When introducing members to kbin/lemmy don't mention the fediverse!
When introducing members to kbin/lemmy don't mention the fediverse!
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.
I don't agree. The term "Fediverse" must be mentioned at the very beginning of the introduction - the decentralized network must be understood as the basis of the whole. People have made the mistake for too long of selling Mastodon to people as the Fediverse - that's just wrong.
I initially downvoted you because I disagree, but then changed my mind because it's still a valid opinion. Personally, I agree with OP. People are being scared off by confusion in trying to understand what the fediverse is. While I agree it's good to mention the fediverse and the distributed nature, it's often coming across as the main thing and I think it's counter-productive. People will come to understand it just fine if they can just be left to dive in without befuddling them. I think getting them on board is more important than it being in the fediverse.
I think what scares people off is looking for an explanation and seeing 15 page documents or 30 minute videos explaining it.
"Fediverse lets different sites talk to each other. It's like if Facebook could follow people on Twitter and subscribe to subreddits so now your Facebook page has Facebook posts, reddit Twitter posts, and reddit posts all in one, if you want. If you join a site on the fediverse, you can communicate with any other site on the fediverse easily." 3 sentences gets the job done for what's needed.
One they're in kbin or whatever, they can learn the site. "oh a magazine is like a subreddit or like channels in a discord server" or whatever they're used to.
I wish that's how it was explained to me. I'm not massively into technology but it interests me casually so I was able to put up with the long explanations because it felt interesting to me. But it really could be boiled down so much more for newbies.
I agree it's not important to introduce and/or explain the Fediverse at length, but the concept probably cannot be ignored completely either.
People migrating from Reddit are faced with the choice between Lemmy and kbin, and a bunch of different servers. Telling them that "which one you choose doesn't matter that much, as they will all talk to each other anyway" is probably of some relevance.
and the fediverse is also about value of inclusivity. it goes beyond a technological ideal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 don't really agree with this because the fediverse is not only interconnected by a technology (ActivityPub) but also by some shared values, like inclusivity and kindness to each other.
so for me it's important to agree to embrace those values if you want to be part of it. it's not just a replacement for other platforms. users that experienced the twitter migration know what I'm talking about.
if an instance becomes toxic, il will simply be de-federated and continue to live on its on , on a secular island (a good example of this is thruth.social, who is not accessible from mastodon.social for obvious reasons). I really don't want this to happen to here.
so please let's keep what was on reddit on reddit and build something new here.
I don't really agree with this because the fediverse is not only interconnected by a technology (ActivityPub) but also by some shared values, like inclusivity and kindness to each other.
That's kind of overegging the pudding. There's nothing intrinsically "nice" about fedi, quite a lot that isn't, and this feels like a promise that will be very rapidly seen as hollow lies the moment someone has a negative interaction, as well they might.
It's what every underdog social network says when it doesn't have the network effect yet. BlueSky, for example.
While I agree that it's important for people to have an understanding of the values that the fediverse are founded upon, as well as associated etiquette, I still don't think that the fediverse itself needs that much of an explanation for people to reach that understanding. Though platforms may provide tools that can be used for malice, a tool is only ever as good or bad as the intent of the person using them. I don't think someone necessarily has to understand the technical aspects of the fediverse to know how to treat others. Maybe to put things in better perspective, like how much of a communal aspect there is to the efforts that maintain this network, but I think most people will get to that understanding on their own regardless if it's truly in their intent. Inclusivity and kindness aren't concepts that are unique to the fediverse, but human concepts that people learn, and unfortunately unlearn over entire lifetimes. And above all, I believe the best way to teach and convey values to one another will also always be the most intuitive: by example.
I think that it's important for users to know where they are.
and I think that it's critical to fight technological illiteracy, raise awareness about how it works, who's developing it, who's paying for it. it doesn't need to be complex, but the main concept need to be explained, and thus let users be actors of their digital life.
in my opinion it's important to take any opportunity to do so.
the online courses from the totem project about digital security and privacy are very well done and easy to follow, if anyone is interested:
https://totem-project.org
Here's what would I say when introducing Kbin to someone:
"...So Kbin is a lot like Reddit; you can pretty much upvote and downvote stuff, you can post stuff that you wanna post, you can follow people, you can save posts by simply 'boosting'. But here's the deal: you can also access posts from other sites like Kbin, and you can write microblogs! With what's going in Reddit, I think it's safe to say that Kbin is here to stay."
First rule of fediverse: Donât talk about the fediverse.
I think understanding how federation works would eliminate a lot of the "Which network should I be on" questions, though. Because a lot of people seem to be confused about that. If I'M understanding it correctly, it doesn't matter really which aggregator you use, because with federation you actually have access to the content in all of them.
You don't have access to the ones which refuse to federate (for example, because they will only federate with instances that accept the same Code of Conduct).
We are obviously assuming different things: You think that there are only uneducated people out there. I assume that there are many interested people who would like to be fully informed.
Sure, there are definitely people who are going to want to know how everything works. But the community won't grow and evolve if there's too steep of a learning curve for the average internet user to just to join in
And why does the community need to grow? That has never been the main goal of the #Fediverse to be focused on. Quality over quantity.
this is not that simple. If a user joins an instance that has only a few users they will get disappointed because it will look empty and non-active. They need to understand that they can still join communities from another instances where they can find more users and activity and they can still interact with them
I still don't understand how to do this part
On top of intentionally connecting specific external communities to the instance you are using, communities from other instances will show up as search results. For example, I am a big Star Trek fan, so I go to the search and enter "star trek", which shows me both a local community here on kbin.social and reveals there's a dedicated instance at startrek.website which has more content.
Over time, I'm expecting that niche topics will (for better or worse) gravitate to specific instances, but that content will then be duplicated throughout the whole Fediverse. There's a lot of duplication right now because things are new and not totally connected, not to mention technical challenges for scaling up, but that will improve over time.