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by mattl
3780 days ago
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Those are servers run by our community. I'd be interested to know if you have any alternative ideas: we don't want to pick one any one instance, but we want to give new users a thing to try. Do we just flip through a big list and show one per page load? |
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Right now you have "Join the federated social web No matter which server you're on, you're part of the family!" which mentions 'federated social web' - a term most potential users probably aren't familiar with; and 'family' which doesn't have a very specific definition (i.e. is it part of the same family just because you're running the same software or does this imply a greater connection between the different servers - my understanding is that it's the second, but I'm not really sure)
I would suggest adding more info such as "You can join any server and still follow people on separate servers. Once you have an understanding of how the system works you may want to start your own server so that you can choose your own settings and have complete control of your own data!"
Also, the home page is very sparse on info. IMO the 'What is GNU Social' section shouldn't start with info about the StatusNet project, since anyone new to GNU social wouldn't know what that is. It should be something like "GNU Social is a free and open source social network (i.e. a replacement for Facebook/Twitter). It is a protocol that allows anyone to run their own server (or join someone else's!) and connect to people around the world. You can have control of your own data and the communication is as secure as you make it!" and then you can add the other info.
Some other suggestions:
The about page doesn't really say anything about what GNU Social actually is, it's just a history. The FAQ page should be linked, or included in the same page.
The FAQ page is pretty sparse and still doesn't tell much about what it actually is used for. And given the sparsity of the rest of the site, I would suggest including the FAQ page as a top level header, rather than under Resources. And a few more suggestions on questions:
"What does the federated social web mean? - It means you can run your own server and connect to other people with their own servers" or something along those lines
"How do I choose which server to join?" - You can join any server and still connect to people on separate servers, or you can start your own server!
"How do I install it myself??" - link to the install info
Also, I just clicked through to the git page, and the info you have there is a much better intro imo: "It helps people in a community, company or group to exchange short status updates, do polls, announce events, or other social activities (and you can add more!). Users can choose which people to "follow" and receive only their friends' or colleagues' status messages. It provides a similar service to sites like Twitter, Google+ or Facebook, but is much more awesome."