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?
Dan Lyke@fraying as long as that criticism is coming from people actually participating in the project. There are an awful lot of "I might use it if.." people out there who won't actually.
@danlyke When people tell you what they need, they’re giving you a gift. You should take it and say thank you.
@fraying maybe. I have a project that people use, and I love their feedback, and that people don't use but have opinions about, and I measure their suggestions carefully. The project is a gift to a community, and it's important to us building this project that those attempting to guide us have similar goals and visions for that community.
@danlyke I don’t know the specifics of your community, and every one is different, but I’ve heard a lot of programmers discount valid feedback based on the person giving it too many times. Be careful about that.
@fraying in this case it's a music player for (Modern Western) square dance callers, there seem to be a class of people outside that target audience who delight in "this would be awesome if it did [this thing that has nothing to do with our intended application]". They're total stop energy, because they have no intention of using the project for themselves, and don't understand the target audience, or the use pattern.
And yet they keep coming.
BK Ryer@bkryer it's spam, right? I've gotta engage the person enough to understand if they're coming from a place of participation, or drive-by sniping. Much like engaging people while assuming sincerity on social media.
Eventually the temptation to block and move on becomes strong, and that harms the community.
@bkryer the part that I struggle with is that good community needs exclusion, and the challenge is that making sure that the exclusion criteria filter for what I want in a community, and yet are still inclusive of diversity.
So many of the feature requests I've seen for and critiques of Mastodon break down some of the filters that I think improve this community. Which... All nice places are eventually destroyed, but we try to hold on... OTOH, maybe they will improve equity?
To make sure we are not just chasing chimeras I'll say it like this.
Equity can't be improved; you either have equity or you do not. Diversity can't be included; diversity IS inclusion.
What's missing in these equations of harmony sold as business plans is reliable identity. And the reason it is missing is because they can't sell it. And the reason they can't sell it is because reliable identity must exist outside the system of value to which it invites or bars you.
@bkryer thank you, I need to think about both these things. My first reaction is that I do not see equity as a binary except as a likely unachievable goal, but that's probably because I don't understand the word as a term of art.
And I think we understand "identity" differently, in my framework that's something largely held by the observer and influenced by identifiers held (or published) by the observed. "reliable identity" thus involves a lot of moving parts.
@danlyke Cheers. Equity as an on/off encourages me to think beyond the idealization to what would actually exist if "equity" were achieved? Different feelings? Statistical constants indicating good health? It’s tricky, maybe more than rocking rhymes right on time. And 'reliable identity' even more so. As you point out, this is quite distinct from popular current usage of the term.
So, yeah, It’s my contention that before long demand for a uuid/ssn/drvlic/passport, yes, a multi-pass Lilu, will exceed the surface tension of a thousand customer loyalty cards and, like mobile phones, okay like iPhones, before it, suddenly will be everywhere all at once.
@bkryer I'm gonna have to ponder that view of equity, I think that'll be an interesting way to think of the filters.
On a universal identifier, I think we're scarily closer to that now than I'd like to think (owned by Meta & Google), and I see a *ton* of value in not having such a thing. I think that identifiers should be as numerous as identities. We, as community builders, need to make the identity that people create in a social interaction then important enough that participants value it.
@danlyke
re: equity filtering, cool. perhaps also community self description as an adjunct to volume of and key matches in posts.
re: identity vs identifiers, the identity one creates inside a system, and the identifier one uses to get inside the system in the first place, are distinct.
Our personal identities, that first kind, are hyper-fractal soul flowers, in bloom, all the time. That our societies, as retro-grade as some elements doggedly remain, seems generally to approve and embrace people as people, no matter how unfamiliar, is pretty good stuff.
But I am bkryer, and I am bkryer everywhere because, well, everywhere I have ever been I have never not been me! I am happily responsible for my utterances and actions, off and online. This is not true of everyone, though, as far as I can tell.
@danlyke seeing that last sentence staring back at me it seemed increasingly passiv/aggro...so...ahem
It is unavoidable true that many individuals need anonymity for legitimate existential reasons, but the nonsense us 1%ers concern ourselves with has little existential consequence, no matter how much some claim it must.
But it does have some, and it’s critical to limit this as we are able. And the way justice is dispensed in our societies requires an identity incontrovertiblly linked to an action, because intent matters. And this identity must exist outside of the arena of action which is subject to the activities of enforcement, otherwise, well, look around.
I hope that is not to obtuse. Framed appositively: Bad actors must appear as not bad actors to be bad actors. If you let them in before you check you already lost.
These markks wanna hang. — Spark Master Tape
@danlyke ...sigh, yes, of course it is not possible to peer into an email-handle’s soul and infer tolerance if not compatibility with communal prerogatives. So we’ll have to solve that....
@bkryer agreement on identifiers vs identity, and...
me the square dance caller is different from me the woodworker is different from me the overly-helpful neighbor vs the not-me who uses a different name on certain web sites.
There's overlap, and it's not like I fight to keep those identities separate any more, but the nearly 3 decades-long friend I'm about to walk for coffee with has no interest in the kink-adjacent identity of me that shows up in other spaces...
@danlyke thanks for keeping this convo alive. We are getting down to important fundamentals here and you obviously have given this more than a little thought.
Expect more here later, and thanks for so far!