this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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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

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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[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 3 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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

I could see the first point being almost the default for topic-specific instances (along with not allowing NSFW material). Who wants to join a D&D, MTG, Star Wars, instance only to run headfirst into a Stalinist troll? With the caveat that I don't see them that much unless Russia gets a mention in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

I am unsure if the latter is needed - give people the option to subscribe or block politics, shitposts and memes. Perhaps start with the default to "Local" and have an introduction thread about it. However, I may be a statistical outlier as I default to "Local" and rarely use "All" and so don't run into things I am not signed up for.

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[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I would counter and suggest that Lemmy implements a "default block" system that admins can set on their instance, i.e. the 3 you've mentioned, plus any others they want. When the account is created, the default blocks are applied (either instance or communities or ideally flexibility to add both).

Users can then choose to unblock these if they want to engage with that content without moving instance.

While portability is kind of a feature of the lemmyverse, your posts don't come with you so likely people wouldn't want to move off the "default" instance, which would create another problem with centralized instances.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 7 months ago (7 children)

I would counter and suggest that Lemmy implements a “default block” system that admins can set on their instance, i.e. the 3 you’ve mentioned, plus any others they want. When the account is created, the default blocks are applied (either instance or communities or ideally flexibility to add both).

The issue is that requires development on Lemmy. The proposal in the OP can be done with the existing tools. Otherwise, I agree with you, what would be more elegant.

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[–] Libb@jlai.lu 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

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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[–] Alice@hilariouschaos.com 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Would you guys quit shittin all over blaze? Not everything is politcal. The issue is people making everything political. How the fuck are cat memes and let's say makeup, political? They're not.

Some ppl just won't shut the fuck up about politics and it's super annoying. I think it's a great idea blaze has.

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[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The onboarding issue isn't politics or which instances are federated, it's that federations exist for all to see when it's something that should impact the server side only and users should come to Lemmy and feel like they're joining just any other centralized website.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

they’re joining just any other centralized website.

That's not the case. Users have to attach themselves to an instance or another, and the content they will be able to see will change accordingly. That's how ActivityPub works

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[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

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 3 points 6 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That’s interesting. It probably goes back to your aussie.zone being country-based

Why would your instance affect your subscribed feed? I would have thought that's the one feed where it should be irrelevant which instance you're on. All is a combination of everything that anyone on your instance has ever subscribed to, so smaller more homogeneous instances will have a fairly simple homogeneous All. And Local is, obviously...Local. But you choose which communities are in your Subscribed. The only thing your instance should change is whether or not downvotes are counted.

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[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Mostly because this website is managed by the Lemmy devs, and what I'm suggesting is basically an instance without lemmy.ml, their instance

And I hope it doesn't come too disrespectful towards their work, I think Lemmy as a software is a quite good Reddit replacement (the best we have so far, actually), but I also think we could benefit from an instant with less political content.

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[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago (6 children)

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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[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 7 months ago (7 children)
[–] m_f@midwest.social 3 points 7 months ago (7 children)

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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[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Honestly might be a good idea, but easily corruptible.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 6 months ago

Thank you for your feedback

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