@ApostateEnglishman @catraxx I tried to explain the boosting to her and she lashed out that she didn't want people "stealing" her content.

I think a lot of why people stick with the tech companies is that they say all the things people want to hear while doing whatever they want on the back end because they know how people don't understand tech and feel overwhelmed by the idea of it.

And yes, the boosting is how I find so many cool threads and people on here.

Man, the Wikipedia article on the Fediverse is really kinda shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

So many half truths. Also:

"Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity."

Excessive complexity?! You write a message and click post ... what? Is choosing a server difficult or something? I don't get it.

Excessive complexity. This is literally the hardest thing ever. Like if you want easy stuff, go work at CERN, that's where we send all the people who fail at posting here, it's the literal losers club. :neocat_what:

@catraxx i think the quote you highlighted is actually an example of editorializing bc it doesn't say who considers it excessively complex. i may try to edit that although i've had multiple edits in this regard reverted recently

Man, the Wikipedia article on the Fediverse is really kinda shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

So many half truths. Also:

"Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity."

Excessive complexity?! You write a message and click post ... what? Is choosing a server difficult or something? I don't get it.

Excessive complexity. This is literally the hardest thing ever. Like if you want easy stuff, go work at CERN, that's where we send all the people who fail at posting here, it's the literal losers club. :neocat_what:

@catraxx

It's exactly what I'd say if I had shares in a commercial opinion-shaping platform.

Man, the Wikipedia article on the Fediverse is really kinda shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

So many half truths. Also:

"Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity."

Excessive complexity?! You write a message and click post ... what? Is choosing a server difficult or something? I don't get it.

Excessive complexity. This is literally the hardest thing ever. Like if you want easy stuff, go work at CERN, that's where we send all the people who fail at posting here, it's the literal losers club. :neocat_what:

@catraxx one of the citations for that line says:

Tildes? Furries? Some Belgian company?

mixed feelings about how it frames furries here https://mxb.dev/blog/the-indieweb-for-everyone/

@catraxx Choosing a server is the first barrier. It is a barrier because you have to make a choice based on ZERO information. Why do I have to choose a server? Which one is good? What makes a good server?

Second barrier is: why can't I see all the replies? That sort of comes back to which server did you choose. From the POV of a person on a small server Mastodon feels half empty. From the POV of a popular person you get a lot of duplicated responses. That is annoying.

@owiecc If you know that you can choose a server, you already know more than the average user, who searches for "mastodon" and is promptly send to mastodon.social.

And annoying =/= "Excessively complex".

At best the wording should be that there are technical differences in how the fediverse works, which can be irritating to some.

Excessively complex is doing your taxes or reading a trade agreement. It is not registering and posting in the fediverse.

@catraxx The "send do mastodon.social" was done especially because a lot of people were turned away. Good move IMO, but when the developer making @PixelFed did something similar there was a big community pushback.

Going back to what you wrote about the Wikipedia article, it should be expanded. The first sentence from adoption section cites sources from 2022. Many of the issues raised were addressed already.

Man, the Wikipedia article on the Fediverse is really kinda shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

So many half truths. Also:

"Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity."

Excessive complexity?! You write a message and click post ... what? Is choosing a server difficult or something? I don't get it.

Excessive complexity. This is literally the hardest thing ever. Like if you want easy stuff, go work at CERN, that's where we send all the people who fail at posting here, it's the literal losers club. :neocat_what:

@catraxx i think it's choosing a server, i didn't knew hubzilla existed until today and it's older than mastodon.
Also it's a lot easier to gain followers and follow interesting people on bluesky and other platfomrs than on here. But that's MY opinion. I have very little followers. To speak to no one I'll keep a diary.

@owiecc If you know that you can choose a server, you already know more than the average user, who searches for "mastodon" and is promptly send to mastodon.social.

And annoying =/= "Excessively complex".

At best the wording should be that there are technical differences in how the fediverse works, which can be irritating to some.

Excessively complex is doing your taxes or reading a trade agreement. It is not registering and posting in the fediverse.

@catraxx @owiecc there's also the "why am I logged into Mastodon but when I go to like, boost or reply to a post from a link it's asking me to log in or go back to my server?"

Because you've landed on a different server hosting the same Mastodon software, skinned, branded, and styled *identically*. But it's not the same. It's a different instance with no awareness of your account.

That's not an easy concept to grasp for a casual user, and the interface, while better, is still not that helpful

@catraxx @owiecc sure we can quibble over "excessive", but comparatively there's a lot of things hostile to casual users. Some of them are by design and unavoidable. Some have been or are being addressed. Some can be mitigated further.

@philbetts @owiecc Yes, we can quibble over that word and many others. It does not change the fact this article is written in an incredibly negative overall way when it should be neutral. These are small annoyances, should we sum them up in the same way for everything? because i can find negatives in everything if i am trying.

@catraxx @philbetts Remember that wikipedia is not an opinion site. It is a tertiary source. It should reflect the cited secondary sources.

If secondary sources from 2022 say the UX is bad then wikipedia article should reflect that. Here we can argue whether “excessively” correctly summarises the two articles.

If you'd like to update the article, look for all the sources that mention Fediverse UX, then cite and summarise them. If the sources mention UX is getting better then you can add that.

Man, the Wikipedia article on the Fediverse is really kinda shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse

So many half truths. Also:

"Users have been slow to embrace the Fediverse due to poor user experience and excessive complexity."

Excessive complexity?! You write a message and click post ... what? Is choosing a server difficult or something? I don't get it.

Excessive complexity. This is literally the hardest thing ever. Like if you want easy stuff, go work at CERN, that's where we send all the people who fail at posting here, it's the literal losers club. :neocat_what:

@catraxx To be honest, I was at first a bit confused as I understood that there are multiple instances wirh different rules and I was worried I would not find any people on those smaller servers with more tech oriented topics, and I would not find tech stuff on a larger server.
I still struggle a bit to follow accounts on other servers, and I still do not know (but did not check either) how to connect to lemmy or other fediverse platforms. Do I need an account there or can I use my account here?