I've been one of the people saying "we don't need more users. we need quality over quantity" and i was wrong.
the way it's going, lemmy needs active users who post content sothat the network stays relevant. networks like the fediverse benefit from network effects and that means that if we have more users, that improves the value and quality of the fediverse overall.
So please, everyone, when you can, make advertisement for the fediverse in your personal area. Go talk to friends, make attractive stickers and put them everywhere, stuff like that. We would all benefit from it.
edit: source for the graph
Piefed.zip is my goto nowadays
It seems like a great one! Like PieFed.World seems to have zero predefined feeds? (or maybe that's just the error message displayed to someone without an account) and also literally only four predefined Topic areas. It gives the impression that it is not finished being set up? PieFed.zip at a glance looks much healthier:-).
The zip admins are also very reactive, !home@lemmy.zip
Oooh, good to know. So is this your preferred instance to recommend to people then, as opposed to e.g. the PieFed instance picker?
At some point we may need to try to spread people around more, but it has a tenth the MAUs as piefed.social so we definitely are not there yet! :-P
Also it is highly exciting to me to see slrpnk.net's plans to migrate from Lemmy to PieFed - that is like the #14 largest Lemmy instance (if hexbear and lemmynsfw are not showing up in the list at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list).
Edit: oh, but piefed.zip federates with hexbear.net - isn't that going to be problematic, as noob users often run for the hills upon being exposed to such? I am perfectly fine with hexbear being opt-in, but on piefed.zip it looks like it is rather opt-out? (even though it truly has an option to allow opt-out of, given PieFed's ability to block all users from an instance, unlike Lemmy)
Let me know if you find a well managed Piefed instance that defederates HB but isn't Piefed.social. I couldn't find one until now, which is why I accept that as a compromise.
Feddit.online is another extremely well-established instance, with an absolutely enormous list of both Topic areas and Feeds available for use, yet it is located in the USA so may lack stability in the future.
Tangent: somehow even piefed.crust also has the "Newbie-friendly" label despite being explicitly a testing instance?
I see what you mean about piefed.zip though - federating with hexbear works against it, not as it being a good instance mind you but only it having received the "Newbie-friendly" label - yet it is the best compromise that can be found under the available circumstances.
Except PieFed.social itself, which is already to PieFed what Lemmy.World is to Lemmy in terms of centralization, which while not a concern now will be in the future. On the other hand, if the goal is to bring people from Reddit, then federation with hexbear might literally make recommending PieFed.social worthwhile despite that concentration effect, until some other instance is made that would work better?
Edit: apparently piefed.zip does block hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and lemmynsfw.com to new users by default, sending them a DM explaining the reason for the choice and how to un-do, making seeing their highly controversial content as opt-in rather than opt-out. See the comment from @demigodrick@piefed.zip below for more details. This makes piefed.zip fully "Newbie-friendly", alongside piefed.social and others, and together with other aspects such as the long history of stability and responsiveness and deep experience of the admins, a solid choice for one of if not the most-recommendable go-to instance for new users.
If I've learned something from Lemmy, is that most people will never move once they are settled on one instance, which is why I avoid recommending Piefed.social.
It wouldn't be so bad if another 5k people joined PieFed.social, but after that then yeah I would agree, especially in principle. People should spread out.
Would PieFed.zip possibly consider blocking all users from hexbear by default, thereby making interactions with them as opt-in rather than a nasty surprise waiting for someone to have to discover and then find out how to opt-out?
It is hard to achieve consensus, or for one instance to meet all the needs, but right now PieFed.zip does not even have so much as an instance label for them!! To be fair I see that such a label is lacking for Beehaw communities as well. I am sorry to say but the more I look at PieFed.zip, the less "Newbie-friendly" it seems to me, especially in comparison to PieFed.social. The latter has for Beehaw:
Which is very helpful for people who have never heard of Beehaw to know about, is it not?
I note that https://thriv.social/ has many Topics, Feeds, and has hexbear blocked, what about using it as a place to recommend? It is pretty new though, and it lacks the Beehaw label (an extremely minor point most likely as it could be easily added?).
The same for https://quokk.au/, and that admin has a lot of experience hosting Lemmy. Although I don't see pinned posts for some reason, from multiple communities, so I wonder if there was a problem migrating over from Lemmy to PieFed.
Otherwise, PieFed.social might just be the best recommendation specifically for newbies, until a more newbie-friendly instance could be built up?
Piefed allows to block instances at the user level, making defederation less of an issue. You have to keep in mind that there's another part of the Reddit population that prefers to have control over their own experience, and for which having a short defederation list is appealing.
Thriv.social is indeed nice, but they don't provide a lot of details about who the admins are and how long the instance can last. Maybe you can try to reach out to them?
The instance label thing is really minor indeed. You can still probably reach out to the .zip admins about it.
Quokk.au is very Australian focused, I wouldn't use it as a general recommendation.
About Piefed.social, if it reaches 5k active users, then the snowball effect will start and Rimu would have to actively lock it down for new users to spread. I prefer to avoid confusing people by linking to Piefed.social when it might be closed for new users in a few months.
Agreed, my issue is that Newbies specifically will not be aware and thus not know. So if e.g. hexbear was added to that blocklist by default and all the user had to do was remove the block, that would solve the problem of making PieFed.zip more "Newbie-friendly".
Or ideally a sign-up wizard question asking if people preferred a cleaner experience without more controversial content (read: trolls) vs. to be exposed to them and be able to make their own decisions.
Though without either of those, I disagree that PieFed.zip is fully "Newbie-friendly". Which to be clear is a perfectly fine choice to make, I am just saying that it would help to refine that label. This is like arguing whether a picture showing someone in a thong bikini should have the NSFW label applied to it: if it does then it makes for maximum friendliness, and anyway what's the harm in having done so?
I have zero desire to police someone else's NSFW experience anywhere, just offering these suggestions in case it may help more people feel encouraged to visit the Threadiverse and feel welcomed rather than get trolled and, being new, unable to at first figure out what to do about it. Just because we here were all hazed upon entry to the Threadiverse does not mean that the conditions must continue unabated.
Or perhaps they should - if that serves as a filter for new people to select only those most matching the current crowd? I would disagree, but it seems a lot of people hold to that view, and also it is the default to continue unless changes are made. Change will require effort.
Hey so I'm like a week behind here, but piefed.zip (and lemmy.zip) already blocks hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmynsfw by default, and sends a PM to the user when they sign up to let them know why we do this, and how to remove it.
I'll look in to instance labels. Piefed has a lot of features, which is great, but are many hard to find or not well documented.
@Blaze@piefed.zip
That's a fairly perfect answer imho, ticking all the boxes: (1) choosing to see that content becomes opt-in, rather than have to opt-out, crucially the reason why being that they have failed to abide by the rules of the wider community, and even been caught outright lying to instance admins; and (2) explaining the reasoning behind it, and how to un-do that decision (which can always be reversed later).
Yes PieFed has a ton of features but I agree that it needs some work still on its level of polish, which Lemmy does ever-so-slightly better with, being older. Fwiw rimu@piefed.social has asked the community whether it desires more of the former vs. latter and typically the past answers have leaned towards more features (although I suspect the tide is beginning to turn on that based on posts submitted to !piefed_meta@piefed.social). I do think that PieFed will end up being the future and leave Lemmy behind (e.g. Jeena's story), though it would be even more ideal if they could both compete in offering fantastic utility as FOSS to everyone world-wide, in efforts to combat against enshittification of the internet!
I have recommended piefed.zip (and also lemmy.zip) in the past to people, but after you explained that I have zero reservations about it being labelled as "Newbie-friendly" and will recommend it all the more as the default go-to instance - with nothing against piefed.social obviously (I am on it myself!:-P) but as a bulwark against centralization I agree with @Blaze@piefed.zip that it would be most ideal to spread people around, which right now means more off of piefed.social.
Thank you for being a MAJOR part of the solution to advance the Threadiverse forward. I don't care that it's a week behind, I am so very glad that you responded here:-).
Minor note: the ToS in the instance chooser on piefed.social for Piefed.zip points to https://piefed.social/tos which says "not found". That is the instance chooser pointed to by https://join.piefed.social/ so even though piefed.zip has its own could be helpful to change for people thinking of joining.
Glad to hear
I never said it was the perfect newbie-friendly instance, it's just the one that I choose to point people to.
Feel free to reach out on !home@piefed.zip to make your suggestions.