@maija@sun_eater Converse was such a piece of shit I had to fix a bug just to get it to run at all when I first tried it. It failed outright at startup. At least they accepted my PR to fix it.
@sun_eater dino is cool on linux but its kinda retarded and fetches THE ENTIRE CHAT HISTORY when you first add your account, and gives notifications for it all, atleast last i used it gajim is popular, i havent had good luck but thats what everyone seems to use i use psi+ because of autism its kinda fucky also converse.js/inverse.chat
@NEETzsche@sun_eater its worked well for me but also id say user experience is far more important than server. a server admin knows what they are doing. the user often does not. and its one of the few good xmpp clients out there. i would apply some custom css personally though, a few quality of life tweaks
@sun_eater@maija My little one-liner brought it from not working at all on my XMPP instance to working, but being a clunky piece of shit.
My experience with federated chat services has been rather terrible. They all sucked. The UI/UX just can't compete with commercial, proprietary services like Discord or Telegram and I think it's because the people who built them thought exclusively about abstract back-end ideas and not at all about things like the user experience.
This is not a problem I've seen with other FOSS/federated services, like the one we're on now. It's specifically chat services that suck ass.
@sun_eater@maija Matrix makes for an excellent bridge because the back end of it is legitimately well designed, allowing one to pass messages with all of metadata peculiar to basically any chat service that actually exists or one can dream up, it's just that all of the clients are dog shit
@dushman@sun_eater@maija Discord UI is actually usable, XMPP/Matrix is not. If you want to criticize Discord you're going to have to criticize its administration, because the way it actually works is highly intuitive to normal people who don't have a computer science degree
@dushman@sun_eater@maija Yeah? You realize there's more to user experience than merely being able to send messages right? You are aware of that are you not?
@NEETzsche@maija@sun_eater agreed as much as I dislike discord its still miles better than anything else hell even fucking rocketchat is more stable than xmpp most times
@dushman@theorytoe@dcc@sun_eater@NEETzsche fosstard tbh you know i mostly use xmpp dush, they're right, most the clients suck and compatibility is kinda ass. sure its usuable normally but its not intuitive and only like conversations and its forks are actually proper good, which is a mobile only client
@dcc@theorytoe@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche yeah i would never be able to get normies using matrix, but some use xmpp with me as its easy to go, yeah this is the best way to contact me and point them to blabber.im and a host or something signal is ofc ideal if you can trust your phone number but not all can, like ive given xmpp to people i've just met or from dating apps
@dushman@dcc@sun_eater@NEETzsche@maija I am for real again I dont think any normal person can use these chat services without having a stroke hell even matrix is a smoother experience for most people
let alone that there are zero good desktop clients that work well for xmpp, let alone web ones that are even passable
@meso@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche dushman is extremely biased foss evangelist. he's incapable of seeing shit out the eyes of a normal user and will criticize things he dislikes, but make endless defence for his foss obsession because it technically works at all. never in this proess does it click in his brain a normal user is not gonna give a fuck about whatever niche reasons he has and wont make such defense. dush needs to learn to be critical on everything and not just make do while considering it good. probably software of his will have bad ui/ux aswell stemming from this
@dushman so here's how a good user experience goes when it comes to media. You download the app, you type in a username and a password, and because we're talking about a federated service we're also going to take the leap of adding in a domain name for the instance, and then it just works. From there, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to set everything to Auto download. You don't have to fiddle with the settings. You don't have to download f-droid and then download this other thing from f droid. Joining a channel is one click experience. The list goes on.
That's what a good user experience is like and that's what literally none of these federated chat services even attempt to offer. They just don't. I've used these things and getting it to function is always this endeavor where there's at least like three fucking work around you have to do before you can get it to send a picture or whatever
@dushman@theorytoe@dcc@NEETzsche@maija i iwsh it let me actually open media without having to download it and open it in my file browser tho that feels retarded
@dcc No, normies can't and don't use it, that's the thing. Normies have a hard time understanding the CONCEPT of federation. Like, it just doesn't fucking register, and then most of the time when it does, they don't get why it's a good thing. You tell them about a new service and they call it an "app." They don't understand and they have no desire to understand. In fact, in my experience they have a desire to not understand. They give negative fucks about this topic and measure how good a service is based on how many fields they need to fill out and how many things they need to click before they get the desired output, the fewer the better.
@theorytoe@maija@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche Well its not like your not going to show them how to use it. No matter how you learn how to use a app you still have to learn how to use apps.
@theorytoe@maija@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche "It just works" well no there is still things to mess with, again you still need the learn the interface and how to add people. If people dont want to learn they just wont its not some bs accessible its just they dont care to.
@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche discored is literally get an account and boom, everything works ootb no settings, so weird handles to remember no omemo encryption just chat
matrix/xmpp wishes it could be that simple, but architecturally its impossible
@theorytoe@maija@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche You need a facebook to use messenger, im not on a high horse i know how people react to you wanting them to use something else than what they already know.
@teratology Normies give negative fucks about the technicals because they would rather think about literally anything else. They just want to get to the part where they get to chat with their pal from work/school or they get to see funny picture or whatever. They view having to comprehend or learn anything as an imposition against them, and frankly when you think about it that outlook makes perfect sense.
Imagine if car guys unironically expected everybody to become an auto mechanic just so they can drive their fucking car. "Welcome to Delta airlines, please have your degree in aeronautical engineering ready as you board the plane."
That's what FOSS spergs do when we try to shill them on Linux or on Stallmanite distinctions between libre and gratis or whatever the fuck else.
If I have to put too much work into something I consider more a leisurely activity I tend to get really frustrated with it. It isn't so much normie as it is human to be handed a medical form and feel a rising desire to come back with a rifle and makeshift flamethrower after realizing it is over ten pages long.
Just thinking about such a scenario is migraine inducing.
That said the first half of your statement stands. Every time I download something for my desktop and see the website call it an app it makes me want to stab them in the eye with a fountain pen.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater i usually give the contact and then recommend blabber.im as a client and tell them to put a certain server, they wont know what that means or really care. we get on, we talk, they inevitably ask what that meant or what this is, and i will make a comparison to "oh its like email where you can have a gmail or yahoo or whatever and still email each other" and they get it
@theorytoe@maija@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche You dont know enough old people, many of them use both facebook and messenger, or viber or signal. Its not the app its just they dont have a reason to learn it (unless you convince them)
@dcc No you don't understand. They don't give a fuck about these services. They give a fuck about you and they want to contact you so they're willing to humor this piece of shit service that's a pain in their ass to use because they want to contact you and you are a sperg that makes impositions that are super important to you but are actively annoying to normies and they just put up with a certain amount of it because in spite of how abrasive you probably are they still care about you to some extent.
Normies just want to send the message asking if you want to see the Barbie movie with them tonight or post their stupid minions memes. I don't think you even partially appreciate the absolute state of the normie. Try talking to somebody with a 100 IQ who changes tires for a living or is a mortgage loan officer or some shit. Their use of the internet begins and ends trying to find a cool explosion or trying to find a cute picture of a cat or whatever. Try talking to somebody who touches grass every day and not just when they absolutely have to. They fucking hate computers and "apps."
@dcc@theorytoe@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche yeah they do. im making a point about design, insta dms are easy and generic. snapchat is complicated and theres weird details like saving messages and unexplained gestures on how to do everything and some things are just really shitty jank with no real reason for it
@dushman I love command lines and in most cases even prefer them over GUIs. However, and this is an important thing to understand, is that I have a theory of mind. I understand that my preferences aren't everybody else's preferences. I am a computer nerd. I like computers. That's not normal. Most people fucking hate computers. They either regard computers as this pain in the ass thing that won't print their TPS report, or as this literal magic box that solves their problem for them. It's not even just dumb people who do this, but anybody who isn't actively a computer sperg.
This is why all of these workarounds and all of these elaborate rigmaroles to get XMPP or Matrix or whatever to fucking work filter them. You shouldn't have to memorize the Konami code to send cat videos.
@maija You're about to get mega mad but I think all of that wacky "gestures" shit is actually quite intuitive to a normie relative to someone who prefers a command line. I think the kind of person who actually likes computers has a significantly different neurology, quite literally.
@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche yeah no its horrible like its ok once your used to it but the design is just awful, and you have to swipe from a particular direction tjust to see your friends, which if your going through and miss something you cant go back you gotta reopen from their chat, you cant open chat till youve seen all pics one by one, the chat requires you tap every message you want to say lest it gets autodeleted after you both see it, you cant turn it off only set to 24 hours, everyones just taps everything they send. sending messages photos has to be from the initial camera screen unless its individual and lets say ok snapchat, filters, you can choose and fine good, works fine. also theres two ways, one swiping only has a few shitty ones and the filter menu after you take the picture has others. what if you want to do it before its taken or use literally half of them? you gotta open another menu. like one? you cant save it and lthe listings change regularly, you have to search from ANOTHER MENU every time i love filters i love trying to look cute and honestly this is my only normie social media as the incentives to keep using it does unironically push you into keeping touch with friends, and i love taking photos of things and sending to everyone anyways. but god damn this ui is ass it took me so long to figure this shit out and i still get confused! and im young and a tech nerd new and difficult ui comes easy to me!
@dushman >for an XMPP client that actually works well
I'm willing to challenge you to find me an XMPP client that actually works well. For it to qualify as "works well" it needs to require no more than twice as many clicks and no more than twice as many fields to fill in as it does to get started on Discord. We're going to go from fresh install of Windows 10 with no programs installed having no account to viewing cat video responding with minions meme.
If it doesn't just work as-described I'm going to get on a call with you and have you tell me exactly what to click on. You're going to have to think of this in terms of resource management, where if you try something but it doesn't fix the problem, you still used up clicks to try to troubleshoot it. It's going to be like a game of chess: "if I have to open up this menu, it'll take five clicks... Hmmm..."
Yes, all of those settings you have to change count toward this total. Yes, all of those other programs you need to install to get it to work count toward this total. I'm willing to give it twice as many clicks etc as Discord and I'm still damn sure XMPP won't make it.
This should be a lesson in how the normie thinks, and to be clear, to somebody who thinks a good time is having a barbecue or going fishing, this isn't an even close to wrong way to view the matter.
@maija I'm on the same page. I remember installing Snapchat years ago and wondering what the fuck is going on, and then uninstalling it because I couldn't figure it out in 10 minutes. I hated this thing.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater oh yeah no it is more intuitive than a commandline and i know i just struggle with it more, not used to it ive always avoided them, but its not even explained is the point. theres a ton of different areas you swipe to on a grid your moving across, and you cant always go all directions but sometimes you can go some. and sometimes things are buttons instead. and sometimes you have to swipe in certain parts of the screen. and sometimes you have to go through multiple menus for basic behaviour, or go in a menu and then swipe, just so much shit and absolutely zero is explained your just tossed in an extremely unintuitive environment and expected to figure it out. much like dushmans friends when being recommended gajim
@dushman@theorytoe@dcc@sun_eater@NEETzsche@maija it doesn't. it uses 100MB max. on windows anyway, where it's most optimized and most users are. either way it will use 180MB worst case scenario, about the same as Gajim
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@meso this is giving such leeway, but yes this is basic UX principles why does no fosstard get it! i used to talk to the dev of that one other crossplatform fedi client i forget the name, and he cared about ui/ux and it helped the project alot. nobody else i've met doing free software has cared in the slightest about ui/ux unless their some gnome user often praising pretty arbitrary just as bad choices
@maija Gleason has cared because his target audience is a bunch of retarded TERF boomers from the United Kingdom. They, being British, have an IQ of around 80 on average from being drunk 24/7, which makes them great candidates for user testing.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater i still use it for the social network and for the filters, which sure is a basic ass normie reason but yes very much so thats why anybody uses it! ux is important but also normies can learn if pressured by their friends being on there or some gimmick like filters which ofc xmpp doesnt have. it had the network affect and got really popular in the mid 2000s! but thats even more reason its not coming back its old news, trend died
@meso@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@NEETzsche i wonder why? i know some clients use webkit or webengine for the chat window, does gajim, and could that be adding weight? or is it just the fact discord is webshit which has effort to optimize nowadays and gajim is python
@maija Yeah, it's why I opened by pointing out that the UI issues don't apply to all free and open source software, just chat services for some reason. All FOSS chat services are trash due to their trash UI. Nobody gives a fuck how much RAM it uses as long as it isn't like a terabyte.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@meso thats true i dont personally like the design of soapbox, that whole, what is it, category? genre? of webuis is something i dont really like, but it is pretty intuitive in my usage and definitely inline with other major social medias tbf though mastodon and pleroma are pretty decent too, back in 2020 some normie friend wanted to check out what im doing and had no issue figuring out how to use pleroma
@theorytoe Neither is going to happen because in the mind of anybody who designs these services, abstract shit like how well the e2ee works are really the only important things to them. You have to understand that the people who designed these things actually believe the CIA is hellbent on monitoring their friend chat group where the most illegal thing they do is sell weed to each other
And I just don’t like FOSS niggers wasting my time having to futz with their Python spaghetti code just so I can tell them their other Python spaghetti code is broken. Which, yes, is what FOSS chat services amount to. I reiterate my challenge to see how many clicks it takes to go from new install of Windows 10 to posting/viewing cat memes, comparing it to Discord or Telegram.
We can use a phone if you really like but I’m going to count every touch as a click instead. And I guarantee you, Discord/Telegram will still have less than half.
@NEETzsche > new install of Windows 10 Do normies even use desktop systems these days? A phone and an Android tablet or an iPad is what they have. Having a "computer" is already a geeky thing.
@NEETzsche No, I get your point, it's just a side note, but it might make a difference as they can get Telegram and Discord in Microsoft store, but they won't find Element there. On a phone, installing Element and signing up for an account on matrix.org would take roughly the same amount of clicks/touches I think. I'm not sure what it would be for XMPP. Skype, while commercial, is a mess in this regard — it asks a lot of questions. @theorytoe@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@meso
The inconvenience of installing the damn thing is part of the issue, though. The biggest compromise I can do is installing F-Droid before we begin. But that’s it. That’s all you’re getting.
The important thing to consider is that the inconvenience of setting this up is measurable and real, and there’s only so much coping one can do about it before the final answer is “no this is trash” to someone who isn’t invested ideologically in this.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@meso theres well done xmpp servers atleast, like ejabberd is corporate and very well made and optimized, and they release their basic quite complete version as foss just missing some corporate specific stuff matrix is ofc literally python. the server. the servers in fucking python. what is wrong with them?
So, here’s me getting into my Discord server. I did have to do a CAPTCHA and enter a birthdate, but notice how it dropped me directly into the server. I also didn’t have to install an app. It’s clear from your video that Element has seen a lot of improvement, which is to their credit.
@NEETzsche I don't think it's as bad as some try to paint it — I use Matrix for communicating with my non tech-savvy friends and family — all of them managed to signup without any help from me, including my mom and girls who prefer Instagram as their primary social media, none of them are bad with computers though. My mom often complains that it takes a couple of seconds to decrypt bigger images — but that's what Telegram doesn't even have. @theorytoe@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@meso
@NEETzsche @theorytoe@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@meso It took longer than I had expected and yes, they do have e-mail verification now — and that was the longest part. Average user probably won't be using a VPN exit point for signing up and won't have to enter ReCAPTCHA, and will definitely not get prompted about using ntfy for notifications. "Help us improve…" — it's good that they even ask. Overall — not bad at all. Can anyone do Discord?
Yes, I’d say this is a step backwards. There are other UI advantages to Discord, like most notably the “servers” (guilds) structure where one server has many channels and roles and blah blah blah. I play TTRPGs online and that’s a big boon.
@NEETzsche@theorytoe@dcc@dushman@sun_eater@m0xee@meso what happened to discord creating temporary accounts? i remember back when i got on this was a 0 step onboarding process, youd open the link to a server and there you are, temporary account, nothing to do. and then from there you could change nick/pfp/set a handle and add your email to verify it that was good onboarding.
@NEETzsche I think they also have some embeddable thing — so, same temporary accounts. I'm just not sure it works for matrix.org And they of course could've got rid of the terms of service and telemetry questions and do it like Discord does "By clicking okay you agree to this and that…" — but it's good that they didn't, I'd probably not trust them with such an "improvement". Overall it's perfectly balanced now, not night and day difference. @theorytoe@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@meso
I’ve considered writing a federated Discord clone with the guilds structure and so on but it’s just such a time-consuming task. But at this point I think the thing that will save federated services is focusing on UI/UX, and Pleroma/forks have been doing great at that.
I think the next step here is rich presence, but for these chat services they still need a lot of work. They need to implement something to the effect of the guilds structure from Discord, they still need custom emoji reacts, and so on.
@NEETzsche Element has also seen a downgrade in fact. Like I said, when I've been signing up and it was still called Riot — there was no email verification, they probably just couldn't come up with better anti-spam measure. I think you can not have one on your server.And I've just checked — they do have invite links, I didn't even think of that as I've never used this function. And they even offer a selection of clients if you follow such a link @theorytoe@dcc@maija@dushman@sun_eater@meso
@theorytoe It's an issue of how it's designed. I usually frame this sort of dichotomy as top down versus bottom up, but I think this time it's best to frame it in terms of inside out versus outside in.
Let me elaborate on what I mean by that. Inside out is when you design the backend and work your way outward to the UI. Outside in is when you design the UI and then work your way into the back end. I think the mistake they made was leaning very heavily into the former. They really fleshed out the back end. But then they only implemented front ends that are sort of a proof of concept, and in the case of Element, they're now just starting to escape that problem.
Considering how events work in matrix, it's actually feasible to implement a Discord like system outright. Just create a new client that sends Events that are designed in that way. For example, if you frame a channel as a guild, just start issuing Events that specify which subchannel they're in. That sort of thing.
The more I think about this, the more I'm coming to the idea that we can salvage Matrix by just writing a new client that abandons this pretense of being compatible with any of the other clients, and we just make up a new Event structure that suits our needs more.
Let's sleep on that for a bit. This could be genius. This could be total retardation. Let's not jump to conclusions.