Allow instance admin to set suggested communities

[db0]

Requirements

• [x] Is this a feature request? For questions or discussions use https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support
• [x] Did you check to see if this issue already exists?
• [x] Is this only a feature request? Do not put multiple feature requests in one issue.
• [x] Is this a backend issue? Use the lemmy-ui repo for UI / frontend issues.
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Is your proposal related to a problem?

The lemmy starting user experience can be bad because (potential) newbies immediately can get thrown in controversial politics comms or flooded by low-effort memes which dominate the frontpages.

Describe the solution you'd like.

I want to provide a way for lemmy admins to curate the "starting" experience for their instance. I want to suggest a new tab "Suggested" along with Subscribed/Local/All for the post list. It would display only posts from communities the instance admins have predefined in the instance settings.

Likewise, In the lemmy settings, the admins can provide a list of local and remove comms which will be used to fill in the suggested tab.

This not only will allow each instance admins to show what they believe is the best part of the lemmy ecosystem, but provide more individuality to each instance frontpage.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

No alternatives exist

Additional context

No response

[Nutomic]

Seems very useful. An alternative way to implement this would be as "default subscriptions", ie an admin-configured list of communities which new users follow by default.

[db0]

That could also work, but I like the suggested idea better, as it's visible to unsubscribed users, and also someone can easily switch back to it after being a lemmy for a while.

[dessalines]

The server-specific / curated view is really just Local, as that's what your local server is about (its focus, topic, location, etc), and wants you to see. The user-specific view is Subscribed, and the uncurated fediverse slop view is All.

I'm not sure what the best way to handle it is. We used to have a default subscribed community that all signups would get subbed to, and we could potentially re-add that and extend it to an admin list. That one has a major downside tho, that it only affects new signups, and existing users aren't going to be subscribed to the new communities.

A Suggested seems like kind of an overlap with Local, except that it's set by your server admins, and could also point to federated communities. Adding more curated views, might also end up overlapping / conflicting with multi-communities, when we also start working on that.

IMO, the best way to handle this, is to use site sidebars and taglines to highlight specific communities, federated or not. That way we can encourage use of the Subscribed view, make ppl's experience more customized and focused.

So of these:

1. Admin-set default subscribed communities
2. Admin-set communities for a Suggested view
3. Highlighting communities in taglines and sidebars, and encouraging Subscribed

I personally like 3) the best, as it encourages a personalized experience, and adds less admin-curated views.

[Nutomic]

Good point about multi-communities. When that is implemented it would be as easy as adding a field to local_site.suggested_communities with ID of a multi-community, and UIs could render that as recommended one way or another.

[db0]

Local is really not similar though. Most small instances have nowhere the amount of content to make for a dynamic local area. People also do not read sidebars, especially not unsubscribed users who are just checking out what lemmy is, and new users who are relying on the expertise of their admins to help them curate.

Almost every other social media service out there has a "default", or "starter packs" or whatever for precisely this reason. This is a very common complaint from people in lemmy.

The whole point is to make the experience more seamless especially since people are already complaining about how complex lemmy is. Expecting people to read sidebars is the opposite of that.

[M4rtineski]

Imo it should be called "curated" and not "suggested" because the second one implies it being personalised while it's not. Curated makes it very clear what this is which is a mostly static (may vary with the instance) shared list/feed curated by someone who in this case would be the admin/s of your instance.

[Sjmarf]

Good point. "Featured" could also be a good label for it.