Introducing the newly redesigned Fediverse Onboarding feature 🥳
Now this is something we can share and use to help people find their way in this federated community ✨
Feedback + boosts greatly appreciated, I spent a lot of time on this, for the benefit of everyone ❤️
@dansup first use looks good :)
I would suggest using the term #openweb alongside the #Fediverse as it's both a more positive term and at the same time more change and challenge as it contrasts to #closedweb
@dansup
Could the tool help me select a Mastodon server that allows more than 500 characters per post?
There have been some servers where the moderation allowed only posts written on English. That's not fair and I'd like you avoid them. Can the tool help with that, too?
Feel like this is a good suggestion.
One of the most common questions is how to find larger character count instances.
@mastodonmigration @sloanlance @dansup Since Mastodon does not show that information in the API, they would have to scrape the remaining characters count in the posting box, which means having bot accounts on all the instances.
So, @Mastodon would have to officially support changing the character limit first.
@gunchleoc @sloanlance @dansup @Mastodon
Makes sense. Too bad.
My eyes glazed over at all the buttons on the "Choose your platform" - I don't even know what that means 😥
The navigation, way, way down at the bottom of the pages, is inconsistent - sometimes a button, sometimes just text, and the text within buttons is inconsistent.
I kept tapping the linked circles at the top of the screen when I wanted to go back to a previous step - that sort of behaviour is pretty standard in my online shopping experience, so it was sad that it didn't work.
@dansup
Looks good! Thanks for doing this.
On the second page, after expressing an interest in microblogging, I was invited to choose a platform. That second page was full of terms that newcomers may not know. Perhaps it would be useful to say something like "if you're not sure, choose Mastodon," or else offer an "any" option or a "choose for me" option, along with some reassurance that making a wrong choice doesn't matter too much because you can always move and take your followers with you.
The first time I moved servers, I was looking for a high character limit and markup support, and it was a slog, because I couldn't find a resource that showed that information. More recently, I moved to a server that blocked Threads for ethical and self-defence reasons. Again, that information might be useful.
Once again, thanks for working to help newcomers find their way!
Uhh - this is really hard, because there is no doubt that you spent a lot of time on this, and I do agree that the idea is the right one, and the visual presentation is spot on.
However.
The first page is really good (although I agree that Facebook needs to mentioned somewhere), but the second page is going to stop anyone without knowledge about the fediverse instantly.
Mbin - "Mbin a fork of kbin, community-focused"
Lemmy - "A link aggregator and forum for the fediverse"
Sharkey - "Sharkey is a Misskey fork following upstream changes when possible, with added features"
This tells the potential new user absolutely nothing useful about those platforms. Mbin? - well, it's a fork of kbin (and I happen to know what a fork is), but I have not idea what kbin is.
The idea is great, but the execution simply does not work. The language is way, waaaay to technical and uses terms not recognized by anyone not living in e.g. the FOSS world.
If this tool is to help people with no prior knowledge of the fediverse, you need to dump just about everything on page 2 and start over there. Descriptions, tags - all of it makes little sense if you don't know it already.
Basically, the tool you have made is really perfect for anyone wanting to HOST instances, but almost useless for anyone wanting to JOIN instances.
@madsenandersc @dansup I think this is a pretty fair feedback.
You could probably just drop step 2, pick the platforms based on selections in step 1, and then in step 4 show a "learn more about [platform name]" link with a matching icon for each server, for those who want to get nerdy.
What do you think about that?
Other than this, I think this looks really good!
@dansup @madsenandersc Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a great description for newcomers. I believe this content coming from fedidb/communityDB. Editing JSON is not the easiest thing in the world, but a fairly simple change to work on.
It should probably use whatever the slogan or short description is from either the software’s join page or repository page, which is a nicer description in this case: “A federated content aggregator, voting, discussion and microblogging platform (By the community, for the community)” though it would be nice to mention it is an offshoot (or fork) of kbin too. Same with Sharkey’s “🌎 Sharkey is an open source, decentralized social media platform that's free forever! 🚀”.
Now all I need to do is not distract myself from making a pull request because I have other things I need to take care of.
For lack of a better place to talk about this:
-I don't think choosing a server is that important. Newbies get the idea that servers are like subreddits.
-What I see as important that I don't see mentioned is what I'll call 'content sculpting': The need to make generous use of both hashtags and the mute and block buttons.
This is my second fedi account, and the amount of automated crap I had to kill to find content I wanted was vast. In 2023, I didn't have this problem.
☝️ This is really great. Daniel Supernault, the Pixelfed developer, has created a general Fediverse on-boarding tool (https://fedidb.com/welcome), and is looking for feedback. This thread (begins here: https://mastodon.social/@dansup/114482960842967063) has lots of constructive suggestions already.
Let's pull our Fedi hive mind together to help Daniel refined this much needed capability!
Great job Daniel!
@dansup how do you discover new servers, instances or platforms?
It was weird to see bridgyfed there, since is not something you can "join".
@dansup This is really nice! Suggestion: In the "platforms" step: It would nice to show the logo of each platform/software so that the individual entries are more visually distinct.
It's easier to create a mental concept for each software, when there is a visual element that one can recognize/remember.
dansup
hamish campbell
Paul Kater
Mr. Lance E Sloan (IRL) 👤
Mastodon Migration
GunChleoc
kim_harding ✅
ThePfromtheO
Ascendor
Jeremiah C. Foster 🇸🇪🇺🇸
ProjektMyra
David 
Voracious Reader
C++ Wage Slave
The Void ザ・ヴォイド
NAB 🇬🇧🇪🇺🔶
madsenandersc
Stefan Bohacek
mradcliffe
Theresacityinmymind
Chris Neklason
Melroy van den Berg
TFed 🍉🌻
Maho Pacheco 🦝🍻
nimi
Sam (Ethical Revolution) 🌱✌️