Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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nutomic@lemmy.ml

Which instances should be recommended on join-lemmy.org? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by nutomic@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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The instance list has a couple of recommended sites at the top. They are defined in this file and seperated by language. For most languages there is only one recommendation or none at all, so you can simply add yours by making a pull request.

In case of English, the situation is a bit different. The current recommended instances (beehaw.org and sopuli.xyz) are already quite large and would be shown near the top of the list anyway. So it makes sense to recommend smaller instances instead.

To be recommended, an instance should meet these requirements:

It should be a general purpose instance
At least one member of the admin team needs to be in the Instance admin chat to coordinate with other admins
The admin team needs to be prepared for a large influx of users, both in terms of hardware and moderation

We can use this thread to discuss which instances should be recommended. There is no maximum number of recommendations, but it should be an even number to work with the desktop layout.

On a side note, the instance list itself could use many improvements such as showing more details about instances or using different sorting methods. If you are a programmer or web designer, you can contribute to improve the website.

Edit: If you are a Lemmy admin and want your instance to be recommended, go ahead and open a pull request for this file. Developers can also contribute in the same repo to improve join-lemmy.org.

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[–] Sam_uk@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Would you consider adding Kbin instances? Or is that not 'lemmy' enough?

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[–] maltfield@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think we should add the following criteria to instances at the VERY TOP that are recommended to new users:

The instances does not define an allowed list of instances
Downvotes are enabled
NSFW content is allowed
Users can create new communities

...otherwise new users (eg from reddit) are not going to use lemmy because it won't match their expectations.

Personally, I was pretty disenchanted by my experience on lemmy when I first joined. I had to create accounts on like 5 different instances before I found one that worked (that's why I created the comparison table of lemmy instances).

Most new users won't have that perseverance. If, for example, they see there's no downvotes on the "recommended" instance, they'll probably give up and leave lemmy.

[–] Sphere@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I strongly disagree with #2 through #4.

Just because redditors expect downvotes doesn't make them good. When Hexbear removed downvotes, the community feel improved dramatically; downvotes both promote toxic debatebro behavior (by making people upset when they catch a wave of downvotes) and allow cowards to attack people silently from the shadows, without having to actually state their shitty views and be criticized for them.
NSFW content tends to alienate people. Besides, there's no way to tell via code whether an instance allows NSFW content or just allows people to mark content as NSFW (two very different things).
Yeah because that was such a positive aspect of Reddit, just ask violentacrez.

[–] maltfield@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Downvotes are important to ensure quality content. It allows the community address statements made by a user based on objectively incorrect (mis)information. This feature is an important reason why many reddit users aren't on Mastodon. Also, democracy is important.
Recommended Instances shouldn't wholesale block content just because it's NSFW. As you say, policy on what NSFW content is allowed is distinct from the instance enabling NSFW content.
People being able to create and moderate their own communities is positive

If an instance (eg Hexbear) wants to deviate from this, that's fine. That's what the Fediverse is all about :) But we shouldn't recommend those instances to new users as it will cause new user attrition.

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[–] bear_delune@beehaw.org 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I think something to focus on would be a clean and easy-to-understand explanation of Lemmy and how the instances federate together.

This is still something Mastodon is struggling with when it comes to onboarding. Even for the technologically minded, it can be a steep curve and there are potentially a lot of other people who will balk at the walls of text and technical jargon.

Obviously, it all can't be fixed overnight, but I feel a lot can be done to improve the onboarding for users without overloading them with information.

Maybe a small step-by-step wizard-style system to help someone find and instance and explain Lemmy in bite-sized chunks of info would be a good first step.

Professionally I'm a UX Designer and Business Design consultant and I'd love to be able to lend expertise to the project!

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