And I think monthly posts with the same text are annoying (we already have some of these posts, but accounts posting such weekly/monthly posts often end on my ignore list (and I don’t think it’s a good idea when people start ignoring the hq account ).
The /getting_started is the first page where you enter your name, avatar and some tags to follow, I think that is not very confusing and you can just skip it, if you don’t want it. But I think you mean the first visit of the stream?
Ah, you mean just a list of things people should do with checkboxes? So something like “your profile is 50% finished” that I saw on some other sites? And you can come back to this checklist later and complete it. I think that should be pretty easy to do. Maybe it doesn’t even need flags in the database for it, we can just check if a user has followed tags, or a avatar, or whatever
I did that again: [quote] and [/quote] need to be on their own line, otherwise they aren’t recognized, but you can see that in the preview. If you don’t want to add these newlines you can just use simple markdown quotes with > quoted text
Summary of this post: Yes Supertux88, yes and yes.
Ah okay, I was wrong about this.
Yes I do.
Well I don’t know about “checkboxes” here but: Yes, in general you got the idea. I thought about a bot who sends you a PM saying “hey, did you know you can fill your profile with five tags describing you. Do so and others will be able to find you by searching for those tags. But be careful: These self describing tags are always public, everyone can see them.”
And if the user did that another PM pops up: “Hey cool, you did the describe-yourself-in-5-words challange. Well talking about tags, try by yourself, search for a #hashtag to find interesting people”
And that task would be done if the user searched to a hashtag with at least one match on the people-column.
And so on. But for example a bot wouldn’t be able to check if you searched for something but the behavior could be similar to someone writing PMs to you (so the first task might be “read your messages”). And PMs… you can read and ignore them and maybe you fullfill the task by accident but you could keep ignoring it.
So that’s the idea atm.
I did that again: [quote] and [/quote] need to be on their own line
Ah okay, but why? This is not usual for BB-Code and BB-Code is meant to be “simplified HTML” and I can type HTML-Elements on as many lines I’d like to. DISCOURSE SUCKS! ;D
I think that’s way to complicated to build and also suboptimal in some points: It wouldn’t change the language when you change your settings, it wouldn’t update when something changes and it would be weird when you answer to the conversation but it’s only a bot that doesn’t answer your questions. Also it would just fill the database with useless bot-conversations.
I think a simple list with things a users should do at some point after the signup (set a name, avatar and tags to e found better, and write a newhere post, for example) and it could be done with a simple list with ticks in front of things already completed. This can also be updated when something changes or even elements added when there is a need for that because of new features.
If you want to have a full blown tutorial for all features, we could just link to the current tutorial or if that isn’t enough we could create an in-app tutorial with pop-overs as they are currently when you open the stream the first time, which would work much better (and also can be updated with changes) than a bot writing you messages.
Except those services aren’t in one giant “E-mail” system banner in one giant ecosystem. They are obviously independent services that communicate with each other over an established protocol. The e-mail analogy is good to describe federation to a point, but when we extend it too far it starts breaking down. Diaspora, Friendica, etc. appear as one ecosystem. People expect a different experience from them.
And yes, I do want Diaspora, or these other social internet alternatives to appeal to every day “stupid” users that want to get off Facebook, Twitter, etc… If putting something like what’s being discussed in front of the federated system helps that process I fail to see the problem with it.
Actually, that’s interesting. The foundation doesn’t provide a pod, nor a service. It provides a protocol (like SMTP). It also provides a software (diaspora) but nothing force you to use it to “speak” diaspora (see social home, ganggo, friendica…). And I would also love to see some very customized pods which would still be “diaspora” but… different. That would mean something nice.
No worries at all, I’m open to all remarks as long as they’re constructive.
So apart for the work on the official website that I still have to present (I should be able to work on it this week), I will work on the “Welcome email”. I also note this interesting idea about gamification of the registration, although it can be seen as intrusive for the user so it should be easily hiddeable.
I have been running a pod and using it for all of one week, so take my comments with a grain of salt. But my goal (which might not be everyone’s goal) for using diaspora is to largely replace Facebook. I am interested in private conversations, mainly with my close existing friends, in a social media style way. In particular, I’m not looking for a new way to meet random Internet people who might be cool. I have sufficient mechanisms for that. The only way that works, though, is if my friends, family, and people that had been using Facebook come with me. Most of those friends, family, and colleagues are not as technical as me and not able to do very much more than click a “join” button and click a few basic “share” buttons. I don’t know how to bring friends and family with me.
There are so many things that big social media platforms do to encourage people to flesh out their experience. Everything from “your profile is X%” complete feedback to “click here to suck in all your contacts”. Diaspora, in being hands-off and privacy respecting, does not give people who want to the ability to migrate their social media experience.
I feel like groups and group functionality is absolutely vital. And it needs to be named ‘groups’. It needs to map onto people’s existing expectations. That’s key to discoverability.
Groups of users have gravity. When a leader tells their group “let’s all do this on diaspora”, we get the synergy and network effects that the big social media platforms get. If we insist on only dealing with individuals, we’ll never get the gravity and network effects.
The discussion about the group feature in diaspora* is here. I agree new features is a way to have more recurrent users, but that’s not the topic of this thread, which is about improving user experience with the current software scope.
Ok. Being “recurrent” requires having people I want to talk to and people I want to hear from. The first thing a new user needs is something/someone to interact with. I’ll ignore the value that groups brings to that conversation.
Do we have the ability to help find “people you might know”? What about setting up the equivalent of a “bridge” like they did for Mastodon? Where people authorise the app to search their followers and find equivalent accounts in the fediverse? Could we create a similar thing for diaspora?
And what about people who aren’t looking to meet random people? Just people they already have some connection to?
If you wish I could explain how it works and how to use it etc. but I think it’s better to just try it.
Of course this isn’t final, but I hope it is more but a “prove of concept”.
I am guessing that this is just in the mock-up stage, because I really hope that what is finished isn’t left in this basic state. Buttons look rather rough and the colour collation seems simple, it could really use some rounding of the corners to at least make it more appealing
So it is a “proof of concept”. My bad.
I was also noticing that you had the location flags in the services row, wouldn’t that be better in a row of its own?
On top of that, I was looking at the locations. I am hope that I am seeking right, but after setting my location to Canada, there wasn’t any server around that poped up. Which is kind of a shame that there seems to be no major pod in Canada.
I hope that I am wrong about that.
I was also noticing a few things, like Diaspora* Brazil being located in the US? Is that correct?
The ‘location’ in that mock-up refers to the actual physical location of the server(s) on which the pod is hosted, which is not always obvious from the name of the pod or its documentation and is not necessarily where the person or people who run the pod reside. It does indeed appear that Diaspora Brazil is hosted on a server located in the USA.
Actually I was close to do a pull request if no critic pops up, because the only feedback I got so far was from my roommate who said “super cool” and SuperTux88 liking my post.
Yes maybe or I change the collumns title to “features” or “properties” (because “chat” is also no service). Having all information in a single row saves space I thought.
No, I am using a scoring-algorithm (as you can see) so the other criteria are just too heavy. I could write a “double weight”-option for every step so users can decide what’s important to them.
There are three servers in canada it seems, two of them have open registration both are a little outdated (still 0.7.x but not cutting edge) and using an old version also reduces your score.
When I pretend to be a company and prefer to have a chat-feature and click on Canada, I get two pods.
Well, I liked the concept and the functionality, but I also saw it as proof of concept. The finished solution should have a more polished and more modern UI (matching the style of diaspora and the project-site). I think as a potential user I would be pretty scared by the basic UI, But the UI can be changed, and the functionality is already there and works (and is indeed “super cool”)
Perhaps a little banner (?) with some options like:
Do you want to join diaspora? First, answer these questions
where do you prefer to store your data?
[ ] located on EU
[ ] located on USA
[ ] another place
which services do you want to have access to connect your account
[ ] fb
[ ] twitter
[ ] wordpress
[ ] tumblr
[ ] xmpp support
Done! the closest match with your preferences is [diaspora server] If you prefer to search manually another pod you could search manually on podupti.me
I have made several posts (mainly in spanish) on explaining how to sign up on diaspora, and the first thing I need to do is explain how podupti.me works.
@astheroth, your ideas are in fact already being used by the ‘pod wizard’ on the Pod Uptime tool. I hadn’t noticed this new wizard until very recently. I’ve suggested improvements to location selection and services available (the ideas you suggest), which will hopefully be implemented soon. I’d like a version of this wizard to be implemented in the main project website as well.
I think it is great that this is possible through podupti.me. I only think the signup procedure through the website is taking way too many steps and isn’t intuitive enough for an average user.
IMO signing up should not take more than a few clicks and creating an account on a pod. I do think that when using a simple account creation process, the new user is informed that if he or she wants to manually choose a pod, that is possible too and could be important if the new user wants to know who is the podadmin and what policy is implemented on the chosen pod.
But for quick account creation, a region (EU, US, Asia, Africa, Australia etc) should be enough to choose from.
FB connection will be extinct soon, as the current implementation is broken (due to changes by FB) and the latest d* software has no support anymore for FB connection.
I am not convinced that choosing extra services should be part of the quick account creation…
).
