This is an unreleased feature to federate some popular communities when a new Lemmy instance is created. It was hardcoded to lemmy.ml for a while, but I already changed this and made it configurable. Obviously the entire development code for Lemmy is not ready for production now, and needs a lot of fine-tuning. Its not an argument against the stable release version of Lemmy.

That wouldnt be enough to get the kind of statistics mentioned in this post.

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This would make instance creation too complicated.

Its intentionally in this order because Mastodon prioritizes the last item (ie the community). If the order was changed, it would be impossible for Mastodon users to interact with a community where a user with the same name exists.

Still its the main feature. Plus the sentence is a bit short like this. Or mention that it is open source instead.

This one is too long, I would only use the first part:

Lemmy is an open-source social network that functions as a global web of independent forums

Plugins mainly have hooks which are called when a new post is created, a comment is updated or things like that. Giving plugins access to everything in the database is more complicated. We could let plugins execute SQL and get the results, but that has security risks.

• user retention (percentage of users that are still active after 6 months? 1 month?)
• ban rate
• percentage of accepted signups vs failed/declined (maybe this just promotes accepting spammers)

These wouldnt be hard to add as we already have the data. Its not relevant for normal usage of the site, so it could be a new endpoint /api/v4/statistics. Feel free to open an issue.

• signup acceptance/rejection speed

Already being added: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/6126

• percentage of anonymous visits that result in a signup (ignore those that result in a login)
• average time spent on signup page
• bounce rate of signup page (opened but never completed)

These are more difficult as it would require new frontend logic to collect the data, then send it to the backend and have more changes to store it in the db. Not worth the effort in my opinion, but you can also mention it in the issue.

Sounds good, but I would keep the Fediverse in somehow, eg “A federated discussion platform for communities”.

“Decentralized” may not be technical, but still its a long and complex word. “Fediverse” seems friendlier to me.

Yes I agree, others have mentioned the same thing. The purpose of this post is to gather concrete suggestions, so please edit your comment with a sentence that you would use instead.

Yes this is pretty much the direction I’m going in based on previous comments here.

Some other people also mentioned this, made a post to gather suggestions: https://lemmy.ml/post/41767599

Makes sense, I created a separate post about this: https://lemmy.ml/post/41767599

Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.

Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:

https://joinmastodon.org/
https://joinpeertube.org/
https://pixelfed.org/how-to-join

Makes sense, this all seems similar to the frontpage changes I drafted today (added screenshot to the OP just now).

This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add ‘region’ as a field, or ‘regional’ as a topic? For our instance, I think that’s how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means. pangora.social seems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing that

This also makes a lot of sense, showing regional instances can make the choice much easier. Opened issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/527

Another biased opinion, I agree that it’s better to have large instances near the top since they’re more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there’s less pressure to pick the “correct” instance.

This is already the case since yesterday, there is a semirandom sort which always shows larger instances near the top and smaller ones further down.

Could you potentially collaborate with https://lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)

Very good idea, also opened an issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/526

Could you make the logo have a rectangular / circle background around it? Right now edges look odd over the dark background. The hover effect looks nicer, maybe with different colors

You mean the Lemmy logo in the top left? It seems the thin lines are not rendered well at this small scale. What colors would you use?

In the header: News, Docs, & Contact can be collapsed into a dropdown under ‘About’ or something similar, since those are pages that someone would go searching for

Maybe, but there are so few items that it seems fine like this.

Instead of ‘Join a server’, ‘Donate’ and ‘See all servers’, it might be better to have one massive “Join a Server” button/card on the front page that leads to the instance list page.

Again see https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/pull/524

The paragraph is a large block of text. I’d prefer something closer to what Peertube did

With Peertube they have a good designer on board to make these graphics. We are all programmers, so its very difficult to make a good design without more concrete suggestions.

The images give off ‘AI generated’ vibes, even if that wasn’t their origin. Could you have large cards with simple icons, similar to the 3 header cards on our site: https://fedecan.ca/en/

The images are just to avoid having too much text, a bit similar to the Peertube site. I already mentioned it in another comment, if you know any better images to put there I would be happy to replace them. The icons on your site are very small, so it would still show a lot of text.

I like the ‘Create your own discussion platform’ card’s format. It’s a bit hard to read, but otherwise nice

True the texts should be a bit bigger. https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/528

The ‘more features’ section could be simplified down to the important points, and maybe even combined with what is being done with the screenshots area

True these havent been updated in a long time. Any specific features that you would emphasize?

Is every instance under one topic, or would it be possible to let the user select multiple and have instances appear and disappear from the list live?

Instances can have multiple topics, in fact you can make a PR to this file to update it yourself.

I like Pixelfed’s join page since I can quickly narrow down an instance based on what’s important to me: https://pixelfed.org/servers

That does look good, though it also has some problems. Most instances are uncategorized, and country selection is by server IP so Germany also has pixelshot.it listed. Manually specifying countries would be more reliable (but also more effort).

Makes sense, this is similar to the changes I drafted in #524. In another comment we also talked about a list of manually curated default instances and I selected a few.

It’s unmaintained but at least it exists. I’m sure you’d go through the effort of updating them if an instance owner asked, right? So they’re probably still close enough. You do have data to present and it’s better than nothing.

Sure, and they can also update it on their own by making a PR to this file. In fact anyone can do that.

But then what decision are they making? Both what decision are they actually making and what decision do they think they’re making? Knowing that they can interact with all* the instances is hugely transformative to your heuristics.

Very good question. I suppose the main criteria are:

• Topic (general purpose or specific interest)
• Language or country
• Instance size (small, medium, large)

Cloudflare is useful to know for our privacy-consonous userbase. It might be kinda technical but if there is one or two stats visible the user cares about or at least understands then I don’t think having one they don’t understand matters. They essentially don’t understand “users” and that’s the main thing presented right now.

This is a niche topic again, most normal users dont even know what Cloudflare is. Those who care can choose an instance which mentions privacy, or check it themselves.

Opened an issue here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site/issues/525

Possibly. Dumping everyone at lemmy.zip is a possibility too. lemmy.wtf is is a bit too on the nose.

I would avoid using instances without “lemmy” in the name like reddthat, it was very confusing to me when I started out.

That makes sense. I went through the list and found these as reasonable defaults: https://lemmy.zip/, https://lemmy.today/, https://thelemmy.club/, https://lemmus.org/

Then it would be one of the monthly tasks for @dessalines@lemmy.ml and me to go through this list and keep it updated.

The new front page looks much better and cleaner. Not sure about the “Apps” though, people need to create an account first so.

At least some of the apps let you register directly, though I dont have an overview of that. Would be good to contact the app devs about adding a registration option where it is missing. They might have the same doubts which instances to use as defaults.

Also I’d call it “Mobile Apps” instead, “Apps” is a bit vague.

It also includes web apps and desktop apps…

I still plead for removing both buttons and directly showing the “instance selector” in the middle area, with the “See all instances” showing in the top bar only. Maybe slightly more prominently than the other top bar icons

Which instance selector do you mean?

The definition used by Reddit currently is also possible

“News aggregator” and “Link aggregator” is very similar, either one works for me.

One of the buttons talks about “instances” and the other one about “servers in your new design”. Not sure what the difference there is

No difference, its just that “Instances” may not be clear to new users. Should definitely be made consistent before merging.

Ah that makes sense, made a note to change that.

No worries, thanks for the helpful feedback!