this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Fedigrow

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Idea: having a political-free instance for new joiners (feddit.org)
submitted 1 week ago by Blaze@feddit.org to c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
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Hello everyone,

Thinking about this as the on-boarding experience on Lemmy can be subpar, especially because new joiners have to

In order to avoid this, what would you think of having a "new joiners" instance, where

  • hexbear, lemmygrad and ml would be defederated
  • politics and news communities would be blocked at the instance level

That could help to onboard people, so that the first time they look around, they see more gardening, cute comics and casual conversation rather than another set of depressing memes.

Disclaimer: politics and societal issues are important and should be discussed extensively (they are quite popular on Lemmy, let's be honest). I'm not advocating to hide them all, just to not show them as the first content people potentially interested in Lemmy would see.

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[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I've tried to read through and understand all the comments. I have certainly failed in doing that, so bear with me if this has already been covered.

Can't we spin up an 'onboarding' instance? Where Local is focused on helping new people navigate and understand this stuff with focused communities to navigate Lemmy, understand Fediverse, Choose Instance, even communities run by adjacent fediverse participants like piefed, mastodon, peertube etc.

The instance could have a clear onboarding mission, with an expectation that as users become acclimatised they will move off to start trying a 'home' server. Their account could be activated only for a period of time on that server.

The delineation between Local, subsrcibed and All can be leveraged here to provide a safe harbour with active mods ready to guide, while allowing Lemmy Full Blast on All, so people understand the reality of Lemmy.

This would also provide an experience a lot like the experience i generally have with Lemmy, AZ is cool, sometimes a little sleepy but rarely any real issues or drama. When i'm up for it, i venture onto All, but its easy to deal with because i know i can just switch back to Local whenever i want. I imagine this is what its like for most users on medium to smaller instances.

I agree with the person yhat said subscribed isn't that useful, i've found that as well. Maybe thats poor subscriptions by myself to blame for that though.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There are significant logistical hurdles to a dedicated onboarding-only site. For instance, who is going to run and pay for it? And why? What's really tying them to the site? What's driving that commitment?

With other sites -- even large, general purpose ones -- there is this sense that you are building a community. That you're doing this for the people who rely upon you and your work. And there's the hope that those people will stick around and contribute, either as moderators, or as funders, to help keep the lights on, and keep the space hygienic. But if the whole purpose of the space is for people to GTFO and find their "real" site... who are they doing this for? Why? And what are they getting out of it?

To set up and operate this is to get excited about being the cog in someone else's machine. Most of us are already cogs in someone else's machines, professionally. We're not going to want to do it as a hobby, too.

And for funding, if the whole purpose is for people to leave, they're not not going to pay you for being a temporary sandbox.

These are centralized, business-type solutions. This is not a centralized space. There is no umbrella corporation backing all of this. Loss leaders are not a solution. Asking someone to be the sacrificial lamb for the network is not reasonable.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Owners and Guides

One or more admins may run it if they came to an agreement. A capable admin or group of admins would have to put their hands up, but this is no different from any other instance.

As for paying and modding of the instance, the Onboarding Instance should come into existence through an organised Collective of existing and willing admins/mods/longtermusers from a range of Instances.

These are likely the people with the best experience to disseminate to new users. So would be important to take on the guiding roles needed in the onboarding instance communities, even if they have no technical oversight of the instance.

The payoffs

  • The key is to ensure new users leave the onboarding sandbox, if that fails, then you're correct.

  1. General growth of Lemmy, whats good for one is good for all. A large, and stable Lemmy user base will help give this network ongoing strength.

  2. New users filtration into appropriate instances may temper the rapid expansion and domination of the majors like lemmy.world. While increasing the likelihood of users sticking around because they have found their place and have a clearer understanding. I suppose this also has a bonus of decreasing work for admins, eg, deleting users accounts and the like.

  3. Own Instance growth. Some new users will inevitably filter through to your own instance. Assuming your instance takes new users.

Finally

cog in someone else's machine

Setting something like this up, i see, as an acceptance that Lemmy is hard to wrap your head around. And we as a network of disparate Instances can better organise ourselves in a mission to help the new-comers growing Lemmy.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The key is to ensure new users leave the onboarding sandbox, if that fails, then you’re correct.

When you think about it, Lemmy.world is currently the sandbox. And even though a few people leave every time LW makes a debatable move (piracy communities, not defederating Threads, vegan cat food modifying the ToS, reminding people that hate speech is a thing in European laws, the most recent "flat earthers welcome" policy change), a lot of the people are still there, while they should probably be looking for another place.

But people don't like to move. That's also why the vast majority of people is still on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah i agree, LW seems to be the defacto sandbox.

So the issue with LW is users history becomes a barrier to exit. An onboarding instance needs to make clear that it is an introductory instance for newcomers to discover and learn lemmy. That they are expected to move off the Instance within, for instance, a month or two.

If new users expectations are set to understand this, their investment in the profile itself will be lower.

You could disable themeing attributes like usernames and icons for users to make clear the transitory nature of their user profile. I'm not sure i'm fully there with that, but it could be a useful tactic. Replace usernames with a number for instance, or NewUser8000@onboardinginstanceY.com

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That they are expected to move off the Instance within, for instance, a month or two.

That really seems unwelcoming

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[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

All very good points, which is why I think the political free instance shouldn't be temporary. People should be able to consider it their long term home.

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