https://pangora.social/join

Hey everyone! I recently finished up an instance selector similar to join-lemmy. There are a couple issues with join-lemmy with it sending the majority of people to the general purpose instances instead of growing the niche instances, as well as giving people way too many options at once which can turn into choice paralysis.

The selector will be the default when people visit the pangora site and people can also use it to select lemmy instances instead of using join-lemmy since im keeping pangora and lemmy as close to each other as possible.

How it works:

  • Users are presented with 10 main categories (technology, sports, art, etc.). They can choose one which will be the category of content they primarily look at
  • If a category has no subcategories they will then be sent to a random instance for that category (e.g. if they choose sports they get sent to fanaticus) Update: If a category has no subcategories they are shown a preview of a random instance for that category (e.g. if they choose sports they get a preview of fanaticus to look at and then possibly click visit)
  • Else if a category has subcategories they are then shown those to pick from (e.g. technology when selected will show programming, radio, etc.) (and when selected repeat previous step)

I added almost every active instance to the site so feel free to use it to check out some other instances for various topics

Hope you enjoy :)

site: https://pangora.social/join
source code: https://github.com/PangoraWeb/pangora.social

  • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Just sending to random instance without telling the user seems misleading, at would be better to show a list of instances in my opinion (or have “show me more instances”.

    Searching for categories by text could also be helpful.

    • Ategon@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I recently pushed out an update that shows a preview instead of just sending them to it (with a button where someone can get a new instance for the category). I updated the post to reflect that now

      Similar ish to what you said but I’ve been keeping it at 1 instance shown at a time to stop choice paralysis (but they can see other ones in the category now by getting a new 1 instance)

  • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    what would be even cooler is if it automatically subscribed you to communities based on the answers you gave

    or at least listed them out? I think Lemmy will soon have an option to import a list of communities to subscribe to all at once

    https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3976

    could either copy paste the json for it, or do it through the api after the account is created?

    • Ategon@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Couple things I think would have to be added for this to work. One would be tagging communities based on the content in them so these subscribe lists dont have to be constantly manually updated and instead can be set on a community level. Then would be handling for taking in the category from the url and saving that so its used later when they sign up (I dont think base lemmy would want to integrate behaviour from the pangora site but it could be integrated into instances running pangora)

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This looks great, and would be a nice place to redirect people for topic based instances. I was just looking for an updated list the other day.

    How do you pick which ones to keep and which ones to skip? For example, there are a few film/TV/music instances and there will probably be more soon.

    Feedback:

    • add some more information on who owns/runs the instances, and maybe show the recommended instance instead of redirecting to it without warning. This page could include the details on the instance, and you could still “highly recommend” one instance

    • move the regional instances out from under “other”. This was important to me as a lot of the relevant communities to me are regional (I follow what’s happening in my city, province, country, school, etc.). I have interests in FOSS, science, etc., but I wouldn’t pick my instance for any one of those.

    It could also help with latency if users are located in one region, and users would have more control over things like where the data is stored or how the non profit is set up. I like knowing that my instance is setting up a non-profit in my country, and that it is following our local privacy / security laws.

    Also like the other user said, you could offer to use location when the user picks “random” (or just redirect them to that page), citing the reasons above.

    • Ategon@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Instances have been added if they have a decent amount of activity and dont break the programming.dev rules (no hate speech, no illegal content, no lolicon). The ones currently here are just basically ones that I know exist but other ones can get added if someone sends me links to them or an issue gets opened on the repository

      Sure I could adapt it a bit to do that. I can show info on one and then add in a refresh button to get a new instance in that category or something similar.

      And sure I can move regional into their own category

        • Ategon@programming.devOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Letting you know that I pushed an update to the site. Shows a preview of an instance with description, uptime, users amount, communities amount, where its hosted, and software, instead of sending the user to it instantly.

          And regional has their own caategory + some other stuff moved around

    • Ategon@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Lemmy itself needs JS to work, wouldnt make sense to limit myself to not using it when the sites im sending people to dont have that restriction. Whats the bloat youre talking about, I can look at it