As always, non-profit open-source software gets branded as “complex” for no reason. Mastodon’s maintainer even made mastodon.social a default server so it takes absolutely 0 seconds to get started which was hated by the userbase for the centralization it causes, and it’s still “complex”
I think for a lot of people, especially people on this site (Lemmy) we underestimate how knowledgeable and capable the general population are.
You argue that open source software gets branded as complex “for no reason” and that it takes “absolutely 0 seconds” to get started.
And yet the Washington Post article literally links to another article where normal people complain exactly what confuses them about Mastodon. Are you saying these people are wrong?
An important rule for design is to stop blaming the users. If the users are complaining that something is complicated, then the designer needs to examine the root cause.
My main problem is that there just isn’t anything I actually want to engage with on Mastodon. Most of the communities I would engage with simply don’t exist there, or only exist there in minute quantities.
I don’t know if Mastodon has communities per se. They have news sources, local info sources, and individuals that make interesting and brief posts. There might be some back and forth comments under a single.post. It feels closer to Twitter than Reddit. I have always been more of a forums person, which is why Rwddit appealed to me more (and why I’m most active in Kbin.social and Tildes). I have however built up some follows on Mastodon over the past 8 months and I dip in every onve in a while, usually finding a worthwhile news article or subway service info.
Sign up and interact with people? It’s just a social media after all.
As always, non-profit open-source software gets branded as “complex” for no reason. Mastodon’s maintainer even made mastodon.social a default server so it takes absolutely 0 seconds to get started which was hated by the userbase for the centralization it causes, and it’s still “complex”
I think for a lot of people, especially people on this site (Lemmy) we underestimate how knowledgeable and capable the general population are.
You argue that open source software gets branded as complex “for no reason” and that it takes “absolutely 0 seconds” to get started.
And yet the Washington Post article literally links to another article where normal people complain exactly what confuses them about Mastodon. Are you saying these people are wrong?
An important rule for design is to stop blaming the users. If the users are complaining that something is complicated, then the designer needs to examine the root cause.
You just got interacted
My main problem is that there just isn’t anything I actually want to engage with on Mastodon. Most of the communities I would engage with simply don’t exist there, or only exist there in minute quantities.
I don’t know if Mastodon has communities per se. They have news sources, local info sources, and individuals that make interesting and brief posts. There might be some back and forth comments under a single.post. It feels closer to Twitter than Reddit. I have always been more of a forums person, which is why Rwddit appealed to me more (and why I’m most active in Kbin.social and Tildes). I have however built up some follows on Mastodon over the past 8 months and I dip in every onve in a while, usually finding a worthwhile news article or subway service info.