I've been on wt.social for years, but find it very hard to follow due to the UI using the "cram everything in the middle" style of layout. There's so much wasted whitespace all over the screen! If...
I've been on wt.social for years, but find it very hard to follow due to the UI using the "cram everything in the middle" style of layout. There's so much wasted whitespace all over the screen! If someone writes a particularly long paragraph you end up with word wraps so deep it takes 14 pages of scrolling to read.
It looks like v2 is more of the same. I've had a bit of a poke around and it doesn't look like there's any way to change the layout to something more appealing. There's also not enough visual separation between each post in my opinion, so scrolling is like a big long wall of text.
I do like the idea of setting a trust level on a user level though... When somone puts up something obviously bollocks you can just reduce the impact that person has on your feed without filtering keywords or blocking or similar.
Super light on members at the minute, and I'm not sure the name "Trust Cafe" is super enticing :-\
Am I reading right in their FAQ that wt.social allows users to edit each other's comments? How does that play out in practice? I am probably misunderstanding something but I just imagine that...
Am I reading right in their FAQ that wt.social allows users to edit each other's comments? How does that play out in practice?
I am probably misunderstanding something but I just imagine that degrading into edit wars in controversial threads.
No, you read it right - there is a check box for allow / dis-allow other users to edit. So I am assuming it is like wikipedia and as you said, will have the edit history as part of the post....
No, you read it right - there is a check box for allow / dis-allow other users to edit. So I am assuming it is like wikipedia and as you said, will have the edit history as part of the post. Literal FTFY :-) There also is no delete button but instead, Archive.
It has potential but it seems there is not a lot of coding resources being applied...
TIL both WT.social sites - I've just visited the 2nd one and it is basic...
As an opt-in I can absolutely see that working. Sometimes you want to make a post community-editable. I can kind of see that working on tildes too, if we can leverage the trust system to prevent...
As an opt-in I can absolutely see that working. Sometimes you want to make a post community-editable. I can kind of see that working on tildes too, if we can leverage the trust system to prevent edit-wars. Imagine someone posts a paper or article or whatever, and the community working together to produce a single post summarizing all the important results of our discussion here.
useful for megathreads, collating different sources or reactions to something. i see the potential, but nine times out of ten that'd be about as easy as just asking someone to add something to...
useful for megathreads, collating different sources or reactions to something. i see the potential, but nine times out of ten that'd be about as easy as just asking someone to add something to their comment.
This is a basic moderation feature in many old style forums, but it only works because it’s extremely limited in who can use it - it should only be used for moderation and the edits should be...
This is a basic moderation feature in many old style forums, but it only works because it’s extremely limited in who can use it - it should only be used for moderation and the edits should be flagged in the content itself.
I don’t think social media and wikipedia work the same way socially, and I’m not sure how taking lessons learned/ideas that worked on wikipedia and applying them to social media is going to work, but I guess it’s a really interesting paradigm experiment at worst.
I've had a wt.social account for quite a while, but I almost never use it. It is just not a very approachable site. His V2 is a giant step backwards in almost every way. I will keep my account in...
It looks like v2 is more of the same. I've had a bit of a poke around and it doesn't look like there's any way to change the layout to something more appealing.
I've had a wt.social account for quite a while, but I almost never use it. It is just not a very approachable site. His V2 is a giant step backwards in almost every way. I will keep my account in the event the site ever takes off, but it has been around a long while at this point and it hasn't grown much if at all from what I can tell.
Nice SEO gag, but it's not a Reddit replacement if it's a microblogging service, and based on the brief look at their docs I took and their claims, it's just Twitter 2.0. It can be a link...
Nice SEO gag, but it's not a Reddit replacement if it's a microblogging service, and based on the brief look at their docs I took and their claims, it's just Twitter 2.0. It can be a link aggregator, but the specific way of threading, organizing communities, and allowing long-form comments combined with short-form posts and comments is the mix tat enables Reddit to be what it is.
If it's just WikiTribune 2 it's closer to Reddit, but still more like Tildes if it weren't intentionally growth-limited and adding staff, and a heavy focus on news.
I'd trust it 1000x more than Meta, so I'll keep tabs on it. It being maintained (indirectly or otherwise) by Wikimedia does help shield it from the "Enshittification" that's been talked about as...
I'd trust it 1000x more than Meta, so I'll keep tabs on it. It being maintained (indirectly or otherwise) by Wikimedia does help shield it from the "Enshittification" that's been talked about as of late.
My few concerns are
UX. I'd never call Wikipedia a badly designed site, but I don't know how far I'd navigate within wikipedia as opposed to relying on search engines to find the right articles.
Rules. Wikipedia's style of moderation (while it makes perfect sense for an encyclopedia) may also not be the best kind of management for a more casual sort of discussion pub. I hope I wouldn't have to obtain a law degree and memorize the TOS by the letter just to get a simple news post up and keep it up.
Being politically agnostic is just not a thing, and people really should understand that. We are constantly surrounded by politics, you can’t put your head into sand to not hurt someone’s...
Being politically agnostic is just not a thing, and people really should understand that. We are constantly surrounded by politics, you can’t put your head into sand to not hurt someone’s feelings. And if your politics is that another person should not exist than we are absolutely free to not share any social circles with you.
The other big one is being unbiased. There’s no such thing either, everyone and everything is biased in some way or form. When people say that a person or organization X is unbiased - what they...
The other big one is being unbiased. There’s no such thing either, everyone and everything is biased in some way or form. When people say that a person or organization X is unbiased - what they really mean is that that person or organizations biases are similar to their own, and they perceive it as being unbiased.
Exactly! One of my favorite “quotes” (I can never remember it verbatim) is from the author of the History of Philosophy, Frederick Coplestone. He writes that everyone has bias, but what is more...
Exactly! One of my favorite “quotes” (I can never remember it verbatim) is from the author of the History of Philosophy, Frederick Coplestone.
He writes that everyone has bias, but what is more important is knowing said biases when we consume some content - so it’s best to be upfront on them.
And to have bias is also natural, I’m pretty sure it’s part of the way we help identify strangers and helps us be wary of people who come in from the outside. Historically obviously very...
And to have bias is also natural, I’m pretty sure it’s part of the way we help identify strangers and helps us be wary of people who come in from the outside.
Historically obviously very important, these days those same mechanisms cause strife.
But the problem with Wikipedia is that no one knows how really reliable the sources are or what the gauge that the editors are using to figure out if a source is better than another source. Or if...
But the problem with Wikipedia is that no one knows how really reliable the sources are or what the gauge that the editors are using to figure out if a source is better than another source. Or if someone in a particular editor group for a controversial topic is acting in good faith with the sources or with the topic itself. A good article for this would be "Debating Reliable Sources: Writing the History of the Vietnam War on Wikipedia" by Brendan Luyt. Which does shows the reader how the editors for the Vietnam War page was discussing which sources are going to be used. Also is the reason why schools don't allow Wikipedia articles to be used as a source.
I am not shitting on Wikipedia, I do use it for quick information for topics that I need the rough summery of or just kind of interested in. So having a moderation in that style is probably not going to work in the long term because the right-winged nutjobs can easily hijacked the discussions this way, unless they have a way to prevent this from happening, which I am hoping for.
Yes. Some topics are going to be hot-button topics, but some things generate huge mostly pointless amounts of discussion (often quite heated) for some unfathomable reason. What's the controversial...
Rules. Wikipedia's style of moderation (while it makes perfect sense for an encyclopedia) may also not be the best kind of management for a more casual sort of discussion pub. I hope I wouldn't have to obtain a law degree and memorize the TOS by the letter just to get a simple news post up and keep it up.
Yes. Some topics are going to be hot-button topics, but some things generate huge mostly pointless amounts of discussion (often quite heated) for some unfathomable reason.
What's the controversial bit of "Mexican-American War"? That dash - should it be en-dash, em-dash, hyphen, or minus. That bit of punctuation was repeatedly discussed on ANI and went all the way up to Arbcom, it generated tens of thousands of words of discussion. And, at the end of it all, can you transfer your new-found dash knowledge to other articles? Nope, because they have their own gatekeepers who'll spend tens of thousands of words telling you a particular dash is wrong for their article.
oh gods. Em dash vs en dash arguments bring back flashbacks from arguments with the main marketing department at an old job of mine. I was the marketing department for two of our offices and our...
oh gods. Em dash vs en dash arguments bring back flashbacks from arguments with the main marketing department at an old job of mine. I was the marketing department for two of our offices and our head office was NEVER consistent with em and en dashes.
I think I will be skipping that entire discussion topic on the M-A war lol.
I'll preface this by saying I've never used any of the third party reddit apps which have been in the news lately; I've only used reddit via firefox on my phone/computer. I am also not trying to...
UX. I'd never call Wikipedia a badly designed site, but I don't know how far I'd navigate within wikipedia as opposed to relying on search engines to find the right articles.
I'll preface this by saying I've never used any of the third party reddit apps which have been in the news lately; I've only used reddit via firefox on my phone/computer. I am also not trying to disrespect people who designed and are maintaining the the current reddit look.
You'd really have to try to make something worse than the current reddit design and the current design seems to work for the vast majority of people. I don't think a Wikipedia-like reddit would be anything different than what we have now.
From his Twitter thread. Apparently there are plans to federate via ActivityPub, which seems promising: I'm very intrigued by these new algorithms too. We've had many years to study the negative...
From his Twitter thread. Apparently there are plans to federate via ActivityPub, which seems promising:
We plan to support ActivityPub, yes, but it isn't our first priority right now - the core concept is a concept of trust-based algorithms (rather than engagement/click/outrage algorithms) and there's a ton of work to do on that.
I'm very intrigued by these new algorithms too. We've had many years to study the negative effect of our current algos on online communities, so I'm curious to see what they're coming up with.
A bit off-topic maybe, so feel free to label - but am I the only one who's a little hesitant about the whole fediverse stuff? Without fail, every federated service I've tried - Mastodon, Lemmy,...
A bit off-topic maybe, so feel free to label - but am I the only one who's a little hesitant about the whole fediverse stuff? Without fail, every federated service I've tried - Mastodon, Lemmy, Diaspora, they all fail at the basic task of being an easy-to-understand platform that can take over an existing service. Yes, ActivityPub is cool, no doubt about it, but try explaining that to my 60 year old father who barely understands twitter.
On one hand, that's certainly a valid point, but on the other, let me play a bit of a devil's advocate (or just simply give you my perspective, which sound decidedly less fun than working for...
On one hand, that's certainly a valid point, but on the other, let me play a bit of a devil's advocate (or just simply give you my perspective, which sound decidedly less fun than working for Satan): I don't feel I need to understand things I use to use them and get entertainment/knowledge/value/whatever out of them.
I have no idea how my TV works. It's a complicated piece of equipment that might as well be magic as far as I'm concerned. Still, I know that pressing a red button on another device that magically communicates with the big box will turn it on. I don't NEED to know whether my remote uses IR, bluetooth or radio waves to transmit signals to my tv - I just need to know HOW to use it.
I find this to be the main problem with introducing people to fediverse - most if not all guides I've seen try to explain federation, instances, protocols and such. I feel that an average user doesn't need to know any of this though, not at first at least. It's kinda like trying to explain an ipod to your grandpa and starting from mp3 compression algorithms and dirrefence between hard disks and solid state media. Wrong, at first you just go: "press this button for music".
Sure, explaining Lemmy and fediverse that way might be extremely difficult, but I think it might work - I'm an absolute newbie myself, but I'm already pretty comfortable with it even though I have no idea how things work under the hood.
Just my rambly two cents - I never learned how to be more succinct, apologies.
I think part of the problem is that to explain how to use Lemmy or Mastodon, you need to explain federation. If it was just "hey grandpa, go to mastodon.com and register an account" it'd be no...
I don't NEED to know whether my remote uses IR, bluetooth or radio waves to transmit signals to my tv - I just need to know HOW to use it.
I think part of the problem is that to explain how to use Lemmy or Mastodon, you need to explain federation. If it was just "hey grandpa, go to mastodon.com and register an account" it'd be no problem, but you need to choose an instance first, "what's an instance?" and it snowballs from there.
I think you are right -- they need to provide LESS information, not more. The average user is going to get information overload by all this stuff they have no need to know up front. If Jimmy...
I think you are right -- they need to provide LESS information, not more. The average user is going to get information overload by all this stuff they have no need to know up front.
If Jimmy Wales' project took this approach to make it, well, approachable -- I think it would be a LOT more successful.
No, you're not. I've dipped my toes into that world as well, and it will need to improve a LOT to have a viable shot at maintaining an active community. The Fediverse is designed by programmers,...
am I the only one who's a little hesitant about the whole fediverse stuff?
No, you're not. I've dipped my toes into that world as well, and it will need to improve a LOT to have a viable shot at maintaining an active community. The Fediverse is designed by programmers, and it shows. It's great that tech minded people find it easy to use and navigate, but we are in the minority - if your average user finds it too confusing, they'll move on.
It's one of my biggest pet peeves within the tech community, this insistence that because something is easy for us to understand, it's fine as it is and others just need to get good. That's not a feasible plan for attracting new users, and in order to maintain a social space, you need new users or things stagnate and die.
I agree. I'm quite comfortable with tech, so if I have any qualms when it comes to usability, it's guaranteed that my less technically-minded friends/family will as well. I also dislike the...
I agree. I'm quite comfortable with tech, so if I have any qualms when it comes to usability, it's guaranteed that my less technically-minded friends/family will as well.
I also dislike the branding of "federated". I know this is more of a semantics issue, but it's too close to "federal". Depending on who you are, the juxtaposition of a word that sounds similar to "federal" and anything tech related can elicit reactions ranging from "Big government in tech? No thank you." to "Stodgy federal government website? No thank you." and more. It's a turn off right away for too many people.
It also steals thunder from the content and the communities. IDGAF about the tech solutions a site has implemented, if the content is good and it serves its purpose. Why does being federated make...
It also steals thunder from the content and the communities. IDGAF about the tech solutions a site has implemented, if the content is good and it serves its purpose.
Why does being federated make some lemmy instance better than if it were not?
For Lemmy/Kbin-type fediverse projects, I think there needs to be an optional "global" community type that shares one community across all servers a la Matrix rooms. Like,...
For Lemmy/Kbin-type fediverse projects, I think there needs to be an optional "global" community type that shares one community across all servers a la Matrix rooms. Like, https://lemmy.example/g/selfhosted and https://lemmy2.example/g/selfhosted should point to the exact same data. I don't know if all data needs to be entirely replicated for global communities, or if this could actually be a useful implementation for Blockchain.
I'm not married to the term "global", anything that references all-encompasing would be fine.
Now that would be a technical challenge with interesting solutions heh. From what I’ve read about ActivityPub and how these fediverses work, that isn’t really how they’re supposed to work. You...
Now that would be a technical challenge with interesting solutions heh.
From what I’ve read about ActivityPub and how these fediverses work, that isn’t really how they’re supposed to work. You could try to federate with everyone, but that’d probably become hilariously slow. And you’d probably be defederated from at least some instances.
Also as anyone can set one up, you’re bound to not find every instance.
This looks like the default noscript tag for Vue.js SPA applications. I’m definitely a little surprised that a project coming from Wales wouldn’t be implemented progressively, but given the state...
This looks like the default noscript tag for Vue.js SPA applications. I’m definitely a little surprised that a project coming from Wales wouldn’t be implemented progressively, but given the state of the project, I also wouldn’t be that surprised if there ends up being server-side rendering later, and they just started with what they were familiar with to get off the ground.
I registered with my name because of autofill. I assumed you could change it later or even delete your account. I'm not able to find where you can do that - which is a little unnerving.
I registered with my name because of autofill. I assumed you could change it later or even delete your account. I'm not able to find where you can do that - which is a little unnerving.
And birth date "to check that you're 13". Under European data protection laws since 1995, including the latest GDPR, you're not allowed to unnecessarily collect random data, and clearly I don't...
And birth date "to check that you're 13". Under European data protection laws since 1995, including the latest GDPR, you're not allowed to unnecessarily collect random data, and clearly I don't need to know it's January 1st 1900 to know that you're over 13.
The minimum data processing necessary for the purpose is a binary setting: yes/no to whether you're older than 13.
(Edit: also, they require special characters for your password 🤦 Without nerding out on password strength here, even the UK and US governments have realised this is outdated advice and updated their recommendations a few years ago...)
Anyway this is most websites on the Internet. Try to pay for a digital wallpaper and they'll need your physical address, mobile phone number, bank login, etc.
correcthorsebatterystaple, a classic (and ironically enough probably a bad password because of it being a classic. the woes of internet fandom).
Edit: also, they require special characters for your password 🤦 Without nerding out on password strength here, even the UK and US governments have realised this is outdated advice and updated their recommendations a few years ago...
correcthorsebatterystaple, a classic (and ironically enough probably a bad password because of it being a classic. the woes of internet fandom).
I've been trying at WT.social since its very beginning, but there's so many little concerns about its usability and, frankly, a lack of soul. It had so much time to grow despite that or change...
I've been trying at WT.social since its very beginning, but there's so many little concerns about its usability and, frankly, a lack of soul. It had so much time to grow despite that or change that and it did neither, really. I don't think it shows any promise.
Oh great, just another Reddit substitute after Lemmiverse and Tildes. That is exactly what we need: a further fragmentation of users that look for alternatives.
Oh great, just another Reddit substitute after Lemmiverse and Tildes. That is exactly what we need: a further fragmentation of users that look for alternatives.
I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The only reason many of us are here is because of fragmentation. Are you saying that Tildes and Lemmy are "allowed" but other alternatives aren't? I can get...
I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The only reason many of us are here is because of fragmentation. Are you saying that Tildes and Lemmy are "allowed" but other alternatives aren't?
I can get one quality of discussion here, another on Beehaw, another on kbin, etc. I have an account on each of them and it's not a big deal.
Fragmentation and diversity is good. That last thing any of us should want is for discussion to be centralized in a single location that can gradually get worse and worse because of an idiot admin and out-of-touch policies.
That's the problem I have with Facebook's WhatsApp in my country: it's getting comparable to WeChat in China. People have only WA for talking to anyone, so you need to opt into Facebook on your...
That's the problem I have with Facebook's WhatsApp in my country: it's getting comparable to WeChat in China. People have only WA for talking to anyone, so you need to opt into Facebook on your phone to talk to anyone short of voice calls and irl meeting. Business is more and more often done over WA. In school I needed it to be included in class activities at all.
If there isn't one place where everyone is, then people are sympathetic to having to install a second messaging system. Even if it's just two, then there's a choice, and people don't find it weird to have more than one. If WA turns shit, or more on-point, if reddit turns shit, people have a choice of where to go. If there is only WA, or only reddit, then the network effect is much, much stronger to put up with the shit.
Having ten different systems isn't great for reaching everyone at once, but users will gravitate towards the best one(s) and those will grow. It's how we try out new things before settling on a status quo for a while. I'm not sad Jimmy is experimenting with this
Trust Cafe (previously known as WikiTribune.Social or WT.Social), is a microblogging and social networking service on which users post to "Branches" including their own personal feed. It was founded in October 2019 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who still runs the site today along with his rag-tag band of merry men. Unlike other social media sites, Trust Cafe intends to be as open and transparent as possible, eschewing complex content selection algorithms designed to keep user engagement high in favor of wiki-style moderation that allows the end-users themselves to collect, organize and edit content.
The primary means of accessing Trust Cafe on both desktop and mobile is via the website, at {URL}. However, the Trust Cafe team also provides support for a first-class REST API which allows intrepid developers to generate new and unique user experiences by leveraging core site functionality.
I've been on wt.social for years, but find it very hard to follow due to the UI using the "cram everything in the middle" style of layout. There's so much wasted whitespace all over the screen! If someone writes a particularly long paragraph you end up with word wraps so deep it takes 14 pages of scrolling to read.
It looks like v2 is more of the same. I've had a bit of a poke around and it doesn't look like there's any way to change the layout to something more appealing. There's also not enough visual separation between each post in my opinion, so scrolling is like a big long wall of text.
I do like the idea of setting a trust level on a user level though... When somone puts up something obviously bollocks you can just reduce the impact that person has on your feed without filtering keywords or blocking or similar.
Super light on members at the minute, and I'm not sure the name "Trust Cafe" is super enticing :-\
"Trust cafe" sounds a little too much along the lines of "Truth social" for me.
Show, don't tell.
Am I reading right in their FAQ that wt.social allows users to edit each other's comments? How does that play out in practice?
I am probably misunderstanding something but I just imagine that degrading into edit wars in controversial threads.
No, you read it right - there is a check box for allow / dis-allow other users to edit. So I am assuming it is like wikipedia and as you said, will have the edit history as part of the post. Literal FTFY :-) There also is no delete button but instead, Archive.
It has potential but it seems there is not a lot of coding resources being applied...
TIL both WT.social sites - I've just visited the 2nd one and it is basic...
As an opt-in I can absolutely see that working. Sometimes you want to make a post community-editable. I can kind of see that working on tildes too, if we can leverage the trust system to prevent edit-wars. Imagine someone posts a paper or article or whatever, and the community working together to produce a single post summarizing all the important results of our discussion here.
useful for megathreads, collating different sources or reactions to something. i see the potential, but nine times out of ten that'd be about as easy as just asking someone to add something to their comment.
This is a basic moderation feature in many old style forums, but it only works because it’s extremely limited in who can use it - it should only be used for moderation and the edits should be flagged in the content itself.
I don’t think social media and wikipedia work the same way socially, and I’m not sure how taking lessons learned/ideas that worked on wikipedia and applying them to social media is going to work, but I guess it’s a really interesting paradigm experiment at worst.
I've had a wt.social account for quite a while, but I almost never use it. It is just not a very approachable site. His V2 is a giant step backwards in almost every way. I will keep my account in the event the site ever takes off, but it has been around a long while at this point and it hasn't grown much if at all from what I can tell.
Nice SEO gag, but it's not a Reddit replacement if it's a microblogging service, and based on the brief look at their docs I took and their claims, it's just Twitter 2.0. It can be a link aggregator, but the specific way of threading, organizing communities, and allowing long-form comments combined with short-form posts and comments is the mix tat enables Reddit to be what it is.
If it's just WikiTribune 2 it's closer to Reddit, but still more like Tildes if it weren't intentionally growth-limited and adding staff, and a heavy focus on news.
I'd trust it 1000x more than Meta, so I'll keep tabs on it. It being maintained (indirectly or otherwise) by Wikimedia does help shield it from the "Enshittification" that's been talked about as of late.
My few concerns are
UX. I'd never call Wikipedia a badly designed site, but I don't know how far I'd navigate within wikipedia as opposed to relying on search engines to find the right articles.
Rules. Wikipedia's style of moderation (while it makes perfect sense for an encyclopedia) may also not be the best kind of management for a more casual sort of discussion pub. I hope I wouldn't have to obtain a law degree and memorize the TOS by the letter just to get a simple news post up and keep it up.
Being politically agnostic is just not a thing, and people really should understand that. We are constantly surrounded by politics, you can’t put your head into sand to not hurt someone’s feelings. And if your politics is that another person should not exist than we are absolutely free to not share any social circles with you.
(You being a general subject of course, not you)
The other big one is being unbiased. There’s no such thing either, everyone and everything is biased in some way or form. When people say that a person or organization X is unbiased - what they really mean is that that person or organizations biases are similar to their own, and they perceive it as being unbiased.
Exactly! One of my favorite “quotes” (I can never remember it verbatim) is from the author of the History of Philosophy, Frederick Coplestone.
He writes that everyone has bias, but what is more important is knowing said biases when we consume some content - so it’s best to be upfront on them.
And to have bias is also natural, I’m pretty sure it’s part of the way we help identify strangers and helps us be wary of people who come in from the outside.
Historically obviously very important, these days those same mechanisms cause strife.
But the problem with Wikipedia is that no one knows how really reliable the sources are or what the gauge that the editors are using to figure out if a source is better than another source. Or if someone in a particular editor group for a controversial topic is acting in good faith with the sources or with the topic itself. A good article for this would be "Debating Reliable Sources: Writing the History of the Vietnam War on Wikipedia" by Brendan Luyt. Which does shows the reader how the editors for the Vietnam War page was discussing which sources are going to be used. Also is the reason why schools don't allow Wikipedia articles to be used as a source.
I am not shitting on Wikipedia, I do use it for quick information for topics that I need the rough summery of or just kind of interested in. So having a moderation in that style is probably not going to work in the long term because the right-winged nutjobs can easily hijacked the discussions this way, unless they have a way to prevent this from happening, which I am hoping for.
Yes. Some topics are going to be hot-button topics, but some things generate huge mostly pointless amounts of discussion (often quite heated) for some unfathomable reason.
What's the controversial bit of "Mexican-American War"? That dash - should it be en-dash, em-dash, hyphen, or minus. That bit of punctuation was repeatedly discussed on ANI and went all the way up to Arbcom, it generated tens of thousands of words of discussion. And, at the end of it all, can you transfer your new-found dash knowledge to other articles? Nope, because they have their own gatekeepers who'll spend tens of thousands of words telling you a particular dash is wrong for their article.
See eg the discussion here for "Requested Move": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mexican%E2%80%93American_War/Archive_3
And the arbcom discussion about dashes: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=429209333#Hyphens_and_dashes
I really really hope he's learned that meta = death.
oh gods. Em dash vs en dash arguments bring back flashbacks from arguments with the main marketing department at an old job of mine. I was the marketing department for two of our offices and our head office was NEVER consistent with em and en dashes.
I think I will be skipping that entire discussion topic on the M-A war lol.
I'll preface this by saying I've never used any of the third party reddit apps which have been in the news lately; I've only used reddit via firefox on my phone/computer. I am also not trying to disrespect people who designed and are maintaining the the current reddit look.
You'd really have to try to make something worse than the current reddit design and the current design seems to work for the vast majority of people. I don't think a Wikipedia-like reddit would be anything different than what we have now.
From his Twitter thread. Apparently there are plans to federate via ActivityPub, which seems promising:
I'm very intrigued by these new algorithms too. We've had many years to study the negative effect of our current algos on online communities, so I'm curious to see what they're coming up with.
A bit off-topic maybe, so feel free to label - but am I the only one who's a little hesitant about the whole fediverse stuff? Without fail, every federated service I've tried - Mastodon, Lemmy, Diaspora, they all fail at the basic task of being an easy-to-understand platform that can take over an existing service. Yes, ActivityPub is cool, no doubt about it, but try explaining that to my 60 year old father who barely understands twitter.
On one hand, that's certainly a valid point, but on the other, let me play a bit of a devil's advocate (or just simply give you my perspective, which sound decidedly less fun than working for Satan): I don't feel I need to understand things I use to use them and get entertainment/knowledge/value/whatever out of them.
I have no idea how my TV works. It's a complicated piece of equipment that might as well be magic as far as I'm concerned. Still, I know that pressing a red button on another device that magically communicates with the big box will turn it on. I don't NEED to know whether my remote uses IR, bluetooth or radio waves to transmit signals to my tv - I just need to know HOW to use it.
I find this to be the main problem with introducing people to fediverse - most if not all guides I've seen try to explain federation, instances, protocols and such. I feel that an average user doesn't need to know any of this though, not at first at least. It's kinda like trying to explain an ipod to your grandpa and starting from mp3 compression algorithms and dirrefence between hard disks and solid state media. Wrong, at first you just go: "press this button for music".
Sure, explaining Lemmy and fediverse that way might be extremely difficult, but I think it might work - I'm an absolute newbie myself, but I'm already pretty comfortable with it even though I have no idea how things work under the hood.
Just my rambly two cents - I never learned how to be more succinct, apologies.
I think part of the problem is that to explain how to use Lemmy or Mastodon, you need to explain federation. If it was just "hey grandpa, go to mastodon.com and register an account" it'd be no problem, but you need to choose an instance first, "what's an instance?" and it snowballs from there.
I think you are right -- they need to provide LESS information, not more. The average user is going to get information overload by all this stuff they have no need to know up front.
If Jimmy Wales' project took this approach to make it, well, approachable -- I think it would be a LOT more successful.
No, you're not. I've dipped my toes into that world as well, and it will need to improve a LOT to have a viable shot at maintaining an active community. The Fediverse is designed by programmers, and it shows. It's great that tech minded people find it easy to use and navigate, but we are in the minority - if your average user finds it too confusing, they'll move on.
It's one of my biggest pet peeves within the tech community, this insistence that because something is easy for us to understand, it's fine as it is and others just need to get good. That's not a feasible plan for attracting new users, and in order to maintain a social space, you need new users or things stagnate and die.
I agree. I'm quite comfortable with tech, so if I have any qualms when it comes to usability, it's guaranteed that my less technically-minded friends/family will as well.
I also dislike the branding of "federated". I know this is more of a semantics issue, but it's too close to "federal". Depending on who you are, the juxtaposition of a word that sounds similar to "federal" and anything tech related can elicit reactions ranging from "Big government in tech? No thank you." to "Stodgy federal government website? No thank you." and more. It's a turn off right away for too many people.
It's also too close to "fedora" IMO.
Yep, that's another one for sure!
It also steals thunder from the content and the communities. IDGAF about the tech solutions a site has implemented, if the content is good and it serves its purpose.
Why does being federated make some lemmy instance better than if it were not?
For Lemmy/Kbin-type fediverse projects, I think there needs to be an optional "global" community type that shares one community across all servers a la Matrix rooms. Like,
https://lemmy.example/g/selfhostedandhttps://lemmy2.example/g/selfhostedshould point to the exact same data. I don't know if all data needs to be entirely replicated for global communities, or if this could actually be a useful implementation for Blockchain.I'm not married to the term "global", anything that references all-encompasing would be fine.
Now that would be a technical challenge with interesting solutions heh.
From what I’ve read about ActivityPub and how these fediverses work, that isn’t really how they’re supposed to work. You could try to federate with everyone, but that’d probably become hilariously slow. And you’d probably be defederated from at least some instances.
Also as anyone can set one up, you’re bound to not find every instance.
Good question. It also uses Google Fonts. Why tell Google who's visiting this site by embedding their crap?
This looks like the default
noscripttag for Vue.js SPA applications. I’m definitely a little surprised that a project coming from Wales wouldn’t be implemented progressively, but given the state of the project, I also wouldn’t be that surprised if there ends up being server-side rendering later, and they just started with what they were familiar with to get off the ground.The registration page requires first name and last name. Feels like data collection to me.
I registered as Smoldering Sauna. No worries. Many aliases are being used on the site...
It never said whose name to enter, right?!
I registered with my name because of autofill. I assumed you could change it later or even delete your account. I'm not able to find where you can do that - which is a little unnerving.
And birth date "to check that you're 13". Under European data protection laws since 1995, including the latest GDPR, you're not allowed to unnecessarily collect random data, and clearly I don't need to know it's January 1st 1900 to know that you're over 13.
The minimum data processing necessary for the purpose is a binary setting: yes/no to whether you're older than 13.
(Edit: also, they require special characters for your password 🤦 Without nerding out on password strength here, even the UK and US governments have realised this is outdated advice and updated their recommendations a few years ago...)
Anyway this is most websites on the Internet. Try to pay for a digital wallpaper and they'll need your physical address, mobile phone number, bank login, etc.
correcthorsebatterystaple, a classic (and ironically enough probably a bad password because of it being a classic. the woes of internet fandom).
I guess this fits with their concept of “trust” but I don’t care for it very much..
I've been trying at WT.social since its very beginning, but there's so many little concerns about its usability and, frankly, a lack of soul. It had so much time to grow despite that or change that and it did neither, really. I don't think it shows any promise.
Oh great, just another Reddit substitute after Lemmiverse and Tildes. That is exactly what we need: a further fragmentation of users that look for alternatives.
I fail to see how that's a bad thing. The only reason many of us are here is because of fragmentation. Are you saying that Tildes and Lemmy are "allowed" but other alternatives aren't?
I can get one quality of discussion here, another on Beehaw, another on kbin, etc. I have an account on each of them and it's not a big deal.
Fragmentation and diversity is good. That last thing any of us should want is for discussion to be centralized in a single location that can gradually get worse and worse because of an idiot admin and out-of-touch policies.
I actually think it is a good thing. There were a lot of Reddit users that I've always wished would go fragment themselves.
I'm sure I don't know what you mean.
That's the problem I have with Facebook's WhatsApp in my country: it's getting comparable to WeChat in China. People have only WA for talking to anyone, so you need to opt into Facebook on your phone to talk to anyone short of voice calls and irl meeting. Business is more and more often done over WA. In school I needed it to be included in class activities at all.
If there isn't one place where everyone is, then people are sympathetic to having to install a second messaging system. Even if it's just two, then there's a choice, and people don't find it weird to have more than one. If WA turns shit, or more on-point, if reddit turns shit, people have a choice of where to go. If there is only WA, or only reddit, then the network effect is much, much stronger to put up with the shit.
Having ten different systems isn't great for reaching everyone at once, but users will gravitate towards the best one(s) and those will grow. It's how we try out new things before settling on a status quo for a while. I'm not sad Jimmy is experimenting with this
What’s the difference between this and the old WTSocial project?
https://trustcafe.readme.io/reference/introduction
Thanks for this - I'm definitely interested. Big nope for me regarding the Meta project.
I'm just imagining Wikipedia editors moving to 'edit' a Reddit alternative... it would be a shitshow.