Renaud Chaput
In the last few weeks, I have been trying to organise the #Mastodon development work, so our (very small!) resources are used efficiently. This led us to a tentative roadmap for Mastodon 4.3, with a (very optimistic) release date before Christmas.
Here are the main items ⤵️
botvolution
Yep, proper threading of posts is badly needed
Emelia 👸🏻
@renchap tbh, I think the “+" button style originally used in Twitter would be better?
So like it renders a preview above the post box, and then you can click through each and "edit”, and then post all at once in one big sequence of publishes.
Rather than publish one post, then writing the next, then publish, then writing the next; as often you need to go back and edit earlier posts.
Renaud Chaput
@thisismissem It needs a bit of CSS :D
Emelia 👸🏻
@renchap yesss, so much YES to this!
Renaud Chaput
Additional entry that I just decided to add (and will implement myself): add an easier way to posts threads 😀
Renaud Chaput
If you want to help and are a developer (Ruby and/or Javascript), you can head to our Github repository and have a look at some issues, or can ping me if you want guidance on what is available to contributors.
And if you are not a developer, you can donate to the project (https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors), so we can hire more people to work on Mastodon full-time and be implement new features faster!
Renaud Chaput
Note that this is not exhaustive, and may change!
We are also working on more long-term features, like the much awaited quote posts, but those need some preliminary protocol-level work before we can start the implementation.
Please remember that the core team is very small, with only one developer! Many of those features are contributed by various volunteers, but we also work on fixing bugs and improving many non user-facing features (performance, security, admin & mod tooling…).
Renaud Chaput
- Improve (or re-do) the Emoji picker
- Support system setting for light/dark mode
- (maybe) Make it easier to interact on other instances and make it easier for websites to add a “share on Mastodon” button, through a trampoline domain
- (maybe) Rework/rewrite the announcements feature, to allow server-generated announcements, for example to highlight new features or help with onboarding
Renaud Chaput
- Continue to improve onboarding, by having a screen to set your profile & main settings (like search discovery) without leaving the onboarding process
- Rework notifications, with grouping support (Your post has been boosted by X people, instead of a notification per boost)
- Federate link previews to avoid having each instance send a request to the URL, causing a lot of trafic (not an easy problem to solve, may move to 4.4)
Renaud Chaput
- Notify users when relationships (follows, followers) are severed, due to a server block, display the list of impacted relationships, and have a button to restore them if the remote server is unblocked
- Improve account recommendations, to help users find relevant accounts to follow
- Redesign all e-mails, add a few onboarding e-mails to help getting on board with Mastodon, and send an (optional) weekly digest e-mail
silverpill
>We are also working on more long-term features, like the much awaited quote posts, but those need some preliminary protocol-level work before we can start the implementation.
The preliminary work has already been done: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/e232/fep-e232.md
Renaud Chaput
@gh0sti The blocked server users will not be notified, but the local users (on the server who initiated the block) will be. We do not think this is an issue, and will improve users’ view of their moderator & admin actions.
gh0sti :pika:
@renchap for privacy and protection from harassment wouldn’t you not want the notify users of relationships being severed?
Renaud Chaput
@Poulpette This will be done automatically, based on various criterias, for example who you recently interacted with, or account followed by your follows.
There is a big onboarding issue where new users struggle to find accounts to follow, and as we do not push content from accounts you do not follow into your feeds, helping users to gather their first 10-30 follows is important if we want users to stay.
Poulpette
@renchap Who will decide whether an account is relevant enough to end up in a list of recommendations? I mean, isn’t that what proprietary apps do? I thought that one of the main interesting features of Mastodon was that users can decide themselves, by reading posts, if accounts are worth following regarding their interests. But maybe I missed the point. I probably did. 😕
Renaud Chaput
@rakoo Not sure yet, each time we think we have a good idea, we find something that does not work correctly.
rakoo
Brendan Jones
@elduvelle @joshix @renchap adding my +1 to this comment. This is a microblogging service not a blogging service, so threading multiple, shorter posts is the name of the game. Don’t be discouraged by the replies saying that it’d be better to increase the character count; composing threads will be highly valued by some!
El Duvelle
@joshix Longer messages are useful (our instance is using glitch and already has them), but threads have their own, separate uses. They allow you to add images at the right place to each post, and they allow people to boost or start a convo on specific posts of the thread.
So I agree that we could really benefit from easier thread-posting as well as better visualisation of the answers to the thread (independently of message length limits) 😀
@renchap thank you so much for your great work!
Joshix
@renchap just allow longer messages...
Renaud Chaput
@to We do, but unfortunately do not have the budget for it at the moment.
Adrian Tombu 🦀
@renchap Do you work with freelancers/contractors sometimes? ☺️
Renaud Chaput
@bilbo_le_hobbit C'est prévu
bilbo_le_hobbit :bzh:
@renchap
- Improve account recommendations, to help users find relevant accounts to follow
=> ça serait sympa de pouvoir ignorer avec un simple bouton certains comptes recommandés qui ne nous intéressent finalement pas pour pouvoir en afficher d'autres
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