Thanks – those are useful guides, I’ll include links to them.
Comment on Media Liberation Day: how can we help newcomers get started and have a good experience on fedi?
otter@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
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:
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Blaze@piefed.zip 5 months ago
Those guides are quite helpful!
We started !newcomers@piefed.zip a few weeks ago but still have to add more content to it @skavau@piefed.social
thenexusofprivacy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
good to know, I’ll include i link to it!
otter@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Oh on that note, would it be helpful to lock and redirect !newtopiefed@piefed.ca to that community?
Blaze@piefed.zip 5 months ago
That would probably help. Do you want to become a mod on !newcomers@piefed.zip ? If yes, should I appoint @otter@piefed.ca ? Cross platform moderation can probably be a bit finicky
otter@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
I’m happy participating as a community member, and stepping up as a mod later on if the team could use some extra help. I don’t mind either way :)
Sarah@piefed.social 5 months ago
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
“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.
otter@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
Hi Sarah,
Sorry for the delay in getting to this. We really appreciate the feedback! We’re currently working on an update to our site, and will continue to incorporate feedback over time.
We’ve iterated over these pages a few times, and while there is definitely more that we can do to improve it, I feel that we need a few different guides for each target demographic or use case. Ideally, someone will find their way to the appropriate resource, depending on the level of detail or transparency that they are looking for. The goal of the two guide pages above were mainly to explain what it is that our non-profit is doing, and how it differs from traditional social media. A lot of alternative social media platforms advertise transparency and a positive user experience, and so the guide pages above were intended for people who want an explanation on how the Fediverse can actually deliver on those promises.
Right now, the page we have for users that simply want to sign up for a platform is here: fedecan.ca/en/guide/fedecan/our-platforms
We can certainly improve the flow for users that want to get to that page, and the page itself. We haven’t prioritized that aspect, since we figured that users who are learning about one of the platforms might be going to it directly, instead of through our non-profit’s site.
Would you have some suggestions on what a page like that should include, or what you would like to see in the guides instead?
We’d love the help and feedback, especially if it’s something that would complement their studies! Thank you for offering :)
Blaze@piefed.zip 5 months ago
Thank you for offering !