zlacker

>a commenter let me know that some members had already set up shop on Kbin, a decentralized Reddit alternative that is interoperable with Mastodon and other services on the ActivityPub standard. While the interface is rough even by the standards of Reddit, it works just fine.

Works just fine for who, though? Not for non-technical people.

The FOSS community, especially the Fediverse community continually disappoint me by being so dismissive of, or even hostile to design critique. Nearly universally, trying to engage a project community in rethinking an interface is received like unsolicited criticism of someone's physique. Even as a software developer who's put many thousands of hours into FOSS development, AND a professional designer, And making it clear I'd be willing to research, design, test, and implement myself, the results are usually just as discouraging. I've stopped trying.

Without significant designer input, FOSS social media initiatives will always be two steps ahead technically but 10 steps behind in UX. After the November bump, Mastodon had lost the majority of the active users it had gained by February. I think that if something even comes close to a commercial social media UX, they stand a chance at being a real turning point the world's conception of how social media 'works.'

>>chefan+(OP)
I am very critical of mastodon when it comes to UX. Kbin on the other hand was no harder to sign up for than Reddit, and it was equally as easy to find subreddit equivalents.

Your post cites no specific reasons why Kbin is worse than Reddit from a UX perspective. Have you even tried it?

>>tensor+54
Nope. I was basing what I said entirely on the article. Based on my extensive experience in open source projects, I think that's entirely reasonable. If a tech blogger thinks the experience is 'rough'— which includes a whole lot more than user flows in sign up and resource discovery— you can be quite sure it's going to look a whole lot worse to your average person.

>>chefan+8g
Is it common for professional designers to bash a design before even looking at it? Maybe this is why FOSS projects aren't very interested in your feedback.

>>George+342
If I said that their handling of callbacks for http requests was rough would you consider that 'bashing' it?