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@RolloTreadway @maegul @lucywildboots @Ronkjeffries @fediversenews This is difficult to counter. If you try saying “Mastodon isn’t confusing”, then immediately that suggests that someone, somewhere said it was. So maybe it is.
It’s an excellent way for anyone with a pro-Twitter (or anti-Fediverse) agenda to spread FUD.
I don’t know how to counter this, but suspect some other language or form of words is needed.

@MetalSamurai @fediversenews @RolloTreadway How about something like, “Where Do You Want to Live? - Everyone wants something different from a home, even as you talk to the rest of the world. At Masto you get that choice from cool spiders to LGBTQ safe spaces to General News to Sports to Caturday.

@lucywildboots @fediversenews @RolloTreadway The wonderful/awful thing about people is they’re all different and never all agree on anything. Whatever you come up with to please one group will feel patronising to another, or they’ll run away screaming in confusion as you’ve overwhelmed them.
In an ideal world you’d have a variety of schemes then get some test subjects to try them and see where they bail out or give up and find out why.

@lucywildboots @fediversenews @RolloTreadway Maybe that could be a student project, or someone with money could fund the research.

How about you ask people if they think they know what they’re doing (and let them choose by themselves) or want a hand (and offer them some choices interactively). An idea I had was to get them to pick out some words that appeal from a word cloud (cloud made from text on each instance’s About page).

@lucywildboots @fediversenews @RolloTreadway Then show them the instances that had the words they picked out.

Or, just show them the list and let them choose, but if there’s no obvious movement within a couple of minutes pop up a message asking if they want help and then show the word cloud.

Kevin Davidson

@lucywildboots @fediversenews @RolloTreadway Too much choice can cause paralysis for some people. If you know someone like that you learn not to ask “What do you want for dinner?” and instead offer a limited selection of choices. How to automate that for strangers?