 Asked some friends to use Pixelfed, they didn't know who to follow. Empty timelines is not good for onboarding or new user experience. Adding Suggested Posts to an empty timeline will encourage users to discover and engage with content without having to follow someone. 36 comments
 The classic "you signed up, now what" problem. Will address that in Smithereen at some point too. @grishka Yeah exactly, I don't think any other fedi project does this yet. I'm working on making the Discover API produce more relevant recommendations using non-invasive signals like follow relationships and hashtags used. I'd love to discuss the technicals with you if you're interested, I could talk for hours about this but I don't have anyone to discuss this with lol. @grishka It uses local-only signals for now, though it wouldn't be hard to use federated content. The key component is ranking signals in a scalable way, so the smallest and largest instances can take advantage. Local vs Remote doesn't really matter to a new instance when you have no content, and thus discovery becomes more important. I'm interested to hear more about your idea, I plan to use FediDB and its growing database to bootstrap discovery in Pixelfed.  Indeed that idea sounds intriguing. Btw, there's also "Trunk for the Fediverse" with a concept that might be further integrated into apps, so getting interesting following becomes a lot easier.  @humanetech Suggestions are for people who undergo #hypnosis. Pls refrain from this kind of behaviour and thought process. What happened to the federated timeline. That's precisely what it's for. Refrain from making Fedi #FakeTwit2p0, please. You're referring to Suggested Posts that can have that issue. Trunk is more like people saying "Hey, I like to talk about this and that subject" and then you add a bunch of them to your Following, which fills your personal timeline based on your topics of interest and you go from there. You and I are people that discover a following on our own but many others aren't like that. They are disappointed with what they see and the federated timeline is full of crap to them. @humanetech Discourse forum software does nice things to guide people. This might be what Fedi needs. Yes, that is true. A wizard-like onboarding tour in a freshly opened account may help educate newcomers how to enjoy their experience. Is also not for everyone. I found the discobot in Discourse quite annoying, but hey.. you can turn it off too :) But still the hashtag approach is 'labour-intensive'. Doing this work is friction were maybe more people than you'd expect throw the towel in the ring. Like those that are just mildly curious what that Fediverse-thing is all about. And when it comes to it, it is not *that* much different than the trunk approach, especially the functionality of joining a trunk topic group is brought closer to the individual fedizen by app integration (or even AP vocab extension). @nat @dansup @grishka @humanetech Make no mistake, this is the beginnings of the #InfluencerModel. The very fact this gamable model, is being seriously considered indicates something. Dick Smiths Fair Go Supporters, I really need to limit the depth of my threaded comments 🤔  I also don't know what is best, and fully agree that impact and possible negative side-effects of any feature need to be carefully considered, and then - if possible - reinvented to not have them. (That means we should be able to discuss them and immediate throwing of #ArtificialImpoverishment to our accounts by @dsfgs is a conversation killer, not helpful for fedi future) The notion of "I am interested to socialize on these subjects" is worth brainstorming on. @dsfgs @humanetech @grishka the suggested posts come from the trending API on the discover page, they are just the most liked posts in the past 24 hours. When you join and aren’t following anyone, having an empty timeline is not ideal. All we are doing is taking the 10 most liked posts and showing them after the home timeline. @dansup Likes are gamed. Popularity contests go against the spirit of Fedi. Make a timeline #Variety. Cycles through the Federated TL so everyone's latest post in the past 24 hours is shown first, then everyone's 2nd ranked by latest, then 3rd, etc. Proceed until you have log(n) users from that day left, then show a helpful screen that encourages searching w #hashtags if deemed needed. Then move to previous 24 hour cycle. Repeat.  @dansup > any other fedi project does this yet #diaspora is effectively helping newcomers populate the timeline on their first log-in. ;) "What are you into? Hashtags allow you to talk about and follow your interests. They're also a great way to find new people on diaspora*. Try following tags like #art, #movies, #gif, etc." This prompt is the first thing a newcomer sees. Those who don't ignore it have a chance to avoid the issue of an empty timeline. @grishka @grishka I disagree that a social network blooms only on Facebook / Whatsapp model. Many users on Twitter, Instagram, etc., enjoy finding strangers and new content by interests. A very large ammount of social networks is built on this concept. Many still use VK specifically for its communities that unite random people. Telegram became popular in part due to its chats/channels. I wish you luck with your idea, but also encourage you not to dismiss the importance of good UX connecting strangers ;) lostinlight, I do have groups for that purpose. Yes, connecting strangers is important, but — as I said — secondary. Being able to find strangers with common interests isn't what locks people into Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/VK/whatever — it's the connections with people they know IRL. And thus, to liberate these people from these greedy creeps, we need to provide for that use case and make it as effortless as possible to switch. deadsuperhero, importing GDPR export archives! I'll research that at some point. I've read somewhere that Facebook helped people switch from MySpace by literally logging into their MySpace accounts and synchronizing stuff. As in, when they posted something on Facebook, it got automatically cross-posted to MySpace. @dansup @grishka Yes, diaspora federates via its own protocol only with 3 other networks: Friendica, Hubzilla and Socialhome, because it refuses to add ActivityPub support [still, I include diaspora into Fediverse, because many new ActivityPub projects are also able to connect without bugs only to 3-4 other AP networks, so diaspora in that sense is no big difference 😉] @lightone Fediverse originally referred to the OStatus-verse and then, as Mastodon dominated the Fediverse, the term smoothly switched its meaning to OStatus+ActivityPub. Now that ActivityPub plugin for GNU Social is working, I think it's fair to only consider AP-verse as the Fediverse. Referring to Diaspora as a part of the Fediverse is just misleading to new users. That's how I understand the way this term evolved. @dansup good to see this getting added. Much as I despise the continual "you might know X" interruptions from Instagram, etc. the encouragement to follow more people and explore is a side-effect I'd like more of over here (and with *my* interests at heart, rather than those of some manager's "engagement metrics" 🙂 ) Am I right in thinking Pixelfed will federate with Mastodon, etc. as it's all ActivityPub? |
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@dansup Nice :)