Just about the worst thing you can do, if your goal is to change my opinion, is frame the discussion in a way that leaves me no choice but to comply, like claiming that if I don't agree with your demands immediately I am a monster.
I have time and time again changed my mind about things in the course of developing Mastodon, but it's a lot harder to do when you feel forced to do so "or else"
It's odd, to say the least, to see people claim I'm refusing to put emotional labour into community management when I just spent a night awake up to 6am answering & discussing user concerns about the trending hashtags feature.
It's odd, to say the least, to hear that the feature is a testament to how I ignore community feedback when the only reason I've implemented it is because it's been continuously requested by community members since November 2016.
That just seems manipulative.
@Gargron And the community is still mostly white guys.
It doesn't seem like folks are trying to manipulate you into anything, but rather just listen to the folks that aren't white guys, because quite frankly they aren't harassed as frequently as others are.
If that's the kind of app you want to build, so be it, but so many people are expressing their willingness to help.
Take advantage of that.
@byronalley @Gargron We are not talking about the generalized experience of people wanting to be heard.
We’re talking about vulnerable communities that are talking about their experiences with harassment and abuse.
Attempting to generalize that conversation diminishes the impact of what they are saying.
And that’s not helping anything.
@Are0h @Gargron No, we're definitely talking about BOTH issues and that's the whole point: as long as people who care about one of those things willfully dismiss those who care about the other, we have nothing but an antagonistic stalemate.
BOTH issues are crucial to the success of the platform. It doesn't matter if there's no harassment or abuse on a platform that no one uses. And if we can't reduce harassment and abuse, then the platform is barely usable too. So we need both.
@byronalley @Gargron I don’t agree, as we’ve seen the user base steadily increase. So that is not as great of an issue as harassment.
And further, the two issues are not mutually exclusive. Dealing with harassment in real and tangible ways will encourage other people other techy white guys to use it.
It just makes sense to make dealing with harassment a priority if we’re thinking long term. It is directly connected to the viability of the platform.
@Are0h @Gargron Where I agree is that the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Fixing harassment here matters most IFF it's a powerful enough platform that people no longer need to use other harassment-plagued platforms.
It's great that Masto is growing. It reminds me of Google+ back in the day, and Google Wave. And that's just it.
Many people come here, don't see enough of what they're looking for, and go back to birdsite etc.
If they're still on birdsite we haven't solved the abuse problem.
@Are0h @Gargron People use trending tags on birdsite to:
* Keep track of news
* Discover professionally relevant posts and conversations
* Chat with people
If someone can't replace their use of abuse-prone media with the fediverse, then we haven't solved the abuse problem on a strategic level.
That's why both are important.
@byronalley @Gargron This is isn’t birdsite. The needs here a different. Constantly using them as an example is only going to encourage a repeat of their mistakes.
@byronalley @Gargron And we are learning from them. That's why this place even exists.
We agree on that. I think that's why features isn't that big a deal because we can implement whatever. The reasons why we are doing them is so much of a bigger issue.
@Are0h @byronalley @Gargron From my understanding, part of the ethos of Mastadon is that it leaves defining the ethos to the instance's community. Maybe features like 'trends' can be modules that can be switched on and off at the instance level depending on the needs and experiences of each instance.
Also, for new user onboarding, you could just have a page with suggested search terms or a get random posts button, instead of trends.
@Are0h @byronalley @Gargron That said, you still need to have the conversation at the instance community level. Perhaps there are ways to focus on that, or tools to facilitate it, rather than defining what works universally. But i'm not sure how that would look.
@Are0h @Gargron The only way to avoid mistakes is to know the history of them.
But in this case, my point is that a huge proportion of people are on Mastodon / the fediverse because we were on birdsite/etc., enjoyed aspects of it, but found there were major issues.
So yeah, we shouldn't copy everything other systems do, but we need to learn from them.
My key point is, the real goal is a large, welcoming community that replaces the existing abusive ones.
It needs to grow and protect users.