Eugen RochkoGood morning
Shoq 🌿Good morning. Trying to survey the whole system and understand what might bring more folks from Twitter.
Never having followers on a new social network is always a problem. It was hard to keep folks interested in twitter's first year.
mjc 🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪
Eric Chant
Dave@EricChant Well, you already got a knack to play to your audience... german autistic chaos tinkerer here, welcome to Mastodon!
Googie
InlineThat newbie problem has been around a long time. Back in the day, on AOL, we had a New Member Lounge". They were chat rooms, but same could be done here with merely a #tag (and/or a server). It was so popular, many people never left, and it was one of the most important tools for teaching the service to newbies
@EricChant @shoq @Gargron best suggestion is to ask your question and tag it with #mastohelp or #help and i'm sure there will be lots of people jumping in to answer your question!
Deadly Headshot
Tony Stark
Fenix 🔥@mjc That's why some of us are now exploring Masto. A lot of people are scared. But a lot of power users have already disliked Masto, and that needs addressing if it's ever to be a viable alternative to twitter for many.
@shoq there is other software other than mastodon and other servers. i run a NSFW only specific instance using Pleroma which speaks the same language so it's part of the federation but has a different design philosophy
@mjc Right, that I know. Is Pleroma more or less restrictive (broadly speaking)
@shoq it's software so the rules and governance are entirely set by the administrator. but it does support 5000 character posts by default and doesn't run on Ruby so for me that was a huge plus, but I also run this instance that i'm on now, toot.zone, which is also Mastodon.
the challenge and exciting part is finding an instance that fits one's culture and personality.
like the difference between gmail & hotmail or protonmail.
all are email services and all can email other people.
@shoq ideally the DNC would run their own server. campaigns would run their own servers. people with certain ideologies or hobbies would run their own servers and people would gravitate to the "community" where they felt more comfortable. and b/c it's the federation, everyone can talk and follow one another
Do I need to include your name in text, as the interface is including whenever I reply? If I remove it, is it no longer a reply and goes to everyone on local? Still not totally up on the actions here.
@shoq just like twitter, at-replies work the same here. the only difference is there is an additional at-sign to tell the software which "server" the other user is on.
@mjc
Twitter removed the reply name altogether, opting to handle it behind the UI. SO that will confuse tweeps coming over (who came along after that change, anyway).
Twitter removed the reply name altogether, opting to handle it behind the UI. SO that will confuse tweeps coming over (who came along after that change, anyway).
@shoq well, Mastodon (and Pleroma, and the Fediverse in general) is not Twitter. But users are resilient, and there's lots of helpful people. :-)
@IronMan2020 @mjc U hear what your'e saying, but in my experience, everything that confuses a user matters; especially if there's an ambition to lure those users to a new ecosystem. That said, I'm just observing things in survey mode, so far. Not concluding much.
Thor of Asgard@shoq It's very easy in Pleroma to create private islands and not federate with the rest (or say only a very limited number of other hosts).
it's easy to do things when you control all the servers that all your users use.
but that's not what the Fediverse is trying to solve. it's trying to create an ecosystem where anybody anywhere can communicate with anybody else and not have to worry about a single company having control
@mjc I get that about Fediverse. But that;'s an entirely separate problem from creating a friendly ecosystem where communities can sprout up, assimilate other users and communities, or disappear. Both contexts can and should exist.
@shoq sounds like an opportunity to me. ;-)
but i recall Twitter not having very many community controls for its first 7 years either.
this software is 2 years old. developed by mainly one guy for the bulk of those 2 years.
@mjc I am not criticizing anything. I understand the FOSS culture and constraints. I am merely commenting on the kinds of issues that invariably come up when people discuss these kinds of projects. Especially the one aimed at evolving twitter from the mess it is, to the mess it might become :)
@shoq you're not raising any points or questions that haven't already been brought up ;-)
@mjc I realize that too, but the issue is now salient again (because of Paul Singer), and that's another issue with all of these services: persistence and discovery. I can't easily find those discussions so there isn't much choice but to have them again.
@shoq The software is smart enough to strip the @mastodon.social part from the reply if it doesn't make sense to show it to the user.
@mjc I get this concept., and have never felt it practical, which is why it still hasn't worked on a large scale. People don't want to create servers just to create community. That's why facebook groups and slack are popular. To ignore those human factors is a mistake, imo
@shoq nobody is forced to create a server. :-) there are over 5,000 servers on the Fediverse to choose from. but some people like running their own. same for email. lots of people use gmail. i run my own email server because i want to.
@mjc I realize that, but my point is that that is NOT what many users want to do. They want to easily create or migrate an entire community and, as with twitter, there is really no way to do that with Masto without your own server. But if that were addressed with groups, or (like with invitation-only tags, perhaps), then badabing.
@mjc What i meant by forced is that it's their only option if they wish any degree of autonomy over their community., An analogy would be IRC. Servers have channels. Why can't Mastodon, I ask myself?
@shoq so if we use your IRC analogy then, think of the 5,000 or so separate servers as different channels, and the Fediverse as basically EfNet.
@mjc But that's my point. Yes, you could think of it that way, but users aren't going to,. They are going to employ what's put in front of them. They don't typically improvise.
@shoq It's been my observation that communities sprout up working with the tools that are presented to them. there are verdant communities already here on the fediverse for all political spectrums, all sexual orientations, careers and professions..... feminist... trans... and even fascists have an unfortunate corner...
@mjc getting some lunch, brb
Karoli