this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I don't mind lemmy.world being recommended to newcomers as it's run by an established and reliable admin (so it's unlikely to just disappear), but it might be a good idea to start recommending lemm.ee as an alternative, too.
Their admin is also great, it's also general-purpose, and they are federated with most instances. It would help spread the load a bit, and would shield newcomers from suffering through the frequent attacks .world have been subjected to recently.
That argument is silly (instances may disappear).
It's the other way around - if small instances don't get users, they may decide to shut down.
So if you want a healthy fediverse, you should encourage many instances. Otherwise it becomes like reddit.
or if instances get too large they need more resources and may not be able to afford to keep going
The argument about instances disappearing has less to do with size and more to do with who runs it. Ruud having a track record with Mastodon.world suggests .world won't be another vlemmy situation.
Lemmy.sdf.org is another great instance to recommend for the same reason.
Probably not a good idea to support just a few instances with reputation because that again eliminates 99% of instances from the Lemmy network.
I rather see it grow than to become a handful of people running instances. The more the better. It's the same mindset as in open source I think. Everyone contributes and feels included.
I'm speaking from the viewpoint of onboarding newcomers, many of whom are not going to be tech-savvy. Keep in mind one of the most common complaints from people hesitant to try out Lemmy is that it seems "too complicated". Sure, you could tell them:
"Okay, first go to the Fediverse Map and find some instances that are hosted close to your geographical location. Look at their stats and find a couple that seem to have good uptime. Now go explore each of them and look at what rules and policies they have, how their admins are behaving and what their plans for funding are medium-long term. Then just pick the one that comes out best in this evaluation!"
This is how I signed up where I did, but let's be realistic and accept that this will not be a viable pitch to onboard most people.
I agree but the solution is not to make everyone register on the largest instance that is also being ddosed. That will most certainly give new users a very bad impression.
Then you will probably say "there are other reputable instances, lemm.ee etc..."
I guess I don't think it's a critical decision to pick "the right" instance. Here we seem to have different opinions since you made a lot of research here to pick something that feels safe. You even recommend other instances that feel safe to you. For me, if my instance shuts down, it takes about 10 minutes to find a new one.
I don't understand the fear you are feeling about instance choice myself at all. It's a server to access the fediverse. It's supposed to be fun.
I would encourage new users to try different ones and realize it's not centralized and that's the entire point.
I mean, in my very first comment in this thread I suggested it might be time to suggest another general-purpose instance to newcomers instead of .world in order to alleviate the load and not subject new users to the instance that's being DDOSed frequently, so I don't know where you got the impression I am suggesting everyone should dogpile onto the largest instance.
New users, particularly coming from Reddit, want a reliable instance because they are used to valuing their account. It's great that you're not, and with Lemmy de-emphasizing Karma there is less reason to be attached, but telling someone "go here, they're run by reliable people" is an easier sell and a smaller culture shock than "who cares about your account, if your chosen instance goes dark just make a new one!". Especially since existing subscription migration tools require the original instance to be online to work. Re-creating your subscription list if your instance suddenly disappears will be bothersome and definitely take more than 10 minutes, and demanding people to set up multiple accounts for redundancy right off the bat also gives a very bad impression.
The other thing newcomers care about is easily accessible content. A reason to pick an instance like lemmy.world, lemm.ee or lemmy.sdf.org is that they're already connected to most communities thanks to their large userbases. This makes navigation easier and makes the All page behave like you would assume.
The most important thing for getting new people on board is a smooth onboarding process where they can start interacting with Lemmy content in a familiar way as soon as possible.
Later, when they're already in the ecosystem and have an idea of how it works, they can explore other instances and maybe move to one that suits them better. I've seen it happen many times already.
I'm trying to tell you that there may not be many smaller instances left to move to if the large ones gets all the users.
You make fair points otherwise but the difference between us is that I would like hundreds of servers around, and I don't see that happening if all new users end up on the largest ones.
Anyway, time for dinner here. What will happen will happen. It's just a shame I think.