Idea: having a political-free instance for new joiners (feddit.org)

submitted 3 months ago by Blaze@feddit.org to c/fedigrow@lemm.ee

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Hello everyone,

Thinking about this as the on-boarding experience on Lemmy can be subpar, especially because new joiners have to

find a list of communities they could like (something like this post https://feddit.org/post/6554534, but should be there as a default)
browse All and stumble upon all the news, political and tech that we know (https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&sort=TopDay)

In order to avoid this, what would you think of having a "new joiners" instance, where

hexbear, lemmygrad and ml would be defederated
politics and news communities would be blocked at the instance level

That could help to onboard people, so that the first time they look around, they see more gardening, cute comics and casual conversation rather than another set of depressing memes.

Disclaimer: politics and societal issues are important and should be discussed extensively (they are quite popular on Lemmy, let's be honest). I'm not advocating to hide them all, just to not show them as the first content people potentially interested in Lemmy would see.

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[-] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

@OpenStars@discuss.online as I know you like the topic

@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works as we discussed it just now

[-] m_f@midwest.social 3 points 3 months ago

discuss.online would be a good candidate, but you'd want to get buy-in from @jgrim@discuss.online as well

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[-] Libb@jlai.lu 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Me liking printed books more than ebooks is already a political matter, so... that would be difficult to offer political-free content.

I think I already mentioned it, but my idea would be to have nothing for newcomers (so they don't get to see even a single political, or low effort post) beside a few tags/keywords/categories they could click in order to start having content displayed in their feed that they actually want to see, no matter how good or how bad it would be ;)

edit: typos

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[+] Rob200@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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[-] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

On Lemmy I feel the server doesn’t matter as much since you can just join communities after account creation and communicate with other servers anyway.

Experience for someone joining today and almost leaving Lemmy altogether because the instance they picked was laggy and not federating properly

yeah this instance I’m on sucks. Realizing now that it definitely does not let you access everything from there. A lot of communities I’ve searched for and thought were missing just aren’t showing up in myserv.one’s search results. Here I was thinking that there wasn’t even a functional non-binary community in the lemmyverse or fediverse or whatever.

[+] Rob200@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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[-] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago

I am aware of the way to solve the issue, but expecting a new joiner who just registered on the platform to copy-paste the communities links from a third-party website to the search to fetch them is unrealistic.

[-] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This is a major issue.

New users run the gamut of tech neophyte to very old hands. Both have reasons for not wanting to do this, even more, not knowing this can be done. As part of the "old hand" crowd, frankly I don't have the time to go look for this stuff - it really needs to be upfront when you join.

I think, overall, what you're talking about is the Discovery process for a new user. And with new users being new to lemmy, they don't understand how it all works. I've yet to sign up to a new instance and have anything clarified, up front - how lemmy works, and not just "federated like email", but how your stuff isn't replicated (I get this, but most people don't automatically get the implications of "federated, like email"). Also, what communities they federate, what they block, etc, again, in detail. This isn't done because documentation is hard, no one likes to do it - I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

Getting new servers to do this would be challenging, but just like the sidebar for a community, it's really crucial.

I think you're on to a good idea.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago

This isn’t done because documentation is hard, no one likes to do it - I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

There are a few posts on !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca, but they are far from exhaustive, and how to get new users there automatically is another challenge.

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[-] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 2 points 3 months ago

I've tried to read through and understand all the comments. I have certainly failed in doing that, so bear with me if this has already been covered.

Can't we spin up an 'onboarding' instance? Where Local is focused on helping new people navigate and understand this stuff with focused communities to navigate Lemmy, understand Fediverse, Choose Instance, even communities run by adjacent fediverse participants like piefed, mastodon, peertube etc.

The instance could have a clear onboarding mission, with an expectation that as users become acclimatised they will move off to start trying a 'home' server. Their account could be activated only for a period of time on that server.

The delineation between Local, subsrcibed and All can be leveraged here to provide a safe harbour with active mods ready to guide, while allowing Lemmy Full Blast on All, so people understand the reality of Lemmy.

This would also provide an experience a lot like the experience i generally have with Lemmy, AZ is cool, sometimes a little sleepy but rarely any real issues or drama. When i'm up for it, i venture onto All, but its easy to deal with because i know i can just switch back to Local whenever i want. I imagine this is what its like for most users on medium to smaller instances.

I agree with the person yhat said subscribed isn't that useful, i've found that as well. Maybe thats poor subscriptions by myself to blame for that though.

[-] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

Hello,

Thank you for your comment and proposal.

The potential issue with the approach you suggest is that once people leave the onboarding instance for another one, their feed is now filled with all the depressive posts we know are usually the most upvoted/discussed. Some might want to stay in the onboarding instance forever. Heck,, even I wouldn't mind having one of my alts there and just enjoy chill content.

I agree with the person yhat said subscribed isn’t that useful, i’ve found that as well.

That's interesting. It probably goes back to your aussie.zone being country-based. I have the same feeling on country instances, while general instances Local feed then to be too heterogeneous to be interesting.

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[-] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 3 months ago

Why can't we have onboarding information on https://join-lemmy.org/?

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[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

There are significant logistical hurdles to a dedicated onboarding-only site. For instance, who is going to run and pay for it? And why? What's really tying them to the site? What's driving that commitment?

With other sites -- even large, general purpose ones -- there is this sense that you are building a community. That you're doing this for the people who rely upon you and your work. And there's the hope that those people will stick around and contribute, either as moderators, or as funders, to help keep the lights on, and keep the space hygienic. But if the whole purpose of the space is for people to GTFO and find their "real" site... who are they doing this for? Why? And what are they getting out of it?

To set up and operate this is to get excited about being the cog in someone else's machine. Most of us are already cogs in someone else's machines, professionally. We're not going to want to do it as a hobby, too.

And for funding, if the whole purpose is for people to leave, they're not not going to pay you for being a temporary sandbox.

These are centralized, business-type solutions. This is not a centralized space. There is no umbrella corporation backing all of this. Loss leaders are not a solution. Asking someone to be the sacrificial lamb for the network is not reasonable.

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