@nolan
Tech journalism has become business journalism (unfortunately, since tech & business are mostly unrelated).

You can check with currently-working tech journalists on here but I assume some of the shallowness can be attributed to short deadlines. ( @sonya & @klintron can verify or refute)

@enkiv2 @klintron @sonya Yeah and of course I'm not riffing on all tech journalists; there are good ones. But man when I look up "news" articles about Mastodon sometimes it's really depressing.

@nolan
I'm suggesting more of a systemic issue.

When people I *know* are intelligent, careful, deep thinkers whose opinions I respect nevertheless write bad, shallow articles, I can't blame the authors and have to blame capitalism. (Or the structure of the industry or whatever.)

@nolan @sonya @enkiv2 A certain amount of "shallowness" also stems from the fact that there's only so-much detail you can cram into an article with fewer than 1,000 words, especially when those words are written in a few hours.

@enkiv2 @sonya @nolan Even with relatively long deadlines and high word counts, there's always going to be stuff that gets left out or glossed over. Sarah Jeong's Mastodon piece was over 3,000 words and there were still lots of things that she didn't cover. Seems like she got a lot of grief for that.

@nolan @sonya @enkiv2 Actually, looking through the stories I can find on Mastodon, I can't find *any* that say it's going to fail because it doesn't have VC, or even any that give Masto's lack of VC funding more than a passing mention.
www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15177856/mastodon-social-network-twitter-clone

mashable.com/2017/04/04/mastodon-twitter-social-network/

www.wired.com/2017/04/like-twitter-hate-trolls-try-mastodon/

...

@enkiv2 @nolan @klintron yep, short deadlines. it's a huge problem.

@sonya @enkiv2 @nolan Short deadlines are a problem for all journalists.

@nolan @enkiv2 @sonya TBH, the few articles I've read about Masto weren't about VC at all, so I'm a little unsure what the all the fuss is about (but I certainly haven't read every article out there)

@sonya @enkiv2 @nolan qz.com/951078/the-complete-guide-to-using-mastodon-the-twitter-twtr-alternative/

www.networkworld.com/article/3188766/open-source-tools/mastodonthe-free-software-decentralized-twitter-competitor.html

www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-open-source-social-media/

www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/mastodon-is-an-open-alternative-to-twitter/article/490546

@enkiv2 @sonya @nolan re: "tech & business are mostly unrelated." I don't even know how to respond to that. You think that technology isn't a major part of basically every business around today? Or that business considerations don't shape everything from hardware manufacture to user interface design?

@klintron @nolan @sonya

There's a circumstantial alignment of concerns. But tech is about as related to business as cooking is: both can be vital to businesses on both a minor and industrial scale (and more people eat than use computers), & certain segments are more integrated than others.

But restaurant reviews don't focus on catering & cookbooks don't focus on fast food, because the focus is on the end user in the normal case.

@sonya @nolan @klintron

Or, for another comparison, consider film journalism. Film is big business, and you get a certain amount of inside-baseball about the industry, but the ratio of inside-baseball to technical analysis in mainstream film journalism is lower than that of tech.

@enkiv2 @nolan @sonya The film industry comparison is more apt. There is a ton of non-business-y tech coverage, but there's a lot more tech biz coverage than there is coverage of most other industries. For most industries, business talk is relegated to trade publications, but that's not so in tech.

@sonya @nolan @enkiv2 A few inter-related things play into that, I think. For one, the biz side does matter more in tech than in, say, film. Who you get funding from will shape your company more than who you get funding from will shape your film. For another, a surprisingly large number of people are interested in reading insider basebally articles on the tech industry.

@enkiv2 @nolan @sonya That's led to the growth of sites like TechCrunch, which are essentially trade pubs but have a crossover audience of mainstream readers. So there ends up being a context collapse. A lot of tech coverage is the tech equivalent of the business briefs section of something like Oil and Gas magazine, but on the web, a link is a link. There's no difference between a business brief in a trade pub and a long read from something like the New Yorker.

@klintron @sonya @nolan

& it's strange, since tech is more like cooking (i.e., most people who code aren't professionals even if most code is written by pros, there's a long shallow climb in difficulty/exclusivity between amateur & professional, & the industry has many varied important organizations instead of a few very similar ones).

Seeing Wired cover Zuckerberg feels like seeing the CEO of McDonalds on the cover of a cookbook.

@nolan @sonya @klintron

What makes it stranger is that in the 70s & 80s there *was* a trade/hobbyist division in tech mags, even though the industry was much more movie-like in the 70s (with micros being the indie scene but the real players being the seven dwarves, and with even playing with micros being a big investment)

@enkiv2 @sonya @nolan Don't get me wrong, lots of stuff in tech gets built just for fun, and a lot of that stuff ends up reshaping basically everything else (Homebrew Computer Club, Linux, the web, Hadoop, Node.js, and with any luck, Mastodon, just to name a few things). But the stuff people use on a day to day basis? Deeply shaped by business.

@nolan

1. In the 1990's, I would also get press releases directly from MS and Apple. I also got the WSJ. Mossberg's columns and big tech co press releases were almost identical.

2. A few years ago, MS came out with Sway. About 100 posts in tech journals had headlines "It's a PowerPoint killer!"

I played with the software for 15 minutes. It was immediately clear that it was not a PowerPoint killer, but a PowerPoint companion.

And we never heard about Sway again.

@nolan Jurnalism generally became a news, political, economic, technological and ideological lobby machine. It's not anymore about writing level or professional approach.

@nolan
Do tech journalists remember 90's internet?

@Phaerris Oh man, I love that it's covered in Nickelodeon green slime, because that's what kids loved in the 90s

@nolan Was 90's kid, can confirm this.

Yahooligans was the search engine used at my elementary school, because I guess our school had money for a children's computer lab.
Next up:

Math Blasters

@Phaerris I also really loved playing the board and card games on Yahoo. I was *sick* at Hearts.

@nolan It's almost like journalism these days is fucking aids. Also, water is wet, more news at 11.

@nolan

It sound like a parody...

@nolan maybe if hobbyists spoon fed tech journalists press releases they would get more coverage. Ya they are a lazy bunch

@nolan I get an picture that those journalists have never heard what github is or about this thing called open source

@nolan That's because many *don't* do the bare minimum research.

I read an overly long post the other day on Mashable about how to become a "verified account" on Mastodon (add your own green check mark), as if anybody gives a turd about that ego-feeding Twitter invention (but egos).

I wish everybody here would drop those things, frankly. Trying to compare and become another Twitter is exactly the wrong foot to get off on, IMO.

@nolan Look to WordPress rather than Wikipedia. As a huge fan of WordPress (com and org) and Matt Mullenweg's Automattic, I can see @Gargron and Mastodon following a similar path. The history of WordPress.com and Automattic provides a great roadmap for Mastodon.social and the Mastodon software, in which balancing commercial and community interests results in a hybrid model/system that works for almost everyone.

@seanmwooten This is a really great point, yeah. WordPress powers a ridiculous percentage of the web, looks like around 25% per some estimates: https://venturebeat.com/2015/11/08/wordpress-now-powers-25-of-the-web/. Impossible to call it a failure, and Automattic seems to be doing well too.

@seanmwooten @nolan @gargron I would concur with Sean. It's a great example and one that has done great things for the WP community. I think the hybrid approach made WP the IBM of websites (no one gets fired for buying IBM ... no one gets fired for building a site on WP).

@trishussey @seanmwooten @nolan @Gargron ... except for being hacked quickly sometimes :/

@saper @seanmwooten @nolan @gargron True. It happens. But when you're open source and complicated I think that's part of the risk/reward.

@trishussey @seanmwooten @nolan @Gargron

fully agree. Wish there was a way to prevent such things from happening by easy but defensive coding...

@saper @nolan @seanmwooten @trishussey wordpress plugin system means attack vectors on wordpress are like, infinite

@Gargron @trishussey @seanmwooten @nolan well, yes, but even the core has its bad record

@gargron @saper @nolan @seanmwooten This is very true. Which makes a strong dev ecosystem of trusted plugin devs important.

@Gargron @trishussey @nolan @saper The plugin system is a mess, but I was referring more to the model of commercial vs. FOSS community interests. WordPress.com and .org provide a great symbiotic relationship. You don't have to use one without the other, and the WordPress software could survive without Automattic.

@Gargron: I want to see your own network/instance and your software flourish, separately if necessary, and copying the Automattic/WP model could be way to manage it.

sorry @seanmwooten we got sidetracked

as much as I enjoy and participate in Wikipedia there shouldn't be one instance/organisation doing most of the work. It should be a healthy, multi-polar ecosystem. But agreements there are difficult.

@nolan @trishussey @Gargron

@saper @trishussey @nolan

No problem! I'm going to stop tagging Eugen since he's probably already bombarded with mentions.

With Wikipedia, you want to have a central install/hub/instance, as the legitimacy of the content requires oversight. While Mediawiki can be installed elsewhere, Wikepedia itself is a source with established rep. With Mastodon software, it's much closer to a website/blog model like WordPress.org, where the legitimacy or authority of the source is left up to the reader.

@seanmwooten
@nolan @trishussey

Wikipedia is not that centralized. The most centralized component is the infrastructure run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The editorial stuff is mostly up to the community, which sets up the policies and implements them (interpretations vary very often from one editor to the other). Only until recently the Foundation started to perfom "Office actions" - edits ex officio.

@trishussey @nolan @seanmwooten

There were numerous proposals to distributed Wikipedia technically (there was even a list of failed attempts somewhere)

https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposals_for_distributed_infrastracture this was just from one strategic discussion

@saper @nolan @trishussey

To me, the question remains, "Is it better to have one central authority governing a network, or should the network be distributed?" We want oversight for Wikipedia because we want assurance that the content is reliable. However, we don't need oversight over our own websites or blogs, and there's no need for centralized systems or companies governing social media. This is where Mastodon can succeed, by decentralizing social media and returning control.

@seanmwooten @trishussey @nolan

What I wanted to say: There is no oversight for Wikipedia and no assurance that the content is reliable.

Nothing!

Coming back to the original issue I guess:

That's why some practices from there might still be applicable, even if to avoid their mistakes.

@seanmwooten @saper @nolan I think the WordPress example is still the best. The community manages the core codebase but Automattic helps the community with a core of devs who are paid to push the whole platform forward. I think here the need for oversight is in the codebase, as you said Sean admins can manage their own sites.

@trishussey @seanmwooten @nolan

I think that keeping The Protocol stable and standardized is the priority number one. The implementation comes right after it.

Regarding how to do it - I think that if there were multiple entities interested in keeping the protocol and this implementation alive, they should cooperate. Just a single holder can be risky.

Having visited some European #PostgreSQL conferences I was surprised to see that this project IS the community. With some backers.

@trishussey @saper @nolan

Yep, and by copying the Automattic model, Eugen can turn Mastodon.social into a primary instance (like WordPress.com) and monetize/sustain the project through advertising and premium upgrades. Don't like ads? Roll your own instance. Everyone wins, Eugen is compensated for his work and the software/platform is still free enough to be widely adopted and adapted.

Mastodon is what social media can be if it's freed from the grip of closed, monolithic systems.

@seanmwooten @nolan @trishussey

I am sorry, but this is getting boring. Automattic is not the only model. There are multiple ways to solve that problem.I am not saying that this is a bad one; what I'm saying is that multiple models needs to be evaluated, including even non-profit stewardship.

Somebody has to shell out money in the end.

@saper @trishussey @nolan

I'm a WordPress/Automattic fanboy, so I understand my view is myopic.

I'll drop @saper from future posts on this topic.

@seanmwooten @nolan @trishussey
:) as you wish, even @Gargron got dropped too :) :)

I am involved in the #Wikipedia community somewhat but I do not think their model applies; I would need to find out the details but Automattic hiring the core WP devs is similar to how Wikimedia Foundation operated few years ago. One of WMF developers, Brion Vibber, went on to help create Status.Net and therefore Mastodon :) @brionv@identi.ca

Let's be open to multiple models and see what works best.

@saper @nolan @trishussey @Gargron Sorry, meant "You can use one without the other..."

@saper @seanmwooten @nolan @gargron Is defensive coding like defense against the dark arts training?

var="expecto patronus"

@trishussey @seanmwooten @nolan @Gargron

I think we are at the very beginning of the software development history (in general). We need to learn a lot.

Re trusted dev: I wouldn't ask anybody to trust my code. Just run, test, check, fix, repeat.