This is not a good thing. Part of the problem is third-party apps like Sync and other Fediverse advocates that direct Reddit users to sign up on only one instance, lemmy.world. This is understandable to keep things simple for the Redditors but it hurts lemmy.world (cost and performance-wise) and the Fediverse as a whole (centralization) to have a lot of accounts on one instance. I hope lemmy.world can make an announcement or guide to encourage users to spread out to more instances.
I think another reason too is that .world is run by Ruud who is a trusted actor in the space (he already runs Mastodon.world, a large mastodon instance), and so many (including me) probably felt it would be a safe harbor and not likely to get shut down or run poorly.
This is a brilliant idea. Drive all the traffic to lemmy.world as it seems like the “main hub”, then when registering drive users to a few other instances as well
I know that it’s inevitable, but the signup flow should try to weaken that effect instead of contribute to it. An example of how not to do it is Mastodon’s old homepage which led to only one instance, mastodon.social, to “make onboarding easier”.
How is it possible to decentralise sign ups and see/searchable content and tabs? I used to be tech savvy but these days I struggle a bit. Turning into a dinosaur.
I have a “when I stop being bad at web development” project idea for this, hopefully someone who has a development background can pick it up.
The idea is an open-source onboarding portal that takes all Lemmy instances from awesome-lemmy-instances and Kbin instances from FediDB and lets their admins tag their instances with what the instance is focused on, maybe through a dedicated community or something. This list of instances and tags is public so instances can’t cheat the system with fake tags or get secretly blacklisted just because the project maintainer disagrees with them.
Users get directed to the portal and fill out a quiz with questions like “what are your hobbies”, “do you prefer strict or lax moderation”, and get matched to a list of the closest servers and recommended communities. There will also be a simple load balancing algorithm to make large instances less likely to be recommended. Of course, because it’s open source, the algorithm and list of instances can be changed if someone wants to host their own portal.
Basically, something like Spread Mastodon that covers the entire known network and not just a few of the largest instances that are approved by mastodon.social.
I like the idea and it sounds like a fantastic tool for people who would have been interested in the Fediverse anyway. I just fear taking a quiz is too cumbersome to be an optimal onboarding method for Lemmy as a Reddit replacement. The reason .world exploded in popularity was the simplicity (just go here and sign up and you’re posting within minutes and your Local is the biggest instance so you’re going to find content even if you’ve not discovered the All button).
Doesn’t every major social media website have an onboarding quiz these days? Whenever I created an alt on Reddit or Twitter, there would be this prompt asking me what I’m interested in, then it would recommend subreddits/accounts/hashtags to follow. I know Facebook and Instagram prompt for your contacts and interests to generate recommendations too. If the average social media user can manage this, so can future Threadiverse users.
The Interface is nicer, you can directly get the !community@instance.tld string for searching it locally, and it doesn’t use a large blocklist like feddit.de sadly does.
That wouldn’t be good either if third parties are still funnelling new users to lemmy.world. They’ll see a “sign ups closed” message, assume there is only one forum and it’s closed, then go back to Reddit.
Actually it’s even worse than that. I tried yesterday to register on https://lemmy.ml but it let me go through the registration process up to the submit button before returning an error message “Registration Closed”.
It’s very annoying to have closed registration in the first place.
When registration is closed the registration form should definitely not be present and let me fill the whole form.
The error message should not just say “Registration Closed”, there should be some indication of where else I should go to register.
A necessary evil but one that can be overcome. I would hope there’d be a way to leave a message about trying one of many other instances or at least a link to a Fediverse FAQ.
This is not a good thing. Part of the problem is third-party apps like Sync and other Fediverse advocates that direct Reddit users to sign up on only one instance, lemmy.world. This is understandable to keep things simple for the Redditors but it hurts lemmy.world (cost and performance-wise) and the Fediverse as a whole (centralization) to have a lot of accounts on one instance. I hope lemmy.world can make an announcement or guide to encourage users to spread out to more instances.
I think another reason too is that .world is run by Ruud who is a trusted actor in the space (he already runs Mastodon.world, a large mastodon instance), and so many (including me) probably felt it would be a safe harbor and not likely to get shut down or run poorly.
Maybe ony Lemmy.world’s registration page thay can list other instances that they trust and endorse.
This is a brilliant idea. Drive all the traffic to lemmy.world as it seems like the “main hub”, then when registering drive users to a few other instances as well
Some degree of centralization is inevitable. I think it may be 2-4 main instances that people will predominately use.
I know that it’s inevitable, but the signup flow should try to weaken that effect instead of contribute to it. An example of how not to do it is Mastodon’s old homepage which led to only one instance, mastodon.social, to “make onboarding easier”.
How is it possible to decentralise sign ups and see/searchable content and tabs? I used to be tech savvy but these days I struggle a bit. Turning into a dinosaur.
I have a “when I stop being bad at web development” project idea for this, hopefully someone who has a development background can pick it up.
The idea is an open-source onboarding portal that takes all Lemmy instances from awesome-lemmy-instances and Kbin instances from FediDB and lets their admins tag their instances with what the instance is focused on, maybe through a dedicated community or something. This list of instances and tags is public so instances can’t cheat the system with fake tags or get secretly blacklisted just because the project maintainer disagrees with them.
Users get directed to the portal and fill out a quiz with questions like “what are your hobbies”, “do you prefer strict or lax moderation”, and get matched to a list of the closest servers and recommended communities. There will also be a simple load balancing algorithm to make large instances less likely to be recommended. Of course, because it’s open source, the algorithm and list of instances can be changed if someone wants to host their own portal.
Basically, something like Spread Mastodon that covers the entire known network and not just a few of the largest instances that are approved by mastodon.social.
I like the idea and it sounds like a fantastic tool for people who would have been interested in the Fediverse anyway. I just fear taking a quiz is too cumbersome to be an optimal onboarding method for Lemmy as a Reddit replacement. The reason .world exploded in popularity was the simplicity (just go here and sign up and you’re posting within minutes and your Local is the biggest instance so you’re going to find content even if you’ve not discovered the All button).
Doesn’t every major social media website have an onboarding quiz these days? Whenever I created an alt on Reddit or Twitter, there would be this prompt asking me what I’m interested in, then it would recommend subreddits/accounts/hashtags to follow. I know Facebook and Instagram prompt for your contacts and interests to generate recommendations too. If the average social media user can manage this, so can future Threadiverse users.
Find instances on https://join-lemmy.org
Find subs (communities) on https://browse.feddit.de
These are great suggestions, but for finding communities, I would recommend https://lemmyverse.net/communities instead.
The Interface is nicer, you can directly get the !community@instance.tld string for searching it locally, and it doesn’t use a large blocklist like feddit.de sadly does.
I think we’re trusting them to crunch the numbers and simply shut off registration if it gets out of control. At least, I’d hope so.
That wouldn’t be good either if third parties are still funnelling new users to lemmy.world. They’ll see a “sign ups closed” message, assume there is only one forum and it’s closed, then go back to Reddit.
Actually it’s even worse than that. I tried yesterday to register on https://lemmy.ml but it let me go through the registration process up to the submit button before returning an error message “Registration Closed”.
A necessary evil but one that can be overcome. I would hope there’d be a way to leave a message about trying one of many other instances or at least a link to a Fediverse FAQ.