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https://andrewhickey.info/2017/11/16/mastodon-dont-worry-about-instances/
New blog post, explaining why you don't need to know anything at all about instances to join Mastodon, and why you don't need multiple accounts.
> a social network called Mastodon
There is a social network often called the #Fediverse, and Mastodon is one of the pieces of software that is able to participate in it.
> Diaspora (a similar Twitter-alternative social network I tried about five years ago, but which only two other friends ever bothered with; it’s apparently still going, but no-one uses it).
Apart from ~400000 active users:
https://diasp.eu/stats.html
> YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW OR UNDERSTAND ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT MASTODON INSTANCES. YOU DO NOT EVEN NEED TO THINK ABOUT THEM.
Apart from the fact that several instances are blocking other instances left and right, isolating themselves from the greater network. But you get to that later.
> Your email provider probably blocks certain domains which are just used for sending spam
But no email provider blocks another domain for the reason that users on that domain talk to users on a third domain that the first provider doesn't like, or for that domain having "wrong ideals".
> Then when you looked at the local timeline, *even those people you didn’t follow* would still be people with whom you shared an interest, and so might be people you’d want to talk to.
A good argument against the title of your post.
@clacke @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna And if you say *ANY* of that, without first saying the stuff I said, what you get is people saying "this is confusing, I don't understand any of this, I'm not using that".
Stuff like distinguishing between Mastodon and the Fediverse *just confuses users*
Not distinguishing them is what introduces the confusion.
You don't have to go Full Technical, it's enough to just use the right words and call things what they are rather than oversimplifying to the point of mixing things up.
"I prefer the Fediverse to Twitter, it's pretty cool. You have better tools to protect yourself against idiots *and* you run less risk of being kicked out because someone else thought you were an idiot.
Bernie and Laura are there too. Maybe you've heard people talk of Mastodon, that's one way to use it. There are lots of different people running servers for you, but don't sweat that for now, if you want to see what I'm talking about, just register at mymasto.blergh and we can connect!"
@clacke @cjd @bortzmeyer @frankiesaxx @nolan @dtluna The problem with that is that the post in question was intended *for people who already knew the words "Mastodon" and "instances", but didn't know anything else*.
You introduce the term "fedverse" when they know the term "Mastodon" already, and *you've already lost half your audience*.
@dtluna @nolan @frankiesaxx @bortzmeyer @cjd @clacke
I have seen -- literally -- hundreds of people say that they wanted to join Mastodon, but the concept of "instances" scared them off. The point of that post was to remove the fear, not to act as a fresh introduction to people who don't know about it at all.
Your way would work for people who haven't already been scared off. It would be deadly for those who have.
@stealthmunchkin @dtluna @nolan @bortzmeyer @cjd @clacke
I don't think "scared" is the right word for most people.
It's confusing, frustrating, and it makes the sign up process more cognitively demanding than it needs to be when you're asking people to make choices about things they have no experience.
In Pokemon Go you don't choose your team until level 10.
I've seen people say that calls for easy migration between instances are ridiculous, but it's exactly the kind of thing that would make this even less of an issue, and lower registration anxiety.
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna The local timeline thing is a problem too. Like people think it's a secret society and want to know what's going on in there. (Saying "it's just a stream of the posts of all the people on the server, follow the people you're interested in, you'll see their posts" doesn't change that idea.) It would help if there was support for groups and local timelines could be wrapped as groups & then people would see they aren't actually missing something.
But instance timelines do mean something. On small instances people really use the local timeline to discover interesting and relevant people. Given that, not being able to sample that (on most Masto instances) before joining is a usability problem.
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna
There *is* a sample timeline on the instance about/more page, but it's pretty small. (I think it uses the federated timeline also. Probably because really small servers.)
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna It's an accurate sample of the most recent posts in the federated timeline. What might be more useful is to show both local and federated side by side, and with more length, not the little tiny 3 post box.
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @schestowitz @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna LOL and that's why automated feedbots should post unlisted, boys and girls. (If they don't want to be silenced.)
Pretty sure @schestowitz is all human-written (if bridged, but that's perfectly acceptable) content, he's just very active at it. :-)
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @schestowitz @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna
How is automatically crossposting human written content from another platform different from a bot?
How is inputting content using one interface different from inputting content using another?
@clacke @stealthmunchkin @schestowitz @cjd @bortzmeyer @nolan @dtluna
On a social platform I would say it's a difference between broadcast and interactive use. If I'm not "here" to interact with and my account is just an automated feed then there's no functional difference between a bot that posts from e.g. the BBC RSS. That's human generated content too.
@dtluna @nolan @bortzmeyer @cjd @schestowitz @stealthmunchkin @clacke
It's interesting to think about what constitutes human interaction vs. automated, anyway.