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.
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!
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.
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
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?
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
Ohhhh so that's why there are two links. I still don't understand it, but at least there's an explanation.
Contributions welcome, all of our code is open source.
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
1,000,000%! I grew up on the internet, love tech, etc, but the onboarding process is confusing.