Derek Powazek 🐐Criticizing mastodon continues to be the least fun thing to do on mastodon.
Y’all realize that accepting criticism and mining it for good ideas is just what you have to do when you run community projects, right? And that lack of criticism means you’re failing, because people don’t criticize things they’ve given up on, right?
The core problem with all social software is that it winds up being run by people who love software more than people.
When users of your project tell you what they need, they’re giving you a fucking gift. You should accept it with grace, even if you don’t like the content of it. It’s a gift. You say thank you. And then you think about it.
That doesn’t mean you do everything everyone asks. But there’s important shit to learn in there and if you run a community project it’s your job to find it.
And if you don’t want to deal with feedback from humans, try building software for goats* or something. Humans talk back. That’s kinda central to the whole premise of social software.
(*goats also talk back)
jwz
@jwz I keep asking my goats to explain that but they refuse.
James against the machine@fraying wired: try building *hardware* for goats 🤔
@j I have! Two barns and several play structures. They’re tough critics but they seem to like ‘em.
Bunnyjadwiga@fraying goats, however, do not expect you to listen, any more than they listen to you.
@bunnyjadwiga you don’t know many goats.
@fraying yeah, I guess my goat experience is limited and/or dated. My family kept goats 50 years ago, but since then I've only encountered them in passing.
[MESSAGE ME TO FOLLOW] green@fraying this is true of absolutely everything that has to do with dealing with other humans. feedback is *always* a gift; negative feedback is the *best* gift. I sincerely wish more purveyors of goods and services understood this principle, instead of letting their "customer service" people take it in the face and giving them no support or means to improve things while they toss the feedback directly into the garbage. and a customer/user who gets burned once will go through *tremendous* lengths to avoid repeating the process if at all possible.
skategoat 🐐 🇵🇸@fraying hello fellow goat enjoyer
ErosBlog Bacchus has moved!@fraying What? No! That's not it at all. Based on my experience offering user feedback, correct response is "Luser, if you care about that functionality all you need to do is write the function yourself and recompile from a clean Kyberzootes suite making sure to set the Warboggle controtes with a string of etherial fruit decompositors. Of course this only works on a virtual machine sandboxed in a software environment that you don't have access to, but how is that our problem? Learn to code!"
skybrianIt seems like this argument works both ways. When we get software or services for free, that's a gift too, so maybe we should say thank you, and be polite when offering criticism.
In a gift economy, it's all gifts. It all depends on goodwill. If people get nasty enough, nobody will feel like giving gifts anymore and the parties don't happen.
Also, maybe we should be wary of overvaluing our gifts? Giving appropriate gifts is hard! Often, a gift turns out to be unwanted waste.
Luis Villa@fraying Some of it winds up being run by people who love profits more than software or people? 😭
Andy Waschick@fraying Thats a broad brush to be painting with, homie. Can’t those of us who love software ALSO love people? I don’t care to be characterized as some affectless zomboid zero-empathy techno-hermit. I make machines do machine things so people who I care about are free to do people things.
@randywaterhouse what? A one sentence post lacks nuance? Almost like I was making one simple point that, were it not to apply to you, personally, might still be true in general? Wild!
@fraying If we’re going to pick nits on semantics… You did make an unequivocal and definitive statement, which included the term “all social software” - If there was a disclaimer to be made, you should have made it instead of assuming your audience thought exactly as you do. Use your words!
eevee 🦊@randywaterhouse @fraying Really getting that "loves people" vibe here yeah
@eevee @fraying I make the lives of my users better by using technology to reduce drudgery and repetition. This requires precision in word and deed. If I didn’t care (about my people) so much, I wouldn’t make a point of arguing the semantics of blanket statements that influence others to dismiss what I choose to spend my career doing.
William PietriExcellent work convincing this very people-oriented developer that you're entire in the wrong here.
Puppy PiThere's so much insanity here I don't have the mental energy to engage in this discussion beyond this post. But suffice it to say, you felt called out by something not directed at you at all (esp. if you're an automation not social networking engineer!!), took issue with it, thinking it called you a "affectless zomboid zero-empathy techno-hermit"
And now, because of victim complexness, toxic reply guy behavior in saying intelligence-insulting things to OP like "Use your words!" and "This requires precision in word and deed", pretending to not understand sentences like "The sky is blue" or "Engineers are bad at empathy" or "Men are jerks" or "Space is cold", and talking like you're a black kid from the hood ("homie") in one post and about your client *companies* having huge sums of money in another post, and etc. ..,
like half a dozen people and counting who didn't know you existed before now think you're a..lemme find the words.. oh right, an "affectless zomboid zero-empathy techno-hermit"
(Which is harsher language than I would have used, but you're the one who said it.)
..Smooth move xD
@randywaterhouse @codepuppy @eevee @fraying @williampietri if by "new friends" you mean "people who have watched you fit your entire ass into your own mouth and have come to the conclusion that you are, in fact, an affectless zomboid zero-empathy techno-hermit and plonked you into their block/mute folder," you are absolutely correct!
@codepuppy @eevee @fraying @williampietri Also I appreciate the special effort you have made to make me feel like such an out of touch jerk. I’ll be sure to integrate this into my ongoing loop of negative self-talk. We’re really living the dream here in this new social-media utopia.
You are really insistent on not taking feedback and not learning a lesson. Since you obviously won't hear it from us, would you please just show these posts to a trusted friend and ask them how you're coming across and if you're having the effect you want?
@williampietri @codepuppy Look who’s being condescending now.
For the record, you came out of nowhere to reply to someone's post and be paternalistic and insult the OP's intelligence. Don't do that and you won't get pushback that you find unpleasant.
(And fwiw xD, the actual original post is *literally* about how we *don't* consider this a new social media utopia and we have problems with how it's designed and how the people who design it have a hard time accepting criticism dslkfjflkj)
@eevee @fraying @williampietri
Okay I'm bowing out now; I got things to do with my life and energies, and this is enough for me on what I put the Content Warning as x'D
@randywaterhouse oh fuck off
Rue Ciphervale@fraying @randywaterhouse I choose to believe they are ironically demonstrating your point
C. E. M. Henderson@fraying the unaware-that-he-is-evidence-for-your-point reply guy you got on this is a real tour de force lol
Garden Variety Linguist@cemhend @fraying
Ruh-roh, this exchange has shades of T(w)itter all over it! Hard to decide if it's more like deja vu or a recurring nightmare. In a way it's a positive sign - it suggests #Mastodon is gaining in popularity.
It's a tough concept, but we frequently (in English at least) use hyperbolic language to make a point or start a conversation, without actually literally meaning what we're saying. It's being artistic with language, rather than precise, & like art, isn't appreciated by all!