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2025-06-18 17:42:52

tchambers@indieweb.social

The Seven Deadly #UX Sins of the #Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix): https://www.timothychambers.net/2025/06/18/113327.html. cc: @mastodonmigration @laurenshof @fediversenews @cheeaun @rolle @scottjenson @zeldman @imanijoy

2025-06-19 12:55:00

The Void ザ・ヴォイド

TheVoidTLMB@social.vivaldi.net

@tchambers a) "Just you and The Void." Hey, I'm doing my best! b) Typo: "These fixed don’t require"--> fixe*S* c) Good ranting.

2025-06-19 16:04:18

Mike Fraser

mike@thecanadian.social

@tchambers @mastodonmigration @laurenshof @cheeaun @rolle @scottjenson @zeldman Mastodon was always sold to the end user as the community when its actually just the software that can run a community. The term join Mastodon is fundamentally flawed, it's like saying join the world wide web instead of saying go to my web site. The emphasis should be building great communities that just happen to interooerate with each other. That shift in perception addressees a few of the great sins (def not all)

2025-06-19 21:08:47

Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦

osma@mas.to

Great writeup of the Original Sins, Tim! And behind these ones on the list is a long list of the Thousand Papercuts, from misplacing mentions at start of the reply body text (when a perfectly good mention field exists in the protocol) to inability to remember the readers' position in their (reverse chron and random) timeline. The papercuts could be solved by the client, but increase friction all the same.
@tchambers

2025-06-19 21:47:27

Tim Chambers

tchambers@indieweb.social

@osma Thank you!

2025-06-20 16:18:02

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦

from misplacing mentions at start of the reply body text (when a perfectly good mention field exists in the protocol)

Does anything except (streams) and Forte actually make use of these "shadow mentions"? AFAIK, Mastodon accepts them, but it can't create them. Due to its total lack of support for threaded conversations, you have visibal mentions eating away your precious character count in order for even only those in your branch of the thread to receive your comment.

That's also why I often have to mention loads of people manually in 100% Mastodon threads: Hubzilla does support threaded conversations, but I think it doesn't support shadow mentions because it has never needed them itself, and it's too old to be designed for a Mastodon-dominated Fediverse.

to inability to remember the readers' position in their (reverse chron and random) timeline.

Maybe it'd also help to move away from Twitter-style doom-scrolling single-message piecemeal timelines as the only option available and towards the same Facebook-style stream with whole threads at once and an unread messages counter with a list of unread messages that takes you directly to each thread with unread messages in it? The kind that Friendica has had for a decade and a half now, and that all its descendants have inherited?

CC: @Tim Chambers

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mention #Mentions #MentionTag #Conversations #ThreadedConversations

2025-06-20 16:41:27

Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦

osma@mas.to

The person who is replied to becomes an implicit mention even if their handle isn't in the reply body. I post this using @phanpy on a Mastodon server - and Phanpy will show your handle in the reply. But, I can't mention several people that way.

2025-06-20 16:53:23

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 Sounds like Phanpy fixes what Mastodon doesn't even acknowledge as an issue.

But your comment kind of demonstrates to me how not even Hubzilla supports "shadow mentions" (because it didn't need them when it was made, seeing as it supports enclosed threaded conversations): I wasn't notified about your comment, I only saw it as an unread message.

I guess I would have been notified, had I participated in this thread from one of my (streams) channels. (streams) and Forte are more geared towards a Fediverse that doesn't support threaded conversations all over, one that's dominated by Mastodon and mostly used for Twitter-style minimalist microblogging.

Ideally from a Mastodon POV, these "shadow mentions" should include everyone in the current branch of the thread. Ideally from a threaded conversations POV, they should go as far as mentioning all participants in the whole thread. But that kind of "black magic" would scare quite a few Mastodon users out of their minds unfortunately.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mention #Mentions #MentionTag #Conversations #ThreadedConversations #PhanpySocial

2025-06-20 18:48:33

Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦

osma@mas.to

The other piece of ideal mentions support, in fact something which should be a minimum anti-harassment feature, is that people mentioned should be able to untag themselves from posts. Another hard-earned Twitter lesson fediverse has refused to learn.
@jupiter_rowland

2025-06-21 11:15:55

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦 This would require three things, however.

One, any Fediverse server software would have to be capable of altering comments from any Fediverse software. Don't think that posts, comments etc. aren't formatted the same everywhere. They aren't.

For example, Mastodon would have to know and understand that it would have to remove @⁠osma@mas.to from Misskey, Sharkey, CherryPick, Iceshrimp etc. notes, @[url⁠=https://mas.to/users/osma]Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦[/url] from Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte comments and an invisible shadow mention from (streams) and Forte comments, too.

Two, anyone in the Fediverse would have to always have full and unlimited permission to alter everyone else's content without their consent. This is particularly crucial in the cases of Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte with their highly advanced and fine-grained permissions systems that don't even cover having your content altered by others.

Three, edits on any Fediverse software must always be federated to absolutely everywhere and anywhere in the Fediverse, no exceptions, regardless of software. AFAIK, there is Fediverse server software that still doesn't understand edits at all, and that will either ignore received edits or understand them as and treat them like new posts.

It's very similar to the wish for being able to edit alt-texts into other people's posts which seems to pretty much always come from people who think that the Fediverse is only Mastodon, or at least that everything in the Fediverse is like Mastodon plus one or two extra features.

And let's be honest: If you give especially Mastodon users the ability to alter other people's posts, they will want to alter other people's posts in lots of other ways. Like, delete summaries on Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte posts because they're "abuse of the CW field" from a "Fediverse = Mastodon" point of view. Remove all hashtags but four, regardless of these hashtags triggering the automated, individual, reader-side content warnings that have existed in the Friendica family since five and a half years before Mastodon was first published. Cutting "long posts" (= everything over 500 characters) down to a maximum of 500 characters because "the Fediverse was invented by Eugen Rochko for only microblogging". Even removing any and all mentions of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Removing text formatting because "it has no place in a Twitter alternative". Or removing all contents from posts or comments altogether.

Of course, the very same Mastodon users will completely flip their shit if a Friendica user comes and copies their 20-post threads into one long post, deletes the contents of the 19 follow-ups afterwards and replaces the content warning in the abstract field (= their CW field) with an actual abstract, just to fit it into a Fediverse culture that's way older than Mastodon itself.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Misskey #Sharkey #CherryPick #Iceshrimp #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mention #Mentions #MentionTag #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Permission #Permissions

2025-06-21 03:54:01

Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:

MsDropbear42@infosec.space

@jupiter_rowland @tchambers 😀😂🤭