I onboarded two completely different users to Nostr - one of them is just a passive lurker now - that being nostr:npub1jz4zy6zhr9k4fdsh83st5a8mnum5ggz4dhwshz27ktp45d0ujdvq8h4a0r - and the other came here to a tumutous start - that being nostr:npub1jy5ysetcu9lmtxt78rlm585ume3mw6llhphefje9whf5ynw0apjsmf6jq4 - because of a troll sliding into me trying to introduce them. Fun stuff!

But during both of those processes, I noticed a few things that stuck out to me. The most common question between the two was: Who do I follow? Can I change my password? Which relays should I use?

Dedanan is somewhat tech-savy. He uses #Amethyst and mainly scrolls there. I doubt he ever used Snort or Primal on the desktop, let alone install nos2x, AKA Profile or let alone Alby. Meanwhile, my other friend, ran into every problem imaginable:

- nos2x for Firefox is now nos2x-fox and it's UI is bad. Like, it took us - me included - a good while to figure out that in order to add an nsec, you had to first click "New Profile". We were stumbed that the text field was blank and the generate button was all that worked - and it was just all over the place...
- They use Waterfox and neither Snort nor Primal wanted to work with it and when they saw NoStrudel saying "it's half-baked", they shied away from it - which I totally understand, why use beta software if you are just new to the whole thing?
- Croacle completely hit the bucket when it tried to find a kind:0 of the profile on 30+ relays. But since this was a completely new key, it found none, and thus got stuck in a loop forever. 100% unusable.

Many people here on Nostr seem to have a good level of understanding for tech in general - but this helps them, and not the people we are trying to onboard. Nobody wants to babysit someone for half a day just for a social media thing - and then, when something "breaks", we are also the ones they will turn to first - which can be a good or a bad thing.

To me, "dumbing down" means "simplifying" and streamlining the experience. For instance, imagine if Snort were to point out, during registration, that you should install a browser installation - or if Primal had some text on it's page to actually tell users that they need an extension to even log in. By default, it tells you... Nothing. For the longest time, I thought Primal was read-only. xD This is stupid, in it's own way.

If I could steer Nostr devs into a direction to harness the buidl power into a certain way, I would put it there: Stabilize the apps, make onboarding easier for both the person recommending it and the other person actually doing it. Don't be shy to support older browsers too - not everyone lives on the bleeding edge. Make Nostr extensions that are awesome.

For instance, this: https://www.getflamingo.org

This was the first extension I used, but it doesn't support DMs and is, in fact, archived. But it does exactly what it needs to in a nice, sleek UI. Put your key in, and done! I am trying to learn about browser extension development because this is one of the pain areas of Nostr right now; We need an "actually good" extension. Alby does too much, and nos2x too little. Flamingo was neatly inbetween but is missing APIs, so it's "broken", kind of.

But this doesn't even help with things like "Which relays should I use?" Both of my friends use my relay because I was syncing it to nos.lol for a while - and the gossip/outbox model is not supported in most clients right now. So this question also needs an answer.

Generally, I totally agree with you. "We" can work with the gibberish and weirdness. If we see "naddr", we know what it is - others don't, and maybe ever won't. This is why I would love to see more development in the "making Nostr accessible to new people" spectrum.

There is another problem but... that one is much, much more difficult: The Bitcoin stigma. I tried to talk about Nostr on some Lemmy instances, but I was /immediately/ met with "oh, its just cryptobros there" and the likes. Yikes! But this shouldn't go here, that's a different problem.