I read something recently that gave me food for thought. An alternative has to be 10x better for people to switch; and the core experience is what convinces people, not cool extra features.
I don't know how universally applicable it is, but I wonder how Mastodon stacks up in that. Personally I think it's 10x better, but is it really? Or more importantly, are we communicating clearly that it is?
@Gargron "10x better" sounds like BS, to me, because you can't actually quantify relative quality like that in any sort of measurable way.
Taking the question as "enough of an improvement for people to switch", it depends a lot on two things. a) the use case of the person who might be switching, and b) how steep of a learning curve they're willing to go through to give another service a chance. (1/2)
@Gargron (2/2) Mastodon has a much steeper learning curve than other contemporary social media sites, which presents a large obstacle to switching. The only ways to get people past that obstacle are to give them sufficient motivation to keep going *before* they really get the core user experience - and the core user experience is what the "10x better" is about.
I don't think most people who could switch are getting sufficient motivation.
@InspectorCaracal Does Mastodon actually have a steeper learning curve than Snapchat though? That shit opaque af
@Gargron Yeah, it does. Snapchat, you pick up, you make an account, you take pictures, you add people. Sure, a lot of the features are weird and unintuitive but that just means most people wouldn't use all the features when they get started.
Mastodon already starts off at a disadvantage because you have to figure out how the system works before you even sign up, and since that's an inherent part of the fediverse, it needs to be done Extra Well.
@Gargron I have yet to figure out what that Extra Well would actually *be*, though, or I'd have given suggestions ages ago. 😓
@InspectorCaracal I guess one of the most important things we can do is try and make the best of the user sign-ups we do get. Let's consider the server selection to be our Great Filter. Most people who join say that content discovery is too difficult. What can be done for this?
Trends, follow recommendations, popular content leaderboards. There's uhhh opposition to all of those in the community. Idk what to do.
@InspectorCaracal Not gonna lie they ask for things like trending hashtags lmao
@Gargron I'm not surprised. >.>
The thing is, a lot of people ask for features because they're used to seeing it, not because it's a valuable addition, or because they haven't thought about what they actually are getting out of it. So in the case of trending hashtags, what do you get out of it? You see what people are talking about right then.
The thing is, on Mastodon, that's what looking at the local and federated timelines is for... ooooh, I had a thought
@InspectorCaracal The signal to noise ratio on the firehose timelines has become too low for them to actually be able to tell what people are currently talking about.
@Gargron I'm trying to think if showing, say, the 10 most recently used unique hashtags in a given timeline column, regardless of frequency, would get booed for the same reasons as trending hashtags. I think it would avoid most of the complaints, but still give people a quick way to see what other people are talking about - which is the function that trending hashtags serve.
@InspectorCaracal Recently I was thinking how I could count when someone gets a follow from a recent account, and then add a list of most-followed-by-new-people accounts to the last screen of the onboarding screen.
Another thing that would be useful to me personally, count interactions with people you are not following, and then get recommendations to follow them, because I legit forget even if I boost someone a lot.
@Gargron I fear this has the effect of amplifying 'popularity', and replicate the shitty birdsite social dynamics related to that... (each user should have the possibility to custom hide counts of following/followers to the whole fediverse imo, not a popular feature perhaps but a long-sighted one) @InspectorCaracal
@bob @charlyblack @InspectorCaracal @gargron I also have the impression that content discovery is overrated (it will only help you find popular content) whereas the total tine spent on the platform is what actually drives engagement.
@steko @bob @charlyblack @InspectorCaracal @Gargron chasing the instant gratification of ‘popular’ is addictive and destructive. It’s what made the birdsite a toxic inhabitable place, an endless contest of who shouts the loudest. Actual engagement is slower, not addictive and requires work. As mastodon is not at mercy of VC, it can afford the luxury of not pursuing popular
Common thread in all of this: it's the cool people and cool stuff they post which makes Mastodon sticky. Not celebs, but people with common interests that post a high density of amazing stuff.
I came to Mastodon as a very experienced social media user and started following breadcrumb trails from hashtags and the local timeline, and quickly found lots of cool people to follow. Most users (even tech savvy ones) seem not motivated enough to do this. (cont)
I'm thinking as I type here, and as an aside (and without having kept abreast of developments), I really wish the best to the forking folks, because I suspect there's a bit of a schism in the community: a big chunk of folks like, use, and want high discoverability, and a big chunk of folks absolutely do not want it, and I suspect in the long run this may need to be solved either by a fork or by configurable features. With that out of the way... (cont)
(cont) I don't agree with the seemingly reactionary stance against nearly every discoverability feature idea that's tossed around, nor do I agree that algorithms are never useful in this context and that all discovery must be 100.0% organic. IMO that's just not realistic. Mastodon is a firehose, and people have limited time.
What about a happy medium with unobtrusive algorithmic onboarding & suggestions which tail off over time as a new user's engagement grows? (cont)
@deutrino @Gargron Sounds kinda like my approach with recommendations.
When people first start using Odysseus I give them a curated set of links. It's less personalized but all the more personal.
But as they use Odysseus more it gets more personalized in easy-to-understand ways. Though I do everything I can to move the focus off of these, and that's where all the challenge of implementing them comes from.
@deutrino @Gargron And if those people like my recommendations, I've got the exact some thing available online. (besides this is useful for testing)
It's currently at https://alcinnz.github.com/Odysseus-recommendations/
I go back to the "cool people with similar interests" sticky factor. How can we make finding those people easy for noobs?
Principle: can we get the user to specify some interests during onboarding, then make it more likely that content from users with similar interests will be displayed to them at first? (cont)
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Idea: aggregate the most general, longest-lived hashtags above a certain usage cutoff, present them to the noob in a "do any of these interest you?" onboarding multiselect. Then:
* during onboarding, suggest one of the more active users in some of the selected hashtags as people for the noob to follow
* until the noob crosses some non-noob threshold, occasionally put recent toots with the selected hashtags into their timeline
To be clear, I'm suggesting an algo that would surface hashtags like "linux" and "cats" and "photography" to present to the user, not "kde" and "blepvideos" and "nikon" - the key would be very broad interest hashtags.
The "algo" here could also be another human-curated list, it'd just need to be well tuned to be broad, and probably based on a study of hashtag use on the fediverse, and updated from time to time.
I think this use of hashtags for onboarding removes most of the harassment concerns raised in prior hashtag feature arguments, particularly if the "don't index my toots" button in privacy settings also opts those users out of being promoted to noobs here.
Further, especially with a little algorithmic randomness, it lacks the thundering herd / concentrating eyeballs problems.
And, it promotes the use of hashtags. If we're not to have full-text search, that's good 👌🏻
@gargron @InspectorCaracal Something I liked in early Google+ was Circle Sharing. People could define a list of people they followed, as do we (although it is easier to use: from a profile you can add it to a list). And then you could share the list in a post. People could click the link, view the list, and import them all into a list of their own. People would then boost the toot containing the big list and there was fast growth. I don't know why they dropped it.
@Gargron I actually really like that second idea a lot.
@Gargron One thing I personally would love to see, is an easier way to discover developers that use Mastodon. I’ve been following these issues for quite some time in the hopes that someday keybase will add an official way to add a Mastodon handle verification:
> content discovery is too difficult. What can be done for this?
Better filtering of local and federated timelines.
One advantage of Mastodon is that you can hear people you don't know, but there's much noise.
There's a gray area between following and muting/blocking.
Allow to move users and domains to a "low priority" or whatever timeline. Kind of muting, but with the option to see what you are missing and change opinion.
@osoitz I mean, column filtering is a good feature idea that could be implemented better, yeah, but it's not actually a solution for content discovery, it's a solution for content filtering, so it reads like you jumped into a conversation because you saw an opening to talk about your personal pet issue despite it not actually being the topic at hand. 
@osoitz I agree that we could use better column filtering but that's really not relevant to the actual conversation that had been happening.
>it reads like you jumped into a conversation
Ooops, sorry for interrupting, let us know when you are finished, so that the rest can talk.
@osoitz That was uncalled for.
@gargron
It is the entire concept of site-sanctiomed popularity we should reject. Algorithmic popularity is what makes interaction on FB and tw the mess it is.
We should never forget that FB originated from a site meant for guys to grade coed hotness. That is still the underlying mindset. And it's shit.
you only have yourself to blame, eugeniou
@Gargron What I think could be valuable is finding out what those people who are saying content discovery is too difficult are expecting the content discovery to actually be like. What kind of content are they expecting to discover, and how do they want to be seeing it?