cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33480650
What resources, suggestions, and support can those of us who are already here provide to potential newcomers? And what can we do to prepare for – and encourage – a potential influx?
and have a good experience on fedi?
Be excellent to newcomers and each other!
I would say the main thing is being nice and letting people explore, and providing spaces/communities for people to come back and ask questions when they have them. When people bring up issues or suggest things that they want to see, we shouldn’t crap on what they prefer their online experience to be (ex. preferred algorithms, content they want to block, etc.)
Resources wise, we created this guide and I like to link these two particular pages for fediverse/lemmy. I feel that they help give a high level overview of how things work:
Those guides are quite helpful!
We started [email protected] a few weeks ago but still have to add more content to it @[email protected]
Oh on that note, would it be helpful to lock and redirect [email protected] to that community?
That would probably help. Do you want to become a mod on [email protected] ? If yes, should I appoint @[email protected] ? Cross platform moderation can probably be a bit finicky
As a digital comms and usability professional, I’d suggest you do some testing and refinement of these materials. I commend your efforts but these are not something I would ever hand out to a 50yr old volunteer if I want them to sign up to use a fedi community instead of FB
“When you want to send an email, you don’t need to use the same email provider as the person you’re sending it to.” is not a helpful thing for a newbie (though I understand why you have included it)… This sort of content indicates the gulf between the (user’s) mental model and the (system designer’s) conceptual design is too great.
I have students who can help you with this stuff for free. If you’re interested, DM me.
Thank you for offering !
I think engaging with people on a human level rather than giving unsolicited advice on how to use fediverse to every new face around could be a place to start. Half the time I see a new user here they seem to get flooded with technical advice that, while well-meaning, is somewhat off-putting.
A simple “Welcome! Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about how to make the most of your time here” is plenty for most people. And if they do ask questions, go wild.
Is there a good community in which newcommers can ask basic questions, like a fedi help desk community/no stupid questions fedi edition? I feel like that could be useful to point people to.
For devs and admins:
Do some usability testing and improvement
- Recruit volunteer UX / usability professionals to run studies with users and recommend usability improvements.
- Be prepared for some critical feedback.
- Organise and prioritise the feedback
- Recruit some volunteer UI designers, graphic designers and devs with experience of working with UXers to refine and implement the usability fixes
Provide more user-friendly onboarding, signup, sign-in, password management etc. The barriers are very high even for those of us with good tech confidence.
Provide better approaches and platforms for small groups (volunteer organisations, hobby and interest groups and neighbourhoods) to replace Facebook Groups and similar.
Gain more experience of working with non-tech users, e.g. volunteer at your local library, seniors’ IT classes, to understand the challenges that 80% of users would face in using fedi products and gain some insights into how to resolve those issues
Great suggestions, thanks very much!
