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Really hope to see a much easier sign up workflow.
The idea could be an automatically assigned server geographically. The user puts in their username. Click continue which then completes the sign up flow on the assigned server geographically. Similar to how #bluesky does it.
It's really important to make the sign up as easy as possible to get over the #NetworkingEffect
@Floppy @Mastodon It's cool on many levels. But one of them is the ability/facility to make this change so far IN, that you can just turn on a dime. And say, okay, let's just have a different default. And it all just WORKS after the config change. #activitypub #federation for the win.
Absolutely fantastic news! 🥳
This solution is even better than the rotating general server pool idea. Geographical and linguistic suggestions are brilliant, they make it easier for people round the world to join AND they encourage decentralisation.
Well done Mastodon gGmbH, it's a very clever way of doing it! 👏 Looking forward to the roll-out!
@Floppy smart move 👏🏼 @Mastodon @mellifluousbox
@Floppy @Mastodon This was one of the things I was most excited to have seen. My big concern is with instances finding the balance between being open and a default recommendation and also fighting spam sign ups which continue to be problematic. It's something I've wanted to have some time to look at for a while now because I'd love to open sign ups but have safe guards to massively reduce the risk of spam from both automated bots and the seemingly farms of human operators creating spam accounts here.
@andypiper @wild1145 @Mastodon @haubles yes, we'll talk :)
@andypiper Regarding the language choice, use the OS language for preselection only and then let user change the language.
Underrepresented languages do not have Android or iOS, so e.g. speakers of Scottish Gaelic won't find their servers if you exclusively depend on the OS locale.
@gunchleoc @andypiper I'm sure they were clever enough to add a default in those cases
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@codebyjeff @andypiper They can't match the server's default locale to the phone's default locale though, because most users won't know how to change their system locale if it's not available as a system language too.
Software that depends exclusively on detect locale has always been a problem for us. We do have Windows and Ubuntu and LineageOS, but we don't have iOS or Android.
@Floppy @Mastodon I think the sign ups have to be open, I know there was a question about it, which from a legitimate users experience is the best way because waiting an unknown amount of time for an approval is a rubbish experience.
I'd really like some middle ground where we can run some automated checks and safeguards and only then hold accounts flagged as potentially spammy but there's only so far you can currently automate that with the state of the tools today.
I'm going to head back to the Mastodon stand a bit later (as the area was super busy) as I think @haubles mentioned they had some slides about some new features and funcionality which might improve the challenges we're seeing.
