Required move to ease onboarding?
I’ve been thinking more about the hurtle of getting friends and family to use federated/self-hosted services. One of the issues to onboarding is people not understanding the idea of picking an instance. This has led, in part, to “default” instances, like lemmy.world, that could grow so large it would almost defeat the idea.
I’ve been thinking that I really wish DeltaChat had a web client. I have had a MUCH more difficult time getting folks to try that out than even federated SNS. But I was thinking how the heck are you going to pull that off without [email protected] having to host the overhead for a robust web client and possibly host a gigantic server system that has to grow exponentially to keep everyone’s private encrypted chats from all the possible email providers, really defeating the goal of their project.
This morning, I thought of a possible solution to both problems. What if you have a built-in transfer requirement. So you start with a default, say pleb.joinmastodon.org or noob.delta.chat and after a certain time (3 months or something) you have to either transfer to a new instance, including hosting your own client for in browser decryption web access to your encrypted mail chats, or your account (in the case of #mastodon) or web client access (in the case of Delta Chat) is shut off.
Do you think this could work?
So, your solution to “ease onboarding” is to give newcomers more work? For a platform with far less content that’s already confusing them with just signing up, let alone figuring out transfering or self hosting?
I think you VASTLY overestimate how many fucks people have to give, and also how tech literate the average person is. The average person can barely figure out how to change their web browser, and most really don’t care about the awful shit big companies do.
This idea of yours would drive engagement through the floor and a respectable distance into the Earth’s crust.
Ease of use should be the #1 consideration when it comes to onboarding people to something.
Once there people will view moving as a hassle, but I understand what you’re thinking. Mastodon I think did it better with “suggesting” an instance to you, and Lemmy has gotten better about it. For friends and family I think the best way is basically telling them which server to use. Go here, sign up
Piefed has a built-in instance selector
I’ve been thinking that I really wish DeltaChat had a web client. I have had a MUCH more difficult time getting folks to try that out than even federated SNS
That’s interesting, I was thinking that Deltachat is quite intuitive to use, especially handling keys and encryption much better than Matrix.
Also don’t most people use messengers on mobile apps nowadays?
this is basically what Ragnarok Online did with the novice class and then you have to pick a real class when you hit job level 10 lol
but I don’t think this idea would work because people are lazy and this would be kinda confusing
if you’re onboarding family and friends, you just choose the instance for them, you say “hey, signup here: URL”
@Die4Ever even that isnt’ enough now-a-days because if its not “download this app” they can’t figure it out. My teenage daughter gets so mad anytime I mention diong anything in a web browser.
What the hell… I suggest to help her to learn something or two about tech if you can, like what is a web browser (no need for technicisms just what is it) and such basic things, without forcing her! I speak as teenager and i would hate to be forced in to something
I don’t think so. When talking about scale, I think it’s more realistic to think that most of people won’t understand nor care enough to understand what instances are. Even after they become regular users
@INeedMana I don’t see many folks not understanding email they can pick yahoo.com or mail.ru and still send and receive mail with everyone they know. And most of us “on-boarded” to a “default” at one time, whether it was your OG ISP or gmail.com when you got your first Android, or icloud.com(?) when you got your original iPhone.
I’m not convinced that many people really understand the difference between mail@gmail vs mail@yahoo and that technically speaking everyone could be hosting their own mail server. “It’s just the address to find you” does not imply understanding what’s a domain
@INeedMana which is why I’m saying “force” them to.
I get your point. But with such approach I expect messages somewhere else like “I set up an account on fedi, it was really great but after a few months they just deleted my account for no reason. There were some banners about changing instance, whatever that means, but that was for the admins, right?”
As soon as the first account they made stops working, they would drop the fediverse entirely And loudly complain how terrible it is. I think this would actively reduce adoption.
No I don’t think that would work.
@[email protected] Personally, I like the idea of instances exclusive for testing out.
Also Mastodon allows the user to point to his/her new account, so migrating, for outsiders, doesn’t too far fetched to implement elsewhere if desired. And Mastodon and Lemmy (at least) allow exporting the user’s data, so also not reinventing the wheel there. And the idea of an instance made for testing out could be set up just like that, on an instance basis, so no need to change fundamental functionalities of a given forum engine.
Two things I’d propose, though, first to not allow new magazines/communities to be created by non-admin/moderators as to not have derelict ones once the allowed usage period ends, and to have some level of control on people subscribing to avoid bots.
And regarding the usage period, I wonder if a moderator bot could be set up to automatically lock a given account after it, only allowing to log in to get the aforementioned export data (if that is to be implemented).
