Mastodawn

Brian Krohne Jul 29, 2023

I've been pondering the posts by @kissane and @siderea about 'not finding your people' #OnHere and am wondering if sentiments toward fediverse-wide #FullTextSearch have shifted at all. I know this has been implemented several times, and then been graciously shut down by developers who listened to community feedback.
#Mastodon #Fulltext #Search

From US - want opt-out fulltext search

37.3%

From US - DO NOT want opt-out fulltext search

13.6%

From Europe - want opt-out fulltext search

33.1%

From Europe - DO NOT want opt-out fulltext search

16.1%

Poll ended at Aug 5, 2023 at 2:15pm.

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Vyr Cossont 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Jul 29, 2023

@siderea @kissane @krohne what the hell's wrong with opt-*in* full-text search

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Matt Jul 29, 2023

@vyr @krohne The thing is, I'd gather that most people that the "full text search" arguments are trying to attract are the type of people who will never configure an option, so opt-out makes a lot more sense for the usability of the feature.

Opt-in and opt-out are very, very different kettles of fish, and opt-out is always more effective for the usability of a feature that relies on other people having it activated.

Another approach would be asking people during onboarding if they want their posts indexed (or removed from the index), but even then the default is going to matter as many people skip this sort of stuff as they just want to post.

Defaults will always be what is used by 90%+ of people - which is why there's always so much pressure on Mastodon and not other platforms to implement features. A lot of other platforms have these features, but most people will only experience Mastodon default.

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Vyr Cossont 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Jul 29, 2023

@mattswift @krohne there's always the possibility of an "opt-either" onboarding UX. consider the following:

"i want to be visible" on the left half of the screen vs. "i want to be quiet" on the right. one click defaults.

left one turns on discoverable and searchable flags, sets your default visibility to public, and disables the opt-out for web crawlers.

right one leaves the flags off, sets your default visibility to unlisted, tells web crawlers to ignore you, hides your social graph, and requires follow request approval.

anyone who wants further customization can go digging for it.

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Matt

@vyr @krohne This is a pretty good idea, people are most likely going to follow patterns in all their options, so a couple set of "defaults" makes a lot of sense!