Proposal: Maintain a group of welcome instances for people new to the Fediverse.

It should be a well moderated safe space from the very beginning.

We can point Fediverse new account links to the Welcome Pod. The signup process would choose a random Welcome Pod instance.

The instances could have a welcome committee helping people get started on the Fediverse.

Proposed Fediverse Logo

Welcome Pod Features:

  • consistent new Fediversian experience

  • instances that specialize in helping new Fedizens

  • socially welcoming for marginalized groups

  • positively recommend alt text for images and videos

  • limited instance size

  • welcome servers would federate amongst each other for easier discovery

    • e.g. friends joining at the same time, but getting different home servers should be able to find each other

  • multi-lingual moderation staff

  • multiple services, e.g. PixelFed, Bookwyrm and Mastodon

  • offers excellent migration documentation and migration assistance

  • not required, people can still choose other instances

  • enforced moderation against bigotries ( racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-accessibility )

Proposed Fediverse Logo

Welcome Pod Advantages for the Fediverse:

  • shared moderation rules specific for new Fediversian experience

    • for instance, squelch spoiler instances that post about pop media without CRs

    • people can follow if they want, but the timeline doesn’t fill with unobscured plot points

  • welcome committee efforts can concentrate on new accounts

  • horizontally scale the welcome point via many instances

    • if an instance gets too many accounts take it out of rotation

    • if accounts migrate and it goes below a threshhold it can go back in rotation

  • can default to regional or language based pods

  • coordination point for supporting disparate service interaction, e.g. between PixelFed and Mobilzon

  • coordination point for migration experience

  • solicit donations to pay moderators and administrators and to pay for infrastructure

  • work for a common onboarding experience for the different Fediverse services

    • e.g. add CR code for each account to profile

New Fedizens could opt to choose a different server, from the Welcome Pod or elsewhere in the Fediverse. They would also be able to easily move off the pod once they’ve gotten acquainted with the Fediverse.

The Welcome Pod isn’t necessarily the forever home. Indeed, we would encourage eventually leaving the pod for the great, wide diversity in the Fediverse.

Some people will certainly want to stay where they start and problably never move. That should be OK. The Welcome Pod can gently nudge them to try another instance, but it isn’t a requirement.

The Welcome Pod could work with other groups to help new Fedizens find long-term homes in the Fediverse, e.g. instances in NZ, trans-friendly, FLOSS, heavy metal, gardening, hometown, etc.

Entry servers don’t have to be called Welcome Pod. Could be "Fediverse entry point", "Fediverse welcome center", JoinFediverse, or even <InsertYourIdeaHere>. @atomicpoet@firefish.social proposed "Lobby Servers" as a similar idea.

For current on-boarding of new Fedizens there are already resources available.

Fedi.Garden has a curated list of well-moderated servers. Fedi.Directory maintains a list of servers, while instances.social uses a short questionaire to help suggest relevant instances.

Mastodon, PixelFed, WriteFreely, and other projects also maintain server lists.

Note: Welcome servers could have silly ( or non-silly ) themes to seem more attractive to new Fedizens.

The Fediverse isn’t obligated to grow, but we can be more welcoming to those who find us.

Proposed Fediverse Logo fetched from WikiMedia.