I’ve noticed that a lot of people on the #fediverse aren’t particularly welcoming to those who don’t initially get it or have trouble with it. You’d think that if multiple people say they have trouble picking an instance, it might be a genuine barrier to entry that we need to consider when introducing them to the fediverse. But no, instead of suggesting an instance to get rid of that barrier everyone gives unhelpful advice like “just pick one” or “it’s not that hard.” We’d have a much easier time getting people on the fediverse if there weren’t so many people with this attitude of “the fediverse is simple, and the people who don’t get it are lazy and should try harder.”

  • ThatOneKirbyMain2568OP
    3•7 months ago

    @wizardbeard I’d argue that telling people to join largest (or at least a larger) instance isn’t a bad thing. If I was telling someone to join Kbin, I’d tell them to just pick kbin.social. Later on, once they get accustomed to fediverse and understand the idea better, they can go to a smaller instance if they want
    (e.g., if it’s focused on a topic you like, it has features or moderation policies you prefer, or you just want to take some load off the larger instance). Having people initially go to larger, more established instances — where the experience tends to be more approachable due to more active hosts, more old content being federated, a larger community within the instance, etc. — greatly reduces the barrier to entry.

    And the danger of a lot of people on a single instance is really exaggerated. If things go badly on, say, a Lemmy instance that most people are on, they can just move to another one with the same features, same UI, and similar access to content. It’s not like Reddit or Twitter where moving means you’re missing out on a ton.

    You’re right that it’s usually better to be the change you want to see as opposed to simply criticizing others, but I think it’s still important to discuss how we introduce people to the fediverse.

    • @0x4E4FEnglish
      3•7 months ago

      And the danger of a lot of people on a single instance is really exaggerated. If things go badly on, say, a Lemmy instance that most people are on, they can just move to another one with the same features, same UI, and similar access to content.

      See, for new users, a slow glitchy instance means “fediverse don’t work like advertised”… sorry, but if you haven’t noticed, the techies are the ones that stayed on Lemmy. Everyone else pretty much left it after the big Reddit migration wave hit it. Glitches, bugs, unstable instances, instances going dark… that’s just not for everyone. Yeah, we understand the reasons, so we stayed, but for normies, this was generally a bad sign and just left.

      That’s why it’s advisable to distribute the load, so we don’t get into these same problems, which of course just gives the fediverse a bad name.

      • ThatOneKirbyMain2568OP
        2•7 months ago

        @0x4E4F

        That’s definitely a good point in the case of a mass exodus like what happened with Reddit. But even in those situations, I don’t think this means we need to direct people to tiny instances. Lemmy now has a bunch of solid instances (lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, sopuli.xyz, sh.itjust.works, lemm.ee, lemmy.ca, etc.), so if some mass immigration to Lemmy were to happen again, you could say something like the following:

        “Pick lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, or lemmy.world; doesn’t matter too much since they’re all decently large instances with good moderators.”

        Saying something like this:

        • Narrows the options down to a small few that don’t really differ for the new user
        • Leads them to an established instance with a lot of people, making them more likely to stay
        • Splits people between instances so we don’t get instance slowdowns, shutdowns, etc.
        • @0x4E4FEnglish
          3•7 months ago

          That is true, you could give a list of stable instances, that I agree with 👍.