Post AUAvf0Ft00d4e9pOk4 by Zach777@fosstodon.org
(DIR) More posts by Zach777@fosstodon.org
(DIR) Post #AU6t0mgpUTg5Dopqro by maegul@hachyderm.io
2023-03-29T03:19:50Z
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Interesting revelation from #gargron in recent interview on server choices for newcomers (https://www.theverge.com/23658648/mastodon-ceo-twitter-interview-elon-musk-twitter)“However, I think that possibly going forward, we might rework the onboarding user experience into **presenting a default option as well as an advanced option, where all that stuff with choosing a server would basically be hidden away from the people who get intimidated by choice**.”@fediversenews @hosting #fediverse
(DIR) Post #AU6t0nPUoPPHSLjWUK by maegul@hachyderm.io
2023-03-29T03:22:31Z
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@fediversenews @hosting Another statement about groups (which isn’t new to me)“What’s next for Mastodon? What should people be on the lookout for next?Groups, probably. That’s a big feature that’s coming. Well, it’s what you would expect. Facebook has groups, Twitter has communities, and Mastodon will have groups as well.”#group #groups #mastodon
(DIR) Post #AU6t0sdrMQrpgLUZ4S by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2023-03-29T14:06:04Z
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@maegul Of course. He wants to make #Mastodon a stand-alone project again.#Guppe was "bad" enough already, but since the launches of @Fediverse Hosting Discussion, @Fediverse News etc., Mastodon has been relying on #Friendica which is essentially direct competition in order to have groups.But I'm sceptical about what's planned regarding instance selection. For one, that'd lead to even more people joining Mastodon and taking two, three, four whole months or longer to realise that there is such a thing as instances. And more than one of these. In the meantime, they'd be mollycoddled into the belief that Mastodon is structured just like Twitter, only without Musk.If carried out badly, i.e. if even the name of the instance these new users join is being concealed for them for ease-of-use's sake, they'd be essentially unable to log in through something else than the app they've used to register their user account with. They wouldn't even know where to log in.Also, what'd be the standard default instance? mastodon.social? And when the next tsunami of new users comes flooding in from Twitter, it'd be full again because 99.999% of all newbies would go there?Even before that, Mastodon should introduce full account migration. Not only including all toots, all uploaded media, all followers, all followed and all the settings, but ideally even without leaving a dead account behind afterwards. Then we can talk about channeling all newcomers onto one and the same instance.
(DIR) Post #AUAvexs3rcNpFgfLKS by edendestroyer@mindly.social
2023-03-30T22:34:46Z
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@maegul @fediversenews @hosting Waiting for #calckey app so i can move away from mastodon. We truly cant have nice things.
(DIR) Post #AUAveyishEdNtVNWeu by mathias@friendica.hellquist.eu
2023-03-30T23:05:41Z
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@edendestroyer Is using Calckey the goal, or is "having nice things" the goal?I am using both Akkoma and Friendica with Mona app, so we can have nice things if we are just a little flexible. ;)As a general comment to the thread: This entire thread is, for understandable reason, all about Mastodon though and kind of forgets that Mastodon is missing so many features users are accustomed to from other online experiences, but which exist in other Fediverse services, such as for example Calckey. Those things doesn't work on Mastodon, for literally no obvious/apparent reason for new users, and is often one of the bigger hurdles in retaining people. I don't see any discussion about that here though. Getting a disappointed and confused user back for another go can be just as hard, if not harder.@maegul
(DIR) Post #AUAvf0Ft00d4e9pOk4 by Zach777@fosstodon.org
2023-03-30T23:37:46Z
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@mathias Can you explain what features are missing on Mastodon?
(DIR) Post #AUAvf0wmQWwMnBtebI by r000t@ligma.pro
2023-03-31T12:58:33Z
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@Zach777Maybe, once 40gbit becomes normal for residential use. Then you'll be able to download the list in a few days. @mathias
(DIR) Post #AUBi4XauyeqT5NuOUC by mathias@friendica.hellquist.eu
2023-03-31T12:09:51Z
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@Zach777 Sorry, went to bed after my last post last night, so a bit slow on the reply here. Here are 10 things that immediately spring to mind:1. Actual federation - where you get to see all the replies made to a post. Most users expect this is how it works, but alas, it does not. There quite likely are "hidden" replies, as Mastodon haven't fetched them all. Post replies in threads are hidden because "backfilling" doesn't work. This means people who reply often will be ignored because their reply simply isn't seen.2. Search - not having to explain to new users that "yeah, I know you have a search input field, but indeed, it doesn't work as you (or any sane person) think it works...this is a FEATURE..."3. Embedding of other posts (aka "quote-posts") - all the other Fediverse services have this. All other social media services has this. Another "feature".4. Not-hardcoded character limit - This, along with quote-posts and Markdown, is probably the main reason for 90% of the Mastodon forks out there. At least make it easily configurable for the admin.5. Not-butcher HTML/MarkDown/RichFormatting - all the other Fediverse services has this but no one can use it if they have friends on Mastodon (this is actually about to get fixed).6. Proper thread views where it is clear who replied to whom - without having to "back" out of a thread and then re-open it, in the hope of it reloading and shows you new replies (which still not be ALL replies, due to point 1)7. Dynamic loading of new replies in threads - assumes there are threads so...8. Nice list management - ideally where you can add people to a list even if you don't follow them, just like on Twitter (or Akkoma)9. A clear indication of what a post is a reply to - ideally with previews of that original post. This creates context (and removes thousands of "back"-link clicks).10. A clear indication of how many replies that have been made to a post - ideally with previews of the replies. This creates context (and removes thousands of "back"-link clicks).The stuff at the end of the list is more about ”nice UX” and as such could be seen as ”optional”. The IMHO most critical one are the first ones. To not do proper federation I would have thought should be a priority for a Fediverse service to fix, but the official bugs relating to that were filed 6 years ago and still haven’t been solved, whereas other services have solved them.I don’t think all services have to be feature-by-feature alike, but it would be nice if they at least respect each other and don’t butcher the posts of other services, and there should be a basic understanding of how the Fediverse services function at a fundamental level. At least that is what I think (and hear) ”users” are asking for.
(DIR) Post #AUBi8eAUTiDqdGVOCG by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2023-03-31T17:49:22Z
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@Mathias Hellquist (Friendica) @Zach7772) #Search across the entire known #Fediverse won't work anyway. It's difficult to implement in a decentralised and distributed way. It's impossible for any Fediverse search to know the whole Fediverse. It simply couldn't immediately scrape the brand-new experimental (streams) instance you've just started up for the first time five seconds ago and index your first post on it which you drop some two minutes later. And besides, you'd have to make search-crawling mandatory for all projects, all instances, all accounts and channels. But many minorities would demand opt-out.3) I'd suggest that this should come with a "don't quote my posts" switch that all instances of all projects would have to obey. But I know from personal experience that I can quote everything, absolutely everything on Hubzilla. Nothing can stop me from copy-pasting parts of another post between [quote][/quote] tags. Speaking of which, quotes should translate cleanly between projects instead of each project expecting all other projects to work like itself.4) Yes. Seriously, who has got a problem with being able to write more than 500 characters? And why should someone? People rather have a problem with reading more than 500 characters. And this is unstoppable unless you'd want to truncate anything that comes from outside Mastodon. And I've got my doubts that Mastodon could and should automatically chop up anything over 500 characters into threads.5) This is something that Mastodon should implement. With a per-account opt-out switch, but still. Of course, this should translate reliably between projects, too. Oh, and Mastodon should start treating embedded images as embedded images instead of ripping them out, converting the last four of them into file attachments and putting them under the rest of the post.8) Or Friendica. Or Hubzilla. Or (streams). At least on Hubzilla and probably also on (streams), you've got two options. Either, and this is the closest to Mastodon, you edit a privacy group (that's what a list is called on Hubzilla), you have two vertical lists, one with connections that aren't in the privacy group, one with those that are, and you can click them back and forth. On top of that, you can edit connections and switch them into and out of privacy groups. This is more comfortable than Mastodon by gigantic magnitudes.
(DIR) Post #AUBi8enq7PhKbIuoWu by mathias@friendica.hellquist.eu
2023-03-31T19:34:41Z
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@jupiter_rowland Regarding search (2): Indeed. That is a well-known and non-surprising limitation of searching in the Fediverse in general: any instance can only search content it knows about, in its own database. However, if there is a search input field there is no real reason it couldn't search everything in the database of that instance.One of the most common use cases for search is finding something you've seen. Every public post of all the instances your own instance knows about will be in the database. All the posts of those you follow will be in the database. There is no technical reason to why it couldn't search free text, not only usernames or hashtags.This obviously also comes with a couple of disclaimers: you can only get a list of results that you are allowed to see in the first place (i.e. not the private posts of others on your instance etc), but that is a completely different issue to solve.The rest could be managed by linking to an information page of search and the Fediverse. Or removing the search input field.But I can easily say I love my search on the instances/services I use (which obviously then isn't Mastodon).Regarding quote-posts (3) I personally don't believe in the opt-in/out stuff. It is merely misleading in that it creates a false sense of security, much due to the reasons you mention. I think it is better to educate and lead by example. But by "opting out" people might think their posts can't be quoted, which is absolutely not true.EDIT: Just to clarify, regarding search: most instances have a clean-out of remote content at a set amount of days (often 90 days). Most instances don't store everything it sees, forever, so there are still limitations compared to the rest of the internet.@Zach777
(DIR) Post #AUBi8fHcKhW85eqawa by r000t@ligma.pro
2023-03-31T21:58:43Z
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@mathiasSearch is a very hot topic on fedi. Most people who make a fediverse search engine are dogpiled and harassed. I know I was. @Zach777 @jupiter_rowland
(DIR) Post #AUDvsXybWCtqTD5B5M by LucyWildboots@c.im
2023-04-01T23:42:58Z
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@m But I would suggest that before you test those things, you poll a random sample of non-technical people on their preferences. I’ll be honest, I like that the only permanent data about me is not cached in this country. I think when you start having caching schemes, you will also need to have assurances that it won’t track any other personal data (ahem phone company).@pinkyfloyd @metalsamurai
(DIR) Post #AUFd7188PeRi87e9Tc by Twitter_expat@mastodon.world
2023-04-02T11:33:37Z
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@maegul @fediversenews @hosting That friction would be solved using other language. For the vast majority server means nothing or something strange. It’s should be “choose your community”. The language should be colloquial and not off putting.
(DIR) Post #AUFd743HY9LZBwOopU by jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu
2023-04-02T12:53:12Z
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@Twitter_expat 🧩(Fedi Resident) @maegul @Fediverse News @Fediverse Hosting Discussion Careful, "community" may already have a meaning, depending on where in the #Fediverse outside of #Mastodon you are. If someone has spent several months in a Mastodon community (= server = instance), then discovers that there's a Fediverse outside of Mastodon, then decides to move to a different project which uses the term "community" for something else and another term for servers/instances, they'll end up confused.#Streams actually uses "community" in the sense of instance already now.#Friendica, on the other hand, uses "community forum" for groups (groups in the #Guppe or #Lemmy sense of discussion groups). The term "community" refers to the entirety of Friendica users, also because it's being maintained and developed by its own user community now. Friendica calls its own instances "nodes".
(DIR) Post #AUFd74cjQLhexsz85I by Twitter_expat@mastodon.world
2023-04-02T18:33:04Z
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@jupiter_rowland @fediversenews @hosting Agree, but for ordinary people who are not or don’t want to deal with IT jargon, server is a scary word. I am confidente that someone will come with a better term.
(DIR) Post #AUFd75G543B8vvOYPw by r000t@ligma.pro
2023-04-02T19:24:12Z
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@Twitter_expat The wild success of Discord would suggest otherwise. People *love* to tell others about "my server" @jupiter_rowland @fediversenews @hosting
(DIR) Post #AUFmea6WIgzBk9yFVI by Twitter_expat@mastodon.world
2023-04-02T21:11:03Z
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@r000t @jupiter_rowland @fediversenews @hosting I tried Discord and hated it with passion. I use if for work because I have to and I know exactly the kind of people who use discord. The same could be said for the “techies” who are in the fediverse.