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.
I’m not sure I can add much value to the recommendations themselves, but I do believe the page needs to explain in relatively simply terms that that joining a particular instance isn’t necessarily hindering access to any content, otherwise people will generally choose the most populous.
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!
I’m very new to contributing in that kind of style, git and code is scary to me; I’m more here for research, recommendations and element design.
What would be the best way to contribute non-coding expertise? I always feel like I’m imposing in these kind of spaces when I want to offer advice and insights as they come from such a different sphere
I literally only understood this after getting an account on one instance, and realizing I still saw posts and could interact with them from other instances. And I’m a web developer with pretty deep technical knowledge.
A simple “choose your home, see and interact with content from everywhere” would go a long way.
If I hadn’t already settled into Mastodon I would have been super lost, still was to a degree…
And Join-Lemmy seemed to be pushing me to Lemmygrad, which is cute, but I wanted something more general and had only heard of beehaw through other people discussing Lemmy
The iconography on posts is pretty confusing too, needs some good labeling “Open in Home Instance” & “Open in Original Instance” would help
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by open in home vs open in original? Does a single post have separate comment threads depending on the instance? Or are they meshed?
Controversial idea: I think we should remove the “users per month” number on the instance list. It’s confusing to newbies and encourages people to join a “large” instance when the number doesn’t really correlate with actual server capacity.
Edit: And don’t display the ones with 1 or fewer users. They are obviously private single user ones. If someone wants to start a public one, they’ll be able to come get 2 or 3 others to join up and they’ll pop onto the list.
Yea, when I looked for an instance to join, the activ user number discouraged me and I thought that these instances are basically dead. Maby just a baar without numbers just saying very activ - unactiv would be better.
Okay, I’ve made the changes locally, but before I put up a PR, do you agree to these changes?
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
allowedlist 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.
I strongly disagree with #2 through #4.
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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.
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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).
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Yeah because that was such a positive aspect of Reddit, just ask violentacrez.
- 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.
I don’t agree that there should be strictures that enforce similarity to Reddit on instances if they want to be recommended. You’ve apparently been using Lemmy for three days now, based on your git repo history and your top-level comment in this thread. As a longtime Lemmy user, allow me to point out that Lemmy is not, and should not seek to be, exactly like Reddit. To enforce that would be to stifle potential avenues of improvement (like, as I’ve mentioned, removing downvotes).
Also, growth for growth’s sake is not something I think should be sought after; your policies seem to be entirely focused on growth with no concern for quality or community, which I don’t agree with.
I’ve stood up aussie.zone primarily for Australians, but open to anyone. Same as poVoq, its just me at this stage… but I’ve disabled community creation.
We should join forces. 👋 Also another Australian, on Australian infrastructure. https://reddthat.com/c/australia