Media Liberation Day: how can we help newcomers get started and have a good experience on fedi?

Media Revolution's Media Liberation Day on November 5 is encouraging people to liberate themselves from malignant corporate media to explore decentralized social networks. It's a great opportunity to bring people to fedi ... but as we all know, it's not always easy for people to get started, find what they're looking for, and have a good experience here.

So, what resources, suggestions, and support can those of us who are already here provide to potential newcomers? And what can we do to prepare for – and encourage – a potential influx?

Here are a few specific questions (although these are just starting points, other suggestions etc are welcome)

• What advice would you give somebody coming from Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, Reddit, and/or TikTok who's starting to check out fedi?
• What resources are good for helping people get started?
• In terms of your own experiences here, what have you learned that you wish you knew earlier?
• How can people (including moderators and admins) here on fedi help newcomers?

Feel free to share your thoughts – on fedi at gotosocial.thenexus.today or in the CryptPad form here

Unsurprisingly, I've got some thoughts of my own on all of these, but I'm going to hold off for now to hear what others have to say. I'll either add them to a revised version of this post, or share a separate post.

Background on Media Revolution and Media Liberation day

Media Revolution's recent open call has details and (in the summary) a lot of links about the day as a whole, and several of their related campaigns, including

• mo-me ("movement media"), is a fediverse platform that people can either sign up for directly or use with a fediverse account hosted elsewhere. For newcomers who are looking for microblogging, this is likely to be a good option for setting up an initial account.
• News Clubs ("like a book club for news"), which can use decentralized social media for online meetings or to complement in-person meetings
• A "leaving party" on Zoom on November 5 (19:00-22:00 London time) – a natural time to help people ready to leave and looking for alternatives

Another idea worth considering: at this year's FediForum, Liz from Media Revolution suggested a "welcome party". Right now the plan is to combine that with the leaving party, but a complementary option is to use hashtags, channels, feeds, and so on to have an ongoing welcome party.