Join Mastodon Landing-page Feedback Thread

#1

The launch of joinmastodon.org is likely to yield some feedback from a lot of people.

So I have preemptively set up this thread to catch all feedback on the subject.

Threads directly relating to the landing page Joinmastodon.org are to be redirected here.

To note: We are going to add more to it, currently it’s a barebones “first iteration” launch. We will add:

  • Screenshots and art
  • Instance Picker (either through our own device or through instances.mastodon.xyz)
  • link to the Mastodon Wiki
  • Localization
The initial (included) Mastodon design
Specialized development teams (and categories) for specific Mastodon feature-sets
#3

Also on the near-term roadmap is better responsive design, particularly of the nav bar, but I’d want to hear any other concerns folks have viewing the site on mobile.

#4

i don’t know how much this has been discussed already (this centralized place is long-needed), but onboarding of new users right now is not great. if mastodon.social is closed, people hit a wall where they have to find the tiny instance list link (which they might not even notice), which for that matter requires them to already know something about how federation works. then they’re left staring at a list of over a thousand instances with very little differentiation besides somewhat arbitrary techy stuff that means nothing to most people.

i’m sure you already have something in the works (joinmastodon.org itself?) for this but i thought it would be good to get this topic out in the open for more of us to weigh in on.

#5

joinmastodon.org now has prominent links to instances.mastodon.xyz, so people have a better starting point. :slight_smile:

#6

okay, i see how this all fits together now.

that said, “mastodon.social” is still considered the de facto “homepage” of the project for a lot of newcomers. it seems like making a new site doesn’t really address a lot of the problems? are there any plans to make mastodon.social use joinmastodon and/or its content as its landing page? (a .env variable for this, like the single-user thing, might be good so that the other generic mastodon instances like mastodon.cloud can do the same thing)

#7

I believe that some type of redirect when signups are closed are planned yes.

#8

JoinMastodon.org definitely needs more prominent placement, would it be reasonable to have a ‘find out more about Mastodon’ link prominently on the default not-logged-in page for an instance that leads there?

A lot of the stuff on the default not-logged-in page is the similar sort of “here’s basic concept and feature information” that JoinMastodon is supposed to provide a clearer (and centralized) view of; it might be nice to be able to trim down the per-instance landing pages to be very utilitarian and allow them to link easily back to a central page; it might also encourage instance admins to customize their own pages more (A thing I think is really good) if they knew there was someplace else to get the basic info.

#9

imo there should be a built-in selector that promotes good instances like the mastodon.xyz list that also shows info on the CoC and also doesn’t include permanently closed 1-2 user instances

#10

I noticed some small grammar errors on the Join Mastodon landing page. Can I fix these myself and submit a PR somewhere, or should I tell somebody in particular?

#11

Please read at least the OP before you reply.

#12
#13

Thanks! I see Nolan already fixed the errors I spotted though. I’ll have to think of another way to be helpful.

#14

I think it should have a link to Gargron’s Patreon somewhere maybe?

#15

That was supposed to be up there. Good catch!

#16

There’s an excellent Japanese “instance search” page called Mastodon-Instance. It has categories, countries, real-time toot previews, and so on. The developer goes by @mastodoninstance@mastodon.social.

Could be good inspiration for the Instance Picker (if custom made), or simply linked to.

edit: link now goes directly to the English/Worldwide version.

#17

A worthwhile enhancement for the instance picker (not sure how easy it is) would be to show preferred languages per instance. Currently you often get routed to a Japanese instance, which is not surprising given the current demographics, but might scare away some Western users, especially in UK where foreign languages skills (and desire to learn other languages) currently aren’t as strong as other European nations!

#18

It might also not hurt to have a way for admins to opt-out of the selector promotion – if I understand right, I could see a lot of new users suddenly pointed at instances whose admins are still getting the feel of running an instance, and might want to keep their growth rate low for a while before they might get a tsunami of users.

#19

From my understanding is that it will be opt in once we have the instance picker made, just as instances.mastodon.xyz is opt in (people submit their servers).
And admins of servers will also be able to submit what information they want supplied etc.

#20

In regards to Instance picking, this is what I’ve been playing with. It’s darned slow running ATM, but at least it all lives in a single file. :wink:

Screen Shot 2017-05-28 at 11.21.15 PM.png1235x848 223 KB

You can play with a demo here

What makes it unique (and rather slow!) is that it is one pre-generated HTML file and doesn’t require back-end server support. At the moment, it’s generated by a mess of templates and python code, but when I get the code “not totally confusing” I’ll post it to the GitHub repository I made for it.

#21

This is a small thing, but. On https://joinmastodon.org/

Built for real conversation

With 500 characters per post, you get plenty of space to go deep into topics, instead of just making surface-level quips. Built-in support for content and spoiler warnings lets you share sensitive discussions and media with only those who want to see them.

The section I bold-italicked, “instead of just making surface-level quips”, makes us sound bitchy and elitist. Plus and also there’s nothing wrong with surface-level quips - lots of us do that!

So like, if you want to be technically correct, you could change it to “in addition to making surface-level quips”. Or you could remove that, or replace it with something less snobby… :smiley: