this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
112 points (89.4% liked)

Fediverse

28362 readers
813 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

To support decentralization and spread, should lemmy.world close registration at some point to prevent a performance overload due to too many users? Of course, if registration is disabled, there could be a hint placed somewhere near that from other instances you can interact with content on lemmy.world just like you had registered on it. There could be a link to join-lemmys instance overview.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I'm in favor of simplifying the signup process with auto-assigning an instance. [Edit: For users coming from https://join-lemmy.org/]

For people who start using the fediverse or lemmy, the concept of federated instances is hard to understand. It also does not matter that much at this part of their journey. How about randomly assigning new users to instances which are open? This could also help with load balancing between instances.

The idea is to make entry as quick and easy as possible. Once users familiarized themselves with content and communities, they can reevaluate their 'decision' which instance they want to make their home. At this point, they have a better idea what this is all about.

Choosing an instance right from the start should still be possible, just not be the default mode. Make it a small link at the bottom 'advanced mode' or whatever, just don't scare or burden newcomers with unecessary complexity.


To answer the question directly: I think each instance can make that decision for themselves, and open or close registration accordingly. Both is fine.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not all instances are going to be equal in terms of things like stability and uptime. It's going to be unfair and frustrating to users who might randomly end up on a bad instance. It might work if it only chose along the top x instances or something, to ensure a bit of reliability for new users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It’s going to be unfair and frustrating to users who might randomly end up on a bad instance.

That's true. On the other hand, we currently entrust this decision to people who know the least.

I think we should weigh the benefits of an uninformed decision against the benefits of making signup easier.

It might work if it only chose along the top x instances or something, to ensure a bit of reliability for new users.

Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Not sure if top x is the right measure, but you're right reliability should be a criterion.