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   Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2024 23:34:36 JST Brendan Jones

   So there’s been this pull request made by Eugen on the #Mastodon Github repo where, among other reasonable design changes, he's changed Unlisted and its description to "Low-key public: Public with less reach”. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/28119.

   After (entirely foreseeable) pushback on that poor naming, Renaud made another PR for discussion of the renaming of Unlisted. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/28887.

   This has got me thinking about how open source projects can be run successfully. A 🧵:

   • Embed this notice
     Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2024 23:35:00 JST Brendan Jones

     in reply to

     This isn’t the first time pushback like this has happened - remember when full text search was incoming and the first implementation was going to make it opt-out instead of opt-in? There was an uproar, and much trust was lost. Even the smallest bit of community engagement could have prevented that.

     I’m no expert on running open source projects, but I do know a thing or two about stakeholder-inclusive software design, and this isn’t it.

   • Embed this notice
     Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2024 23:35:28 JST Brendan Jones

     in reply to

     My intention is not to pile on Eugen and team because honestly they’ve done an amazing job creating a tool that’s been used by so many, and has scaled so well post-Twitter-implosion. But I do know that Mastodon is not enabling contribution as well as it could, and that makes me sad because I want this project to be amazing.

     I’d love to hear examples of open source projects where the maintainers are really making use of their network. What are some successful projects, and why are they so good?

   • Embed this notice
     Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2024 23:39:58 JST Brendan Jones

     in reply to

     This is purely a guesstimate but I presume Mastodon is in the top 10% of open source projects, in terms of user numbers. It's sitting on a goldmine of contributors - this user base skews techy, after all.

     I don't just mean developers, either. There are loads of UI and UX designers here. People who could be doing the research on and designing what people want to see here on Mastodon.

     People who would save the Mastodon team from stumbles like they've just made with the Unlisted renaming.

   • Embed this notice
     Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 00:04:11 JST Brendan Jones

     in reply to

     • Scott Jenson

     @scottjenson @tantacrul how do they engage the community, what sort of process are they using?

     And what is MetaMuse? I'm not aware of them, and searching is only pulling up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZOC_(band).

   • Embed this notice
     Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 26-Jan-2024 00:04:12 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     @Brendanjones This is a topic near and dear to my heart as so often UX feature decisions (of ANY kind) will upset someone in the community (change is two edged). I've noticed that @tantacrul with both the Audacity and MetaMuse projects has been particularly adept and previewing upcoming UX decisions early in the community, getting feedback and managing the reasons for a move they'd like to make.

   • Embed this notice
     Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2024 21:24:42 JST Brendan Jones

     in reply to

     • Scott Jenson
     • LWinterberg

     @scottjenson @LWinterberg That’s why I’m a big fan of https://plausible.io/. Open source, anonymous tracking. And no investors, they’re entirely bootstrapped, so no stupid endless-growth model.

   • Embed this notice
     Scott Jenson (scottjenson@social.coop)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2024 21:24:43 JST Scott Jenson

     in reply to

     • LWinterberg

     @LWinterberg @Brendanjones
     Thank you for that. I really wish there was a way to collect minimal, anonymous telemetry in a way that would not make people get out pitchforks. One would think by being open source and very clear about what and how telemetry is getting collected would be acceptable. (I.e. it's not any personal data)

   • Embed this notice
     LWinterberg (lwinterberg@c.im)'s status on Tuesday, 30-Jan-2024 21:24:44 JST LWinterberg

     in reply to

     • Scott Jenson

     @Brendanjones
     Tantacrul posts screenshots of upcoming versions, I tend to run polls with an associated discussion in discord. It's not the highest quality of research results we get out of this, but given we don't have any telemetry, it allows us to draw at least a vague picture of things. It really is as much a community building and marketing tool as it is a research tool, which is kind of interesting.
     @scottjenson