Also found in a !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com post by @biltong@piefed.co.za : https://piefed.co.za/c/fedibridge/p/22233/post-on-r-buyfromeu-on-the-recent-surge-of-users-to-piefed
I like the way Voyager does it:
DeltaChat also has a very easy onboarding process: you just put your name, and that's it. The app creates the password in the background and allows you to switch servers easily. That really helps with onboarding new joiners.
Piefed.zip could be a nice default choice. If there are others you see, feel free to suggest.
For me, the problem wasn’t making a choice, but not understanding what that choice meant. It felt like we were expected to know exactly what we were signing up for without any explanation on the page. I assumed the “I don’t know, help me” button would lead to some clarification, but it just scrolled down by about a centimeter :D Everyone says it doesn’t matter which server I’m on, but I just read here that there are some banned servers, whatever that means. On the server I choose, will I see all posts from all users across all servers, or are there communities that are only available on one server?
That's true - there should be some explanation available there as well, not just a "help me choose" in a completely practical sense.
It's possible to make communities that are only available on one server, but that would be an active choice by the person who made the community. The only one I know of like that is !trolley_problems@piefed.social, which is more of a test than a community that actually benefits from being closed. I guess if for example a book club set up their own server they could be interested in running their own closed community on it.
There are also communities that won't be visible to us on piefed.social because the instances hosting the are blocked. The list of blocked instances is available somewhere on the site, but basically it boils down to self-proclaimed free speech extremists, authoritarian instances on the left (lemmygrad.ml) and right (I think someone started a MAGA instance at some point), and other unwanted stuff like that.
Some instances are stricter than others in which sites they chose [not] to communicate with, but all the ones recommended during sign-up should have a somewhat reasonable policy on the matter. I think it's best people don't get sent to the more questionable sites unless they actively ask for it.