problem is.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services @UlrikeHahn@fediscience.org @julian@fietkau.social
The Nexus of Privacy
Julian Fietkau
