Personally I thought first impressions of Mastodon (and Lemmy) were abysmal. Being told to pick a server without knowing what that means or the consequences of that choice just scares people away. Unless someone has a specific server in mind they should not even be asked to pick one. Instead a number of existing servers should volunteer as curated core servers and new users are automatically assigned to one of those. There can still be a “let me choose” link that goes to a full list of servers if they prefer to browse them all
I think this is a decent take. Maybe certain trusted servers can opt to be “default” servers and new users signing up on mastodon’s default homepage are round-robbin’d into them. This can create a large burden of moderation on servers that opt into this, but it would be well worth it to turn mastodon into a user-friendly platform
Sounds like a good way. I have to admit, signing up for mastodon was a confusing mindfuck, and I’m not anything close to tech-illiterate as a reporter, and it’s mainly because of the process. It’s seriously crippled adoption.
