For those that have poked around other fediverse stuff beyond Lemmy, and been around the spaces awhile, what’s stuck out to you as stumbling blocks, or basic user experience fumbles? Which parts do you think may be technical, and which may be cultural?
netsplits/defederation.
You can’t just tell someone to register for any server, and they will be able to see everything. So they then have to choose a server, which takes effort, and can cause analysis paralysis.
Maybe that is exactly what we need to do, to spare them from the indecision. Recommend them to a specific instance to sign up and follow you (if in doubt, the instance we use). I suppose we can mention there are lots of choices, and those who are inclined that way will want to explore other servers, many are not, and for them pointing them at a server may be best.
I’m just thinking that trying to say there are lots of networks, each with lots of servers etc, may be the problem.
Alternatively, should ask them some questions like do they want to post short format or long text format, and take into account a specific interest they have, and then we still recommend a server instance to them to join.
So for fellow ham radio operators, I just pointed them all to the ham radio Mastodon instance and said sign up there.
Controversial and probably unpopular opinion:
- the biggest hurdle the fediverse faces is that it’s not run by a business with monetary incentives to make it more popular and doesn’t have any marketing / market research / product managers focused on gaining users.
I’m someone who hates advertising with a burning and seething passion, and I’m no lover of capitalism, but from a systemic standpoint there’s a reason most open source projects burn out and go nowhere, and for-profit businesses have a higher chance of survival, because there’s direct incentives (you know money/food) to keep making commercial software and increasing it’s user base, but there isn’t for hobbyist and open source software. Especially in the case of a social network that is only as valuable as the content and users on it, this might be a long term systemic issue.
most open source projects burn out and go nowhere, and for-profit businesses have a higher chance of survival
You know like 50% of new businesses fail within 5 years, right? I don’t have stats on open source projects, but it seems to me those are more likely to fail because they’re run by one person who loses interest than because they don’t have a profit motive.
You know like 50% of new businesses fail within 5 years, right?
Yes, that is a remarkably low failure rate. 99.9% of open source projects sit unused and abandoned after 5 years.
those are more likely to fail because they’re run by one person who loses interest than because they don’t have a profit motive.
They’re run by one person because they don’t have a profit motive, so they don’t need to hire QA, market research etc. etc. All the parts of a software company that help to keep continuously developing their software and make sure users are happy.
- Lack of discoverability
- Poor moderation tools at all levels (admin, moderator, user)
- Lack of will to moderate at admin and moderator level
- Replication of topics on multiple instances (two different lemmy instances with their own /c/technology - one too busy to keep up with, the other just a lone person posting links every so often)
- Low effort content dominates some places making it difficult for an individual to find interesting content (see 1 and 2.user)
