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Call to all Mastodon Newcomers


Welcome to all!
How can we improve the #onboarding process? If you joined in the past few weeks can you let us know what was difficult when you joined and/or once you had joined?

For example:

  • I didn't know which server to join
  • it took too long for my joining request to get accepted
  • I wasn't sure how to find people to follow

(The aim of this post is not to collect answers to the problems but rather detect all potential obstacles to joining & starting to use Mastodon. Please boost around! 🔄)

#Mastodon #MastodonTips #NewHere (not me, but my target audience)

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

El Duvelle reshared this.

in reply to El Duvelle

finding new people to follow is hard. I wish there was more feed like `java champions` or `MS mvps` when I follow those it will follow all the members in there like bsky discover feed
in reply to El Duvelle

they call it starter packs there, example

bsky.app/starter-pack/alina-yu…

lately Java people are moving there and brining some action to bsky, just FYI

in reply to El Duvelle

I've never been on Twitter, so I think most people come here with a better idea of what to do. I've managed to follow things with my interests, but if I post something no one seems to see it? I'm on the default instance because most instances seem to be focused on a narrow interest that would define me.
in reply to El Duvelle

Just learned that bluesky is proposing Starterpacks with a bunch of people to follow, that could be a good option to add to servers :cute:
in reply to Clovis :bdx_town:

@clovis yes I agree! Mastodon already has Lists, which could play the role of a starter pack, except there is currently no (easy) way to make them public or share them.
in reply to El Duvelle

Lots of boosting so far (🙏) but not many answers! Does that mean all newcomers are perfectly happy?....
Unknown parent

El Duvelle
@hiker I'm not sure if you're being serious or not but I would say that's exactly the kind of thing that newcomers do not care about - more something for experienced users to discover later on, once they've decided to stay.
in reply to El Duvelle

I got an invite link which gave me direct access, but my instance says that it takes up to 24 hours to get approved for new users without an invite. I personally think that hurdle is a good thing to keep spam bots away. The Mastodon interface gives otherwise good suggestions on who to follow. My only concern was the immense amount of blocking and muting I had to do in the start to make my feed free from people with a worrisome way of expressing themselves.
in reply to El Duvelle

ah I remember my onboarding at my first account on scholar.social, feeling totally confused about how to use it, and my first interaction with anyone was getting told off after my first post for not including alt text. Was so happy when we started neuromatch.social so I could move here.
in reply to Dan Goodman

@neuralreckoning thanks for the input!
The alt-text scolding does get mentioned quite often. I think it's nice to push people to write Alt-text, but not sure what would be a nice(r) way to reach that goal, without pushing people away.

Is it just a question of tone (they're not asking nicely) or quantity (many answers asking the same thing because they can't see that someone else already asked)? Or people just don't like to be advised on how to use a network? How could we improve that? A little pop up or warning before sending a post?

(Sorry for all the questions, they're for everyone generally, not just you :) )
#AltText

in reply to Albert Cardona

@albertcardona @neuralreckoning If it was compulsory, people would just type a few words to fill that requirement and move on.

I think the most effective way to improve this is by suggesting alt text people can use in a friendly, nonjudgmental way, using the "Alt4You" hashtag.

Yes, some people see this as passive-aggressive judgement anyway, but scolding people just doesn't help. And you never know if someone's own disability makes adding alt text harder.

in reply to Stefan Bohacek

in reply to 四

@yon

"A good UI makes doing the right thing easier."

Oh absolutely! I touched on this in stefanbohacek.com/blog/impact-…, see the note about Phanpy, the alternative Mastodon web client.

"do I make a difference?"

You do!

- mastodon.social/@alttexthallof…
- mastodon.social/@alttexthallof…
- alttexthalloffame.org

@albertcardona @elduvelle @neuralreckoning

in reply to Stefan Bohacek

@stefan @albertcardona @neuralreckoning 14.3% is a *lot* lower than what I’d expect. That’s disappointing.

I think calling it alt text was a mistake. Something like descriptive text might be better. I for once would think A/B testing would be worth it here.

I also wonder if other instances have distinctly different results. More than 60% of my feed has descriptive text after all. Probably well north of 90%. Actually running the numbers was a great idea btw!

Also, we are talking about making people’s lives a little better with for the vast majority of us a very minor effort (there are exceptions). Of all the things to be upset about and refusing to do:(

in reply to 四

@yon @albertcardona @neuralreckoning Yeah, I get disappointed too.

But still best to try to find positive ways to counter this. This has been my goal with @alttexthalloffame, with some good results!

mastodon.social/@alttexthallof…

in reply to El Duvelle

Thank you! One thing I have been wanting to bring back is the #AltTextChallenge, which was a weekly community challenge to try to describe a specific image.

Just more positive ways to get folks involved and get some practice!

@yon @albertcardona @neuralreckoning

El Duvelle reshared this.

in reply to El Duvelle

it's a funny thing. I learnt the lesson, but I also left that server as soon as I could. I guess the question is what is the priority, alt text or having people stay. I think my approach would be to make sure that the first few interactions are positive - or at least not negative. I like the reminder of the little yellow exclamation mark without having someone tell me off. You could also have an automated reminder after a month of use, saying something like "did you know that if you had used alt text, your content would have been accessible to approximately 3000 more people" or something like that. Turn it into a positive interaction on how to make your posts visible to a wider audience. Carrot not stick. It just works better.

El Duvelle reshared this.

in reply to El Duvelle

others may mention already, but I find the best way to "follow" at the beginning is to follow people on your instance and then your follow's followers and follows😁 and make sure look at those on the original website format ( see comparison in the images)