Two perspectives:
1) We should hide relays from new users because we don’t want to scare them away.
2) We should make relays an integral part of onboarding because otherwise, they won’t see the value in nostr.
Which do you take?
Discussion
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Relay introduction will scare off most if part of #onboarding. On day one, relays should “just work”
I can see that. What’s cool is that we can have both and taylor it to the individual. If i was showing my dad nostr it would definitely need to “just work”. But if I was showing a non-techy friend they could probably figure it out.
If I am to introduce newbies to one new concept beyond keypairs, I would probably go with seamless zaps onboarding over relays.
Maybe 2, but with an explanation that atm they're slightly pointless / WIP, apart from the cool logos on onyx / amethyst lol. And maybe the only exception for content mostr ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah something that confused me when I joined is I wasn’t sure which relays to choose, because I didn’t know the difference. I pretty much licked them at random. And that’s largely because there wasn’t much difference, and still isn’t. But that should change with time.
Yeah I was assuming it was giving me different content when I joined.
I do wonder about the likely scenario of relays becoming what we assume they will become / how they are spoken of becoming. Would have to be something like a banned subreddit or Alex Jones or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. How far off that would be? Doesn't seem like it'll happen any time soon to me.
Not sure how true this is, but I was told that it is possible private relays already exist. We just wouldn't know about them if they were ultra private. Maybe clients would know(?) Maybe, they (like you lol) made their own clients. No idea of the veracity of this tho.
There’s not much incentive to do it yet because most clients don’t have good relay management tools. Being able to easily switch between sets of relays should help with this.
Integral. They help avoid spam and tailor your feed to make the experience better.
But at the same time, I think relays need to innovate and cater to certain areas/demographics/categories. Right now almost all the relays are just general discussion. I always envisioned relays with specific content like sports relays, bitcoin relays, etc. and then in clients you can filter which relays on your relay list you are writing/reading from at certain times or for certain notes.
Yeah the only real differentiating factors right now are speed and spam control (paid relays mainly)
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A little of both. Recommend random relays based off of the top relays. We know that relay management is a pain point for new users. We should do a better job at helping users understand them in an intuitive way and friendly way, otherwise they won't see the value in Nostr and they'll also feel overwhelmed and not follow through. Breadcrumbs and hand holding here would be immensely helpful.
2. With a better UX around it.
#2 but make it more user friendly. Relays are powerful tools. The settings and terminology just need to be easy for non-techie people to understand what they’re for and how to use them.
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one client on 1, other client on 2 per OS
test, compare
bc i honestly dont dare to guess anymore 😂
Thank you. This is a really good point
If we want to go "mainstream", the word "relay" should not even exist for them. Everything should be in the background. The question is, do we need to go mainstream? I guess most people are too sensitive for uncensored speech?
I disagree… that’s like trying to shield internet users from URLs
I don't get the comparison tbh.
We probably need a relay search engine tbh
Everyday guys might not even be interested in a non-algo driven social media app, imo. They just want to log in and be distracted from their lives.
DOOR NUMBER TWO
until clients stop blinding sending notes to your list of all relays, relay selection only matters in so far as you want the ones with highest availability.
if clients start surfacing relays in a content-centric way, e.g. wss://catpicsonly.example.com, wss://austin-devs.example.com then relay selection becomes important.