Which instances should be recommended on join-lemmy.org?

The instance list has a couple of recommended sites at the top. They are defined in this file and seperated by language. For most languages there is only one recommendation or none at all, so you can simply add yours by making a pull request.

In case of English, the situation is a bit different. The current recommended instances (beehaw.org and sopuli.xyz) are already quite large and would be shown near the top of the list anyway. So it makes sense to recommend smaller instances instead.

To be recommended, an instance should meet these requirements:

  • It should be a general purpose instance
  • At least one member of the admin team needs to be in the Instance admin chat to coordinate with other admins
  • The admin team needs to be prepared for a large influx of users, both in terms of hardware and moderation

We can use this thread to discuss which instances should be recommended. There is no maximum number of recommendations, but it should be an even number to work with the desktop layout.

On a side note, the instance list itself could use many improvements such as showing more details about instances or using different sorting methods. If you are a programmer or web designer, you can contribute to improve the website.

Edit: If you are a Lemmy admin and want your instance to be recommended, go ahead and open a pull request for this file. Developers can also contribute in the same repo to improve join-lemmy.org.

jdp23,
@jdp23@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Those are solid requirements to be listed on joinlemmy.org and I would also add another one about moderation policies prohibiting racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry, Islamophobia, etc. Otherwise, if a user joins an instance that the "official" page recommends and discovers it's racists / sexist / etc, they'll see it as a problem with as a whole, as opposed to just one bad instance.

And as we've seen on Mastodon, if a Black user goes to a site where racism is tolerated and quickly encounters racist sh*t, they leave and tell their friends; ditto for trans, queer, Muslim, etc. users having bad initial experiences. Once that happens a bunch of times the reputation becomes hard to shake. Much better to steer people to sites where they're less likely to have a bad experience!

V4uban,

Good point

bdonvr, (edited )

If your goal were wider adoption, having a big "sign up" button (with the server name on/next to it) that links to a random "recommended" general instance could be best. Put a "sign up on a different instance" button next to it, and a list of instances below that.

Of course - that's IF it's your goal.

I think Mastodon does this, but just a static link to mastodon.social instead of randomly rotating it.

Edit: that's what they do on the app - but not joinmastodon.org

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Instances have different topics and moderation, so it should be left to each person which one they prefer to join.

bdonvr,

And it would be - no choice is being removed. It's more of a "I'm not sure what all this is... I just want to join lemmy" button. But I know that perhaps that's not completely in line with the core/original culture of the Fediverse. But a lot of people have incorrect assumptions on what federation is, if indeed they know anything about it at all. This leads to decision paralysis and confusion. People overthink which instance to join, at least among the open "general" instances.

And it would need to be explicitly opt-in for each server.... I don't think BeeHaw would be open to this for example.

mobiuscoffee,
@mobiuscoffee@sh.itjust.works avatar

I agree with your way of thinking. I believe a lot of people would be open to recreating an account on an instance that vibes with them more once they understand how it all works too.

I did that about 3 or 4 times already and only a couple of them were by accident!

veroxii,

Controversial idea: I think we should remove the "users per month" number on the instance list. It's confusing to newbies and encourages people to join a "large" instance when the number doesn't really correlate with actual server capacity.

Edit: And don't display the ones with 1 or fewer users. They are obviously private single user ones. If someone wants to start a public one, they'll be able to come get 2 or 3 others to join up and they'll pop onto the list.

amir_s89,
@amir_s89@lemmy.ml avatar

I created one about Kia cars/ ownership. How do I invite in the public & also let others moderate the page?

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Contributions welcome, the repo is linked above.

veroxii,

Okay, I've made the changes locally, but before I put up a PR, do you agree to these changes?

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

I already opened a PR to remove instances with less than 5 users. Anyway go ahead and open a PR to remove the active count, it makes sense to me.

Heimchen,

Yea, when I looked for an instance to join, the activ user number discouraged me and I thought that these instances are basically dead. Maby just a baar without numbers just saying very activ - unactiv would be better.

AnonStoleMyPants,

Same here. The numbers looked sooo low that I was thinking that everything is dead, but it is not. Though I did go to sopuli due to being Finnish but anyway.

veroxii,

Exactly. Or allow the instance owners to specify large, medium or small, depending on whether or not they have the capacity and resources for more people.

DidacticDumbass,

Everyone has a happy place. To me it is 3D printing and lutherie.

I think it would be cool to have instances that are the equivalent of a subreddit. Okay, perhaps not THAT granular.

I think it is useful to categorize around broad themes. Technology, Nature, Music, Art, Philosophy, etc. Somewhere in the middle is probably the most attractive.

Lemmy is still early enough that nothing has been made de facto. Yes, it is replicating the format of Reddit, but since it is federated, subjects will be naturally duplicated and fractured. That can be good, the best will rise and the rest will fade out. Lemmy can be an improvement instead of an echo of a dying phenomenon riddled with flaws.

bear_delune,

I think something to focus on would be a clean and easy-to-understand explanation of Lemmy and how the instances federate together.

This is still something Mastodon is struggling with when it comes to onboarding. Even for the technologically minded, it can be a steep curve and there are potentially a lot of other people who will balk at the walls of text and technical jargon.

Obviously, it all can't be fixed overnight, but I feel a lot can be done to improve the onboarding for users without overloading them with information.

Maybe a small step-by-step wizard-style system to help someone find and instance and explain Lemmy in bite-sized chunks of info would be a good first step.

Professionally I'm a UX Designer and Business Design consultant and I'd love to be able to lend expertise to the project!

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Contributions welcome, all of our code is open source.

bear_delune,

I’m very new to contributing in that kind of style, git and code is scary to me; I’m more here for research, recommendations and element design.

What would be the best way to contribute non-coding expertise? I always feel like I’m imposing in these kind of spaces when I want to offer advice and insights as they come from such a different sphere

malcolm_miller,

1,000,000%! I grew up on the internet, love tech, etc, but the onboarding process is confusing.

Skwalin,

I literally only understood this after getting an account on one instance, and realizing I still saw posts and could interact with them from other instances. And I'm a web developer with pretty deep technical knowledge.

A simple "choose your home, see and interact with content from everywhere" would go a long way.

bear_delune,

If I hadn't already settled into Mastodon I would have been super lost, still was to a degree...

And Join-Lemmy seemed to be pushing me to Lemmygrad, which is cute, but I wanted something more general and had only heard of beehaw through other people discussing Lemmy

The iconography on posts is pretty confusing too, needs some good labeling "Open in Home Instance" & "Open in Original Instance" would help

Skwalin,

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by open in home vs open in original? Does a single post have separate comment threads depending on the instance? Or are they meshed?

bear_delune,

There's 2 "Link to post" buttons The chain icon takes you to the post/comment but within your home instance, the Fediverse icon does the same thing, but the link is directly to the original post/comment's instance.

I like the metaphor of Home and Neighborhood, I reckon that would resonate with potential users

malcolm_miller,

Ohhhh so that's why there are two links. I still don't understand it, but at least there's an explanation.

pyarra,

I'm happy for people to join my instance vlemmy.net, its got plenty of resources on dedicated hardware so I'm sure it could help out in case of an influx.

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Please make a pull request to add it to recommendations.

pyarra,

Should be done now

Johnnypneumoniac,

If you don't mind me asking, what are your costs for running an instance?

pyarra,

Well I'm hosting on infrastructure that I already own, so I'm just paying for the connection and the upkeep/electricity costs. It comes out to about €20/month for 8 cores/16threads and 32gb ram.

Johnnypneumoniac,

Interesting, thanks for the info.

maltfield, (edited )

I think we should add the following criteria to instances at the VERY TOP that are recommended to new users:

  1. The instances does not define an allowed list of instances
  2. Downvotes are enabled
  3. NSFW content is allowed
  4. Users can create new communities

...otherwise new users (eg from reddit) are not going to use lemmy because it won't match their expectations.

Personally, I was pretty disenchanted by my experience on lemmy when I first joined. I had to create accounts on like 5 different instances before I found one that worked (that's why I created the comparison table of lemmy instances).

Most new users won't have that perseverance. If, for example, they see there's no downvotes on the "recommended" instance, they'll probably give up and leave lemmy.

computerboss,

This critria is very well thought out, and explained. Thank you for making this list, it is how I found what instance to join.

chromozone,

I agree, I think we should be pushing for experiences people are already most familiar with first.

Sphere,

I strongly disagree with #2 through #4.

  1. Just because redditors expect downvotes doesn't make them good. When Hexbear removed downvotes, the community feel improved dramatically; downvotes both promote toxic debatebro behavior (by making people upset when they catch a wave of downvotes) and allow cowards to attack people silently from the shadows, without having to actually state their shitty views and be criticized for them.
  2. NSFW content tends to alienate people. Besides, there's no way to tell via code whether an instance allows NSFW content or just allows people to mark content as NSFW (two very different things).
  3. Yeah because that was such a positive aspect of Reddit, just ask violentacrez.
maltfield,
  1. Downvotes are important to ensure quality content. It allows the community address statements made by a user based on objectively incorrect (mis)information. This feature is an important reason why many reddit users aren't on Mastodon. Also, democracy is important.
  2. Recommended Instances shouldn't wholesale block content just because it's NSFW. As you say, policy on what NSFW content is allowed is distinct from the instance enabling NSFW content.
  3. People being able to create and moderate their own communities is positive

If an instance (eg Hexbear) wants to deviate from this, that's fine. That's what the Fediverse is all about :) But we shouldn't recommend those instances to new users as it will cause new user attrition.

Sphere,

I don't agree that there should be strictures that enforce similarity to Reddit on instances if they want to be recommended. You've apparently been using Lemmy for three days now, based on your git repo history and your top-level comment in this thread. As a longtime Lemmy user, allow me to point out that Lemmy is not, and should not seek to be, exactly like Reddit. To enforce that would be to stifle potential avenues of improvement (like, as I've mentioned, removing downvotes).

Also, growth for growth's sake is not something I think should be sought after; your policies seem to be entirely focused on growth with no concern for quality or community, which I don't agree with.

maltfield,

Honestly I'm not sure I'll stick to lemmy if the amount of content doesn't grow. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm here for news, and there's very little coverage of world events on lemmy (though that has already noticeably improved as our userbase grows).

I do want lemmy to grow, but not for growth's sake. I want it to grow so the content (news article submissions and quality comments about those articles) grows.

Sphere, (edited )

If you're a liberal, as most Redditors are, you probably won't like it much, but Hexbear.net is far more active, and has plenty of news posted. (Keep in mind that "liberal" here covers all of the US political spectrum that doesn't qualify as fascist; i.e. moderate republicans are liberals too. Hexbear is a communist instance.) It's not mentioned on join-lemmy yet because it's a fork, but there are efforts ongoing to merge back to upstream so federation is possible (one of the main roadblocks is the much-higher volume of activity, which is uncovering bugs that don't show up under lighter loads).

Kolli,

Will the instances be easily hideable for when they suffer downtime or are too fully packed?

maltfield,

That's not going to happen automatically, but we can manually remove instances that go down.

I only know of one site that monitors uptime of lemmy instances:

They do have an API, but I'm not sure yet how to query it (help would be appreciated!)

tomek,
@tomek@mastodon.online avatar

@nutomic certainly szmer.info, one of the largest instances for many years, and the only one in Polish

lodion,
@lodion@aussie.zone avatar

I've stood up aussie.zone primarily for Australians, but open to anyone. Same as poVoq, its just me at this stage.. but I've disabled community creation.

ticoombs,
@ticoombs@reddthat.com avatar

We should join forces. 👋 Also another Australian, on Australian infrastructure. https://reddthat.com/c/australia

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Make a pull request if you want an instance recommended.

poVoq,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

Our server on slrpnk.net can very likely take some more users, but I am pretty new to hosting Lemmy and it's currently only me that has some time to managing the server and approve applications.

So maybe better not to add it directly to the recommended instances list.

TheDude,

I'll be submitting my instance to be considered to the recommended list. I've thrown a nice amount of resources at my lemmy instance and i'm pretty excited to see how it will handle the extra load that is expected!

AnonStoleMyPants,

Looking good. Man, I dislike that when I click that link it does not go through the instance I am logged in to so I get a banner that I need to log in to comment. It's kinda weird behaviour.

imaqtpie,
@imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yeah that needs to be fixed ASAP. Is that behavior always the case or does it only happen when the link leads to a community that your instance is not already subscribed to? It's quite annoying to have to go back to the home instance and manually find the thread again in order to comment.

AnonStoleMyPants,

Always happens. Also happens through Jerboa apparently, though I think that does not happen always.

mobiuscoffee,
@mobiuscoffee@sh.itjust.works avatar

the dude abides

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Perfect, can you make a pull request?

TheDude,

Got this completed! Looks like the merge request was accepted and merged into the main already. Thanks for giving the heads up.

TheDude,

Will have this done before the end of the day! I will be adding support for the French language as well to accommodate french speaking individuals as well!

V4uban,

Thank you for your work btw. Love the domain name.

StringTheory,

You have a vulfpeck community! You have a bunch of cool communities, hot dog!

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

I think my server lemmy.world would qualify :-)

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Great, can you make a pull request?

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

Ohh, never done that before. Should I create a fork, edit the file, and then submit as PR?

clumsy_cat,

(yes)

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy try that.

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

OK I submitted the PR.

Aequitas,

I can't access your instance from my instance (feddit.de), although my instance is linked to yours. Does anyone have an idea what this could be?

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

Hmm no idea, I see your instance in https://lemmy.world/instances and I can find articles on your server in Search. What can't you access?

Aequitas,

I don't know if you just rearranged something, but it works now. I previously wanted to subscribe to !mildlyinfuriating from my instance, but it didn't show up in the search. No idea what was going on there.

ruud,
@ruud@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, that happens very often. When you search first time it doesn't find it. Then in the background apparently it fetches it so when you search again, you'll find it.

original_ish_name,

smaller general purpose instances such as sh.itjust.works

wiki_me,

The admin team needs to be prepared for a large influx of users, both in terms of hardware and moderation

Reddit has almost half a billion users, so until there is horizontal scaling I would argue no instance is ready.

One criterion i would add is economic viability, Lets look at beehaw, it has about 1000 monthly active users and according to opencollective got about 1000$ this month (for some reason the opencollective page of lemmy can't show this stat), that puts him at the ARPU (active revenue per user) of about 1$ a user which is similar to reddit that has ARPU of about $1.02 (and was much lower in 2021, about 0.5$).

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

There is horizontal scaling through federation. Even if lemmy.ml, beehaw.org and lemmy.one go down, users can still join instances like sh.itjust.works. The instance list on join-lemmy.org works as a load balancer.

MistDusk,

Is it possible to have users automatically distributed to different places to help with scaling and load, and at the same time be able to select which "rules/content of that instance" they'd like to be part of without it having to be dependent as it is now on which instance they join?

Right now everything appears to be entirely tied to the instance joined when it comes to accounts, rules, and most importantly load. Wonder if it is possible to have the rules/content portion separated from all that in the future.

So to try it put more simply have in the future specific instances behaving more like joining a subreddit that have different topics and moderation instead of having everything tied the instance where the account was created.

Ninmi,
@Ninmi@sopuli.xyz avatar

This just the emphasizes how crucial it is for join-lemmy to succeed. If your load balancing hinges on the onboarding experience then it must at the top of priorities, though I'm sure you're aware and would like ideas instead.

I wonder if the site could simply offer one at random from the list of recommended ones, offer it in a big frame with a "sign up" button.

Below it could something along the lines of "Any of these will also do: they all connect to eachother anyway." And list the rest of recommended instances.

Below that it would have a "show more" button that would reveal the rest of the instances.

I also feel like the site could start with this dumbed down instance picker. First with an introduction and then the recommended instances. The vast majority joins and the ones who want to run an instance will likely join one first anyway. Skip the two buttons step.

wiki_me,

That just creates a problem of choice overload, I use to manage a forum, managing a community is hard, If there is a instance that is really good (possibly one that is "democratic") Most people would like it to scale, Just figuring out the rules for every instance and what other instances it blocks is hard, I already saw complaints on reddit about having to pick a server.

I also think it is a good idea to have paid moderators, what happens when some gets pissed decides to post some terrible picture to punish the mods? on facebook they have a therapist for the people reviewing reports .

Regarding sh.itjust.works , in my culture i think swearing is considered more of a bad behavior compared to the US, are we sure that is not cultural blindness having that listed as a recommended instance?

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