Very much agree with this. Multiple onboarding instances that all work basically the same way, routing new users to them based on geography and language to start, and maybe when the sign-up in complete, the first post they see is an automated very basic primer that includes something about that Lemmy isn't owned by anyone, let alone by a giant corporation that wants to collect and sell their identity.
100WattWalrus
joined 3 weeks ago
Who manages this, and who defines the criteria?
That's exactly the kind of thing the Lemmy community needs to figure out together. There doesn't have to be just one, but there should only be a handful, and they should work basically the same way. Ideally some consortium or committee would come together to agree on a simplified protocol for onboarding. I realize that's easier said than done in the early, Wild West days of Lemmy. But if the Fediverse is going to take off and undermine the billionaire-run social media networks, it needs to be easy enough for your grandma to understand it, and be able to sign up and get around without getting lost of confused.
Actually, that Reddit post was exactly the thing that got me thinking about this in the first place. That is not a post for average people. It starts out with an attempt at a simple explanation — "No need to understand federation, servers, or any technical jargon" — but very quickly devolves into exactly those things it said you didn't need to understand. For example, it uses the word "server" 21 times without ever explaining what the word means. And, as I mentioned elsewhere, explainers shouldn't be necessary. What's needed is a cleaner, simpler UX. I've started by suggesting a clearer, simpler onboarding process. The rest I'm still noodling.
Some of those are relatively decent explainers, but what's needed is simplification of the whole onboarding process and UX. Having to read a 2000-word treatise on the Fediverse doesn't solve the problem of the Fediverse being confusing in the first place. :)
To me, the solution is a streamlined onboarding, like I've proposed, driving most people toward one or two common, popular instances where they can just sign up and just find posts that interest them — then let them/help them discover how to further explore once they've got the hang of it.
You can't read about how to use Lemmy any more than you can read about how to ride a bike. And yet, most of the pople trying to drive Lemmy adoption are explaining, explaining, explaining instead of trying to make it simple.
I'm not saying those explainers shouldn't exist. I'm saying they only help people who want to understand Lemmy rather than helping people who just want somewhere to go for a feed of interesting community topics.
I'm sorry, but you've completely missed the point of this post. I wasn't literally asking those questions (and I did literally say exactly that). That's why each set of questions was couched in an [average user voice] "tag". The point is that these are things nobody needs to ask when signing up for Facebook, etc. They are barriers to anyone to joining Lemmy for who isn't already highly tech-literate.
Federation can be explained at the 10,000-foot level by just saying something like, "You know how Reddit subs are moderated by volunteer from the community, and Wikipedia is edited by volunteers? Lemmy has volunteers all the way down. It's coded by volunteers, it's hosted by hundreds of volunteers, and all those independent instances connect together to make a whole that serves the same purpose as a Reddit or Facebook." That's just off the top of my head. I was toying with a a simile about cruise ships vs. a flotilla of fishing boats, but that one got a way from me. I'll come up with better descriptions later. It's something I'm fairly good at.