It stroke me that saying things like “First, you have to choose a comunity to join the fediverse” might be a better way to ease onboarding nwecommers than “First, you have to choose a server”.
Although the latter might be technically more accurate, the former is what people might
- understand better;
- ends up being what they’re really doing;
- frighten them less;
- reinforce the “community” contribution aspect;
- lead them to better understand the federated aspect as they realize that communities are not isolated and can talk to eachother.
What do you think?
“Let me know in the comments bellow…” - just kidding!
An immediate problem is that “community” is a term in the threadiverse, where [email protected] is a community. It also might make it sound like an exclusive space with a specific topic, whereas in reality when you join a server you can still interact with the wider network.
IMO this is a concept that can’t be expressed in one word when someone is unfamiliar with the concept. We put together this guide a while back to try and explain it: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
We could call it a home, shortened from home server. I didn’t pick a server over another. I keep using other server’s communities. What I did was that I called one server my home on the fediverse while you called lemmy.ca your home.
It’s not perfect but it would solve the term conflict.
I like “home”, I might try using that in the future :)
That’s a great analogy. It does also highlight that, when you travel to another instance, you are a guest and should behave accordingly.
I feel like that’s getting there, though ‘home’ doesn’t sit right with me somehow; too many other connotations (after all it’s still somebody else’s server, unless you’re self-hosting it, you’re still using it on their terms so it’s not a ‘home’ in a typical sense).
Maybe ‘gateway’ or something like that?
I like home, gateway, or home base.
Maybe neighborhood?
Maybe neighborhood?
Showing my age, that reminds me of Geocities.
Thanks for the guide.
When you set up email, I think you’d say you “choose a provider” not “a server” even if that’s essentially what you’re doing.
Is there a downside to using the term “provider” when talking about choosing an instance? Ultimately, that is where the difference would be. The entity in charge of the instance needs to be trustworthy and have a moderation style/philosophy that the user agrees with.
Provider doesn’t really have any downside
And the term would reinforce the need do stick to that entity rules. I agree.
Not sure it’s a fitting term. Most instances aren’t communities. They provide their service, but there’s no “we are the members of mastodon.community and here’s what we do as a community”. They exist but aren’t the norm. Calling instances communities probably leads to wrong expectations
Except you don’t have to interact with other users on your server, so why label them as “communities”. Communities on Lemmy or subreddits are already more deserving of the term “community” because that’s where you actually go to interact with other people.
Edit: Typo
Except you have to interact with other users on your server
Says who? I don’t know the server of anyone I’m interacting with. I think “gateway” would be a better choice, but that isn’t any less confusing.
Typo
Doesnt really matter i think. Lemmy has become very centralized to Lemmy.world. But you have a few more medium sized instances also so its still better than a central site.
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Even setting aside the fact that the term community if already in use in the context of Lemmy or the fediverse in general: I really don’t agree that you’re choosing a community. For the vast majority of things it makes no difference what instance you’re on. That’s the whole point. While I made a conscious choice for my instance, the selection was almost completely irrelevant for 99.9% of my interactions.
You probably shouldn’t pick one whose ideology goes completely against yours, and you probably shouldn’t pick one that’s heavily defederated (for whatever reason), but that’s about it.
They being said, if they have “special interests” and are coming here to mostly talk abouta specific topic, choosing a fitting instance is at least a good idea and may have more impact.
I disagree. I think you’re placing your specific use-case as someone who regularly scrolls by all or subscribed as the only one, when in my opinion local scrolling has a lot og fun for specialized instances. Two comms on different instances with the same subject are going to have different content and responses, and that’s nice! Plus, some have their own emotes, special features, only allow upvoting, etc so they have differences there, too.
You might be right about being able to do almost anything whatever the instance you choose, as long as you already figured it all out, but having an account at a lemmy server, and two at two different mastodon servers, I do have the feeling that the presence on any of them is a different experience.
Don’t forget that what most people’s experience on the fediverse comes probably via mastodon and that they start by getting most of their content via home and local feeds. Federated comes third, i guess.
I am still struggling to find content on some of my preferred topics…
Emphasizing moderation differences and such are things best left to discover after the user successfully lands onto the fediverse.
At the start they shouldn’t even have to think about what instance they want to land on. We’re approaching it with the mindset that they “want to join Lemmy/Piefed” — that’s not right!
They should want to join a specific community, and the server just happens to be whatever they find first.
Let’s say I like Star Trek. I shouldn’t have to be redirected to startrek.website. I should be able to see the community, think “cool I want to participate”, and sign up, even if where I landed happens to be feddit, db0, or a random NodeBB instance.
I like to use more physical words. Such as town or nest. For instance I used to be on a norwegian site which translates to Freetown, but I have now moved to Hedgehognest.
