I introduced kbin to someone today who asked what the fediverse was. I answered for them of course, but it made me realize that the concept is still technobabble for most people. The average joe probably doesn’t care or notice that server A is really talking to server B. Just have them find out on their own and if a mass migration does need to happen from A to B, just make a standard announcement.
The issue is that for your average Joe Schmoe, decentralization isn’t really a selling point. For a lot of people, a computer is a magic box they use to visit websites, and how anything works under the hood is irrelevant. Whether it’s one server or a federation of servers doesn’t matter.
I saw a lot of people bail on Mastodon before even signing up because this concept of “instances” confused them. What server do I join? Can I talk to X of I’m not on X’s server? Do I need an account on each server I want to follow? This concept of multiple instances of a platform doesn’t exist outside of the fediverse. Kbin just pointing you to the default instance is probably the best thing it could do for widespread adoption.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms. Point them to the main instance and give them a high level overview about the fediverse if they ask. The resources are here if they want to learn more.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms.
This is my opinion as well. I really don’t think that the average end user should be expected to know or care about how federated servers work, any more than I need to know that when I visit a website it uses a load balancer to route my request to one of many servers. Users should be able to create an account and click on links to find and create content without having to understand anything about the technical end.
I don’t think it’s fair to expect someone looking to join a new knitting community to learn about client/server relationships and federated social platforms.
This is the situation with the communities I’m most interested in - it’s a big psychological barrier to entry, if you’re not particularly tech-minded. I’ve been trying to spread the word, but I don’t think I can put it simply enough (and I’ve been putting it really simply, because honestly I don’t completely understand it all myself yet).
I’m here because it was easy to sign up, it’s friendly and reasonably intuitive, and it seems like a place where you can learn by doing. I just jumped in without thinking too much about it, and it’s working out pretty well so far. I just wish more people understood that they could do the same thing…
I’m not too worried about the learning curve. I can remember when explaining Reddit to my friends ended in a blank stare. I also encountered plenty of people on Reddit, even recently, who were only there for a specific sub and had no real awareness of the larger Reddit system/community.
The same thing can happen with the Fediverse. Communities on specific instances will gain critical mass and attract people from outside the Fediverse, who will sign up and engage with what they think of as just another website.
As an alternative the UI could hide the fediverse-related technicality while showing basically all the magazines from all the kbin instances. When new users create an account, all the kbin instances should allow creation for any other instance. Just allow redirecting or something. There should be an advanced info button to show each kbin instance’s policies. They won’t matter for the average Joe.
You can’t show anyone anything “from all [blank] instances”, though. There’s no centralized server that they all phone home to. There’s no mechanism for them to learn about each other except through user exploration.
So there’s no way to see non-kbin content without going and subscribing to another instances magazines?
The onboarding process, prior to selecting a server, could be streamlined. It’s common fair to ask new users to identify some of their topics of interest. Server admins could provide a list of tags/topics that are associated with their community. The new user would then see a list of communities ordered by strongest matches to their interests. Just a thought.
This concept of multiple instances of a platform doesn’t exist outside of the fediverse.
This is not 100% true.
A good comparison might be World of Warcraft. While not the best example, a player does not have to be in the same instance/server as their friend in order to join in each other’s content/dungeons. This is a fairly new feature of WoW ( and not feature-complete compared to full federation ). It could stand in as a starting point for the conversation.
