Young folks: Please can we contribute using modern git-based workflow rather than email?
Old farts: No.
👶: OK, but can we at least use modern memory-safe languages?
👴: Also no.
👶: Perhaps we could modernise our language & attitudes to be more inclusive?
👴: LOL! No.
👶: Could we at least consider addressing some long-standing community issues?
👴: What part of "no" are you having trouble understanding?
⏳ ⌛
👴: Why aren't there any new people contributing to our project? Truly a mystery. 🙃
@uecker @maco
I think sarcasm is the only sane response at this point.
USENET failed for the same reason IRC failed. Stick-in-the-muds who refused to adapt to what new users actually wanted.
I wrote a bit about it here https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/why-did-usenet-fail/
This is annecdata - not a serious academic study. Adjust your expectations accordingly. When I first got online, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy - so CompuServe was my gateway to the Internet. I loved their well organised chat room. A couple of clicks and I could be discussing Babylon 5 with people in another country, downloading wallpapers, and uploading my poor attempts at…
@uecker but they *didn't*! That's the whole point!
Every time someone wanted to make a change to USENET, grumpy fogies started blathering about Eternal September and AOL lUsers.
Do you see what happened? New people went somewhere friendlier, more responsive to their needs, and with a gentler learning curve.
Same thing happens to lots of open source projects. Nerds dismissing user experience as something useless.
UX is *everything*.
@uecker I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
I was shouted at for using a client which top-posted, I was chased away for wanting to use HTML in my messages, and PLONKed when I asked people to reign in the sexism.
You can't blame any of that on companies.
They gave people what they wanted - a slick UI and a smooth experience.
All the while, fossils were insisting on ASCII supremacy and scoffing at kids who wanted to use emoji.
They were dinosaurs who refused to adapt.
See https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/01/the-commons-weve-enclosed/
I, unironically, love Reddit. But it's just USENET with a better UI, and a few moderation improvements. Most days I use DropBox. But it's just FTP, but a bit easier to use and automate. I waste a lot of time on Slack. When I explain it to old-school nerds, I say it's IRC - but developed by someone who gives a damn about user experience. Most people in the world don't have access to WWW. Instead, they use Facebook which gives them a much simpler way to post photos and share their thoughts. It …
@uecker because it is the same thing.
People don't want to work in a toxic environment, I think we can both agree on that.
Yet, even recently, you saw big projects which tolerated sexist, racist, and homophobic language.
Would you go and volunteer to work on an open source project with that sort of community?
Would you say "well, I guess I have to change the way I communicate with people in order to participate"?
No. You'd go and do something else.
@uecker @Di4na @Edent The problem you're having is that you think this thread is about you, and that your individual choices and tastes disprove anything being said about visible trends.
Which is exactly the whole point: when project maintainers center themselves, all they will end up with is themselves.
@uecker why would I want to volunteer to work in an environment where my technical choices were mocked and belittled?
Project want to attract newbies.
Newbies want to work in a modern way.
Project aggressively tells newbies to use punch cards and COBOL or GTFO.
Newbies go off to somewhere more welcoming.
Project dies a slow death.
The end.
The enshittification of the internet wasn't inevitable. The old, good internet gave way to the enshitternet because we let our bosses enshittify it. We took ...
Terence Eden
Martin Uecker
maco
Thomas Depierre
FJ!!