Good news, thank you, let us know how it goes!

This is the point.

People signing up have just landed here, and have never heard or understood a thing about how this works. The community in here is talking like, oh well, if they don’t get it, that’s there problem. Well, no, that’s poor design.
Unless that’s the intention and this is a niche type thing you’re aiming to create in here for coders or a community into geeky things?

But if the intention is to create a platform that is open and accessible to all, a Reddit of sorts, I feel something needs to be revisited because it’s super confusing when you just land here.

A platform, website should be designed to work like Google, or Apple, something your Grsndmother could click on and use.

Is there a way to make it easier for literally everyone else but conversely making it significantly more complicated specifically for reddit user "icankillpenguins"?

On the other hand, sometimes it might just be easier to go with the flow: https://piefed.zip/post/410688 . Seems like things are not that confusing is you just enjoy what there is without digging too much.

From experience, there seems to be three types of users

• people who are okay to just click on a few things and see how it goes (see the link above)
• people who are okay to look at the deep concepts to understand them (most of the people around here)
• the last one is like in the screenshot in the original post: they don't know about the concepts, but instead of just letting go, they keep complaining that they don't understand every single thing that is mentioned.

I think the problem is that there's two competing problems here: The federated structure of the fediverse and good onboarding. We certainly can improve onboarding, but trying to bypass it and just throw people into an instance sort of negates what the point of federation is. And I don't think it would stop many people confused now, from being confused.

I think point 4 is critically important. It's great that the fediverse has kooky instances but lets not throw new users to the wolves by referring them to "random" instances.

IMO, pre-select a half dozen good choices, discard the third with the slowest response times, make a random selection from the remainder.

You guys are like mechanics in here, talking about cars under the hood. You’re coders, logic people, not design minded.

The best products are when form - meets function. The two must combine. Either one on its own it fails.

This thing is never going to work out. It’s fundamentally flawed. It’s a jumbled up mess.

https://piefed.zip/post/410688

"I'm just happy to be here" is a fun archetype but unfortunately not that common lol

I'd say for the health of decentralisation we don't really want to encourage any server having more than ~15% of users.

Voyager has damn good UX, we can essentially copy most of what they're doing and it'll be good

The problem with your suggestion is that it creates centralization. See Mastodon.social, matrix.org, etc.

The solution, I have posted before, is to ask instances to be opted into a directory, and then present the user with a random suggestion from that list. There should be some basic criteria like uptime and a proper set of rules laid out of course.

Counter point: Bluesky is a well designed product where form meets function. However , Twitter is still the vastly more active micro blogging platform. The network effect is still at play there, and the established platform usually takes it all, even if alternatives have equivalent or better designs.

As the original post acknowledges, there are improvements to be made to Piefed. But let's not forget that even a very sell design product will struggle to replace an established platform.

I’m afraid that icankillpenguins might be right.

Not something that I thought I would read today. 🤷🏻‍♂️

If 10k new Piefed users show up tomorrow if is better to lose them or to have them on two instances that would both have 40% of the userbase?

It could become more spread if we started using good hidden defaults.

For a while there was a large amount of Sync+Lemmy.world user, because LW was the default instance

We should try to replicate something similar with Voyager and Piefed.zip

Lemmy.ml isn't the largest Lemmy instance

Piefed.social will probably go the same way once rimu decides to shut down the registrations to keep hardware costs manageable.

Your suggestion would be doable if there was another long established, up-to-date , generalist, non-flagship Piefed instance, but as of now I only know Piefed.zip

Piefed.ca is Canadian focused

Blahaj is queer focused

Piefed.world is vastly outdated

Anarchist.nexus is, well, anarchist

Lemmy.ml isn't the largest Lemmy instance

It's also not a default instance in any apps that I'm aware of.

Piefed.ca is Canadian focused. Blahaj is queer focused.

As it says in OP, none of that matters.

@Blaze @Skavau are there any piefed instances that are tied to an alternative frontent like Voyager yet?

https://photon.piefed.zip/ ?

Isn't Lemmy.ml the default in Jerboa?

As it says in OP, none of that matters.

I'm not @ada@piefed.blahaj.zone , but I'm quite sure they prefer to avoid waves of new joiners from Reddit signing up on their instance without knowing it's a queer safe space

We have an application process. If they don't show recognition of the fact it's a queer safe space, they don't get approved. We've also got a matrix bot to help trusted users approve signups, so we can handle volume ok as well!

Isn't Lemmy.ml the default in Jerboa?

Okay, 1 app. Where is OP from Reddit looking? There's no "Lemmy app". Or "PieFed app". That's what matters.

I'm quite sure they prefer to avoid waves of new joiners

Then they can choose not to opt in.

Ah yeah, gatekeeping, that's what we need more of.

Honestly if this extremely low barrier keeps out the Facebook crowd then it's doing God's work.

That makes sense

Then they can choose not to opt in.

But then none of the instances I listed above would want to become a "default" instance except Piefed.zip

Again, if you can find me an updated, generalist, long established, non flagship instance besides Piefed.zip, I would be happy, but I don't think there's any unfortunately

Yeah, realistically, just get people onto a server (we can bike shed about which is best for that later) and then when they learn more about what they are/imply and what different ones are like they can move if they want to. I'm sure I'm preaching the choir here, but everything can be pretty easily migrated to your new account. The only thing that won't be is your old posts/comments and replies to those won't end up in your new inbox, but that's pretty minor.

none of the instances I listed above would want to become a "default" instance except Piefed.zip

Then .zip it is. For now. This is obviously a growing platform, but we should have a plan to decentralize for the future.

I can assure you that as soon as some ready-loaded, well designed and reliable piefed instances emerge that are 'generalist' in purpose I will promote them on piefed.social in an effort to spread the userbase.

Yes, that's what PieFed does now.

It's better to keep them for sure.
I'm just saying in a perfect world.

With the servers and setup we have now it's probably best if they just end up and the most stable wel run instances (as I've been pointing then to)

The problem isn’t the choice itself – it’s that we don’t understand what we’re gaining or losing when picking a server. There’s no explanation of what a server is on the selection page. Does it really not matter which server I choose? Are the communities the same across all servers? If someone posts something on one server, will it be synced to all servers? My wife doesn’t know what the word “server” means, and I think most people are the same. Or are we expecting only IT folks to use the platform?

So it does matter which server I choose? Will my choice mean I can’t see all the posts from every server?

This is one of the problems – I saw your comment on piefed.social, but your link points to piefed.zip. When I clicked it, I couldn’t upvote or comment because I’m not logged in. Is the post you linked available on piefed.social? Why does your link go to another instance - are you on that one now? I tried changing the link to https://piefed.social/post/410688, but it doesn’t exist.
Does it really not matter which server I choose? Will I be able to see posts from any user on any server while using my chosen server?

Hmm, I never had to choose a server when signing up for any of the emails I use. If it’s not like Reddit, then maybe it shouldn’t look exactly like Reddit :D

For me, the problem wasn’t making a choice, but not understanding what that choice meant. It felt like we were expected to know exactly what we were signing up for without any explanation on the page. I assumed the “I don’t know, help me” button would lead to some clarification, but it just scrolled down by about a centimeter :D
Everyone says it doesn’t matter which server I’m on, but I just read here that there are some banned servers, whatever that means. On the server I choose, will I see all posts from all users across all servers, or are there communities that are only available on one server?

Why does it function and look like Reddit? I thought it was an alternative to Reddit. Is there something I'm missing?

In case you are interested in the full story:

It does not matter much to the user, but it does matter a little. Which is also why it gets hard to find a good solution.

The communities are the same, and posts are synchronized. However, each server (also known as instance, to make it more complicated) is responsible for its own moderation.

Say for example that it turns out quokk.au is run by the absolute worst people, and that they start encouraging vile content and hate speech on their platform. Or simply that they don't moderate, and a lot of bad actors start signing up there and posting spam. Other servers might say in response that they don't want to keep seeing content from quokk.au, as bad content keeps coming from there. Of course that would affect the users of that instance.

To a degree, these problems can result from size. Lemmy.world is the biggest instance of Lemmy, and while it's generally decently moderated they have of course had greater challenges making sure their user base behaves decently as a result. So we want users to spread out so that each instance can have human moderators overseeing a manageable amount of human users.

This means that your instance can matter: if it is particularly poorly managed, you might be cut off from parts of the network as a result. And on the flip side, if you join an instance with stricter moderation, you might see less questionable content from elsewhere. Typical divides is whether Russia propaganda networks like lemmygrad.ml are blocked form joining the network, and whether porn is allowed.

The other big reason we want people to go to different instances is to keep the network healthy. If (almost) all of us are on the same site, that gets expensive to run, and leaves too much responsibility and power in the hands of the people running that site. If something happens to it it's a huge problem, if moderation fails it's a huge problem, and it's just generally a weakness. We want people to spread out to a bunch of different sites so that the network itself is robust.

Over on Mastodon, an anarchist instance hosted in America had the police raid their physical location and steal all the data off their server. Obviously we're also less vulnerable to these types of attacks if we spread out, though more often the problems are more boring and ordinary.

So in effect, when people ask to sign up at piefed.social, the good people at piefed.social wants people to join the network, but preferably the load should be put on some other server in that network in order to distribute the risk and workload, and strengthening the network as such. This is not primarily for the immediate benefit of the individual users—though it will materialize as such though more human moderation and admins that have the capacity to actually care about them—but for the benefit of the network.

So that's why we struggle to find a good way to ask people to pick a server. The choice is not super important for the user—the recommended instances are all decent, and the little information provided should be enough to make an informed enough decision—but it's important to the network that some users make a choice.

If you have any recommendations how to make this easier while distributing users around the different servers, feedback and ideas are super welcome.

That's true - there should be some explanation available there as well, not just a "help me choose" in a completely practical sense.

It's possible to make communities that are only available on one server, but that would be an active choice by the person who made the community. The only one I know of like that is !trolley_problems@piefed.social, which is more of a test than a community that actually benefits from being closed. I guess if for example a book club set up their own server they could be interested in running their own closed community on it.

There are also communities that won't be visible to us on piefed.social because the instances hosting the are blocked. The list of blocked instances is available somewhere on the site, but basically it boils down to self-proclaimed free speech extremists, authoritarian instances on the left (lemmygrad.ml) and right (I think someone started a MAGA instance at some point), and other unwanted stuff like that.

Some instances are stricter than others in which sites they chose [not] to communicate with, but all the ones recommended during sign-up should have a somewhat reasonable policy on the matter. I think it's best people don't get sent to the more questionable sites unless they actively ask for it.

I meant only in the context of the pasted image, not that whole other thread

You had to choose between Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo etc

That person is making a bad faith gatekeeping comment. Most of the people here agree we need more users, and that most of them will come from Reddit as the two platforms are similar

https://piefed.social/post/1204070

Regarding your questions, maybe this will help: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/detailed-overview

Those email services differ in aspects like file size limits and available storage space, yet you say it doesn’t matter which server we choose. So, does it actually make a difference or not?

Did you have a look at the guide I pointed you to in another comment two hours ago?

https://piefed.social/comment/9983232

So it does matter which server I choose?

Yes

Will my choice mean I can’t see all the posts from every server?

Yes. Federation allows any server to maintain lists of trusted and blocked servers. On lemmy and piefed, you can visit <address.com>/instances to check it - the link should be at the bottom of the homepage. If I'm not mistaken, most servers also take a "trust unless we manually block" approach, so new instances will show up by default.

This is a double edged sword, but it thankfully errs on the side of safety. Blocking servers means you can ensure that no communication from any server that has shown sympathy to extreme content or spam will reach the one you're in.

Big public instances are often federated with one another, which is what the majority of the users want, so you won't be missing out.

The better message instead of "it doesn't matter what instance you pick" should be "your choice of instance is not permanent." With any product choice, the rule of thumb is that most consumers will switch products only when they perceive a 10x improvement. It is clear from many similar threads that the sign-up process is a barrier to such perception, because of the cognitive load of having to choose. To me, there's two ways to address this: offering fewer choices, or reducing the perceived cost of a choice. In particular, streamlining account out settings migration (eg via export/import tools) may make arbitrary server choices more appealing, as it then becomes easier to pack up and switch.

We all have families that are not tech-savvy.

I do want a replacement for Facebook where my family can share vaguely racist updates in exchange for also sharing baby pictures.

But I'm not willing to give this place up, in exchange for it. LoL.

Now on this, I completely agree with you. You can generate instance-neutral links on Piefed by putting an explanation mark in front of text: !piefed_meta@piefed.social - and it will be clickable and send you there within your own instance.

And you can do the same with usernames by using "@": @cile.sb@piefed.social

However, for linking someone a threaded comment specifically like Blaze just did? It's more awkward.