We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.

stomata@procial.tchncs.de

michaelbishop@mastodon.world

Onboarding seems to be the barrier to Mastodon's growth and success. The whole Active ecosystem is a bit foreign to general users and needs more work.

extra_special_carbon@mastodon.world

@Mastodon Consider that many may prefer non-local servers. I sure wouldn’t want an American server.

lucien@toot.community

@Mastodon this is great and will improve the user experience so much. Well done

mywoolymastadon@toot.community

@ruud @NoOnesRival @Mastodon

I'm in the USA but was happy to discover that my choice to be my instance was based in Europe. Serendipity.

I like the idea of having more laws in place for my privacy.

tynstar@nerdculture.de

@Mastodon
Good point! Just in case your team hasn't thought of this yet, I'd like to share an idea.

On the pricing page of my hobby project (link in my bio), I wanted to show the prices of the "correct" country. But I wanted to ensure that I don't get to know the result if someone is just visiting.

But sending the user's IP address to a third party geolocation service is not legally possible without first asking for consent.

Here's my solution: the web page contacts a tiny endpoint on my server that returns the IPv4 address it sees, but doesn't log it. Then the country lookup happens client-side via a geo-IP database file that the web page has loaded into the browser cache earlier. As the web server itself also doesn't log, I don't have any data on visitors (unless they become customers).

In the next step, you could list all languages of servers in that country, starting with the most common ones spoken there (e.g. for Switzerland: DE, FR, IT, RM) & let them choose.

#GDPR #SaaS

donelias@mastodon.cr

@matt thanks, done.

adrian@tyrol.social

@Mastodon Done

sunnythesheep@mastodon.social

@renwillis

@Mastodon has improved a lot, already. Try registering a new account again, these days and you'll see by yourself

renwillis@mstdn.social

@sunnythesheep @Mastodon you don’t need to pitch it to me. I’m all in on the fediverse and its potential.

But my conversations with folks on Bluesky, IG, etc when I preach the virtues — they falling on deaf ears.

It’s still seen as complex, not user friendly, and feels like “starting over” where Bluesky doesn’t.

seano@masto.nyc

@Mastodon hype, this is a great idea! Looking forward to this- also it would be cool to see this with other apps too

sunnythesheep@mastodon.social

@renwillis and very often, it's simply not true. They made their choice and now they're looking for excuses to rectify it. 50% of the statements I read about Mastodon either never were true or they address problems/lacking functions already resolved long time ago. At the same time crowds still chose BlueSky over Mastodon, when there was:

- no videos
- no Hashtags
- no search functionality
- no DMs

That's ideology ‍️

For all the other, open-minded ones, is continuing to improve

sunnythesheep@mastodon.social

@renwillis there's even people praising #WSocial over Mastodon, when all they did (until now) is founding a company and designing a (really bad) new "European" landing page for BlueSky.

mike@thecanadian.social

@matt @Mastodon @chm @admin@mastodon.nu @trumpet @hugo @xaphanpl @admin@paktodon.asia @tc @xrobau @team @sysadmin @amministratore @mastodonie @maop @kenobit @chief @support @admin@piaille.fr @valvoja @henri @saustrup @donelias @spla @announcements @admin@mastodon.com.br @adrian @aussocialadmin @mike@chinwag.org @admini Done!

renwillis@mstdn.social

@sunnythesheep There’s plenty of criticisms, many valid, about Mastodon. I love it, but it’s no panacea. People went to Bluesky because a) it was easy and b) because of *that* the “cool kids” went there and folks followed.

Add in a quick feed to get people engaging? Check done.

Mastodon & the fediverse at large can be the long term solution, but we still got a ways to go!

j_j@muenchen.social

@ellaw
Sure, up to you. However, i believe, for most users, it's a good idea to start with an instance close to their lives. This could be based on interests, language, opinion on emacs vs vi, but not everyone has a strong opinion on vi. Yet, everyone lives somewhere, speaks one of the local languages, and may have some interest in local news. You may not care much about borders. However a storm in the vicinity is going to affect @tragivictoria @WestLawns @Mastodon

jeremy@nwt.social

@Mastodon this would be great for some of the smaller indigenous communities here that might be experimenting with creating their own servers. The people I’ve spoken to up here about the fediverse were most excited by the idea of easy ways for minority language groups to create their own social spaces online.

sunnythesheep@mastodon.social

@renwillis but I explicitly wasn't taking about the valid criticism, but about simply made up ones, which I still encounter so often. And which I really got tired to even reply to.

And about Bluesky: the moment it started, it wasn't "easy" at all. It was way behind Mastodon at the very beginning and you even had to beg and wait for an invitation code to get started At this very moment, it DOES have better usability, than Mastodon (at least for who loves algorithms), but you'd be surprised to

sunnythesheep@mastodon.social

@renwillis ... see Mastodon's current, new sign up process (so was I).

Still, federation (despite its HUGE advantages for digital sovereignty!) will always have downsides, too. It's a choice you actively have to make.

hashraydamon@me.dm

@Mastodon just make sure to check the servers *before* recommending, just because the language is the correct doesn't mean the server is properly run

Abspeckgeflüster – Forum für Menschen mit Gewicht(ung)

We are excited to share that we are beginning work on a new onboarding experiment for #Mastodon: Default Server Recommendations.