** Clean Up proposal - Removing old, never active accounts **
For purpose of internal discussion and to gauge people's opinions, I am opening a discussion topic on this subject -- here, in Public.
I had very recently brought this up internally, in a Staff only area (essential for sensitive discussions, and common in all internet sites).
The image included in this post is a snapshot of my post there - - which looks much nicer than it could ever be here (until we get better, enhanced text format supported).
This idea was motivated by my belief this deserves attention, and by a very recent post by Paul Sutton -- asking what the meaning of 'active'users is on the server stats displayed at the front doors.
My post follows, in Text form. Look forward to your comments, suggestions and participation. Thank you.
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A pet peeve of mine.
I would have done it myself. Proposing here for discussion and possible action.
* that long term, never active accounts represent a Zero value added to instance.
* that such accounts can be dormant ones for video sharing people, as we had before
* that high number of users doesn’t really matter, this is my personal opinion.
I propose that :sparkler:
* inactive accounts, zero posts ever, older than a certain threshold, be eliminated.
A report from the admin panel could provide some stats on how many those would be
The threshold I would suggest – one year and older, inactive, Nuke applied.
Thank you.
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Screenshots included :
1. Forum post snapshot.
2. The content of this post, as seen in a properly full formatted way. Markdown enhanced.
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The counter points to this:
1) We already seperate out stats between active users and registered. So by removing old accounts it would make the registered number useless as we would effectively be reducing it to the active count. Aside from perhaps being dishonest to our users it prevents us from actually being able to know the ratio of active users to registered users, as the registered user count doesnt represent anything meaningful.
2) Users who register with no activity represent 0 value, but also represent 0 negative sides. They do nothing to decrease the quality of the instance
3) users may wish to have an account for read-only purposes. There is no harm in that
4) we can not truely delete accounts, it looks more like a suspension. This means users can not re-register later without them emailing an admin. This adds extra work load on admins, hassle for potential users, and with no gain.
5) there is no easy way to suspend accounts on the criteria you suggests. Someone (me?) would have to invest time and energy to write a script to do it.
6) many users want a server with expiernce and a history. The registered user count reflects this. For that reason many users pick their instance specifically because they have a large registered user count. so we would be doing ourselves harm
It seems to me there are quite a few down sides to doing this and not a single positive effect I can think of... What, exactly, is to be gained by doing this?
Fair points there, I was just thinking about how people may see the number of active uses vs registered users.
As an alternative we can come up with a text explanation to counter any arguments people may have for that.
I believe that a reported number of users who have :
* at least bothered to login once, in the past 12 months.
* posted a single Byte in the instance.
...is not in any way distorted.
Mastodon network user count is approaching 4 million accounts, as seen in the Stats posts in federated timeline.
Well -- how many of those are similar Zombie accounts?
How many are multiple accounts held by one single active user for some reason ? (I have about 12 atm, and increasing. With reasons)
I don't want to spend much time arguing, my logic is on the OP above, and I have other projects to spend time on -- more ideas deserving attention and effort than time, which is precious.
So carry on, let's hear the people's voices.
@design_RG @freemo
I agree here, worth discussing anyway.
I am more thinking that the critics I come across will pick up on anything,
But if you consider that Facebook has what is it now 3 billion users, how many of those users are zombie, duplicate or robot accounts.
> But if you consider that Facebook has what is it now 3 billion users, how many of those users are zombie, duplicate or robot accounts.
Lots of them -- years ago it was easy and quick to get a completely Bogus new account up and running. It's harder now, as these have been abused badly by state agents on campaigns against other countries.
See also, 2016 US election, 2016 Brexit referendum, and likely... 2020 US election, again.
@freemo
Seems this solution would be the best way to satisfy your concerns without having the downsides then, since you mostly just want better reporting of dormant but once-active accounts:
@freemo @design_RG
Maybe I am so used to people being cynical about anything other than the mainstream stuff, I just seen the registered / active users stats as another attack vector for them.
Maybe leave it as it is for now. I am making a blog post later in the week to cover alternatives to mainstream social media.
Already made a post to link to explanations for the fediverse, activity pub etc.
In what way would it be an attack vector? Do you feel adding the third statistic type I mentioned would mediate that attack?
@freemo @design_RG
What I mean is people are just cynical and see what we have here as "esoteric." for one such word.
They already say no one uses it, being no one they know. So I was saying here that if they see users vs active users they will use that to justify their argument.
Given I have, over the last few days had some really interesting discussions on the fediverse, maybe it is time to just ignore them and just promote what we have here the best way I can.
So if i understand you correctly people think the service isnt used by enough people to be useful.
If that is your main concern wouldnt eliminating registered accounts have the opposite effect? It would reduce the number of apparent users making the service look more obscure not less, no?
@freemo @design_RG Yeah, I think it is time to ignore the cynics and not really worry about what they think unless they have actually been here and used the fediverse in some way.
I generally tend to agree, but I think it is important we at least listen to the cynics. We just shouldnt jump to make changes over every criticism either.
@freemo @design_RG Good point, I think this thread highlighted an issue with the delete and redraft feature, which is a 'good' thing in that it can be looked at by the developers.
I actually like being able to go back in and make corrections though.
@freemo
> Ideally we should be able to edit posts without "deleting and redrafting"
It can be done, it's in place in both Corporate networks (FB for example) and on non-corporate ones, Friendica has it as previously mentioned.
Corporate Twitter is the model for Eugen's mastodon project, so a lot of what we see here is based on the original. He aded many extras and high value -- it's much better generally.
BUT -- never an edit we shall see, I bet. Not on Mastodon anyway.
Yea its absolutely doable in theory. Eugen was explicitly against it. So he did this on purpose, though I disagree.
I think eugen is ok with implemented features regardless of twitter, i just think he is highly inspired by twitter more than trying to replicate it feature for feature.
@freemo
> i just think he is highly inspired by twitter more than trying to replicate it feature for feature.
Mastodon AWI is TweetDeck incarnate.
And he can't get it when I make a case for my Two panel, full screen, writer and reader optimized model.
I am annoyed with it and being vocal, Guerrilla is my action choice. Results will come, I already see signs.
People commenting casually who now know that Pleroma exists (and looks nice) and that Glitch-Social is a superior platform so easy for them to use if they want.
Indeed, there are many instances implementing their features against Eugene's desires. Change will happen so long as people unify on working on forks instead of everyone doing their own. Pleorma has good potential for that it seems.
> maybe if Twitter add this feature it will appear here too.
They will never implement it -- for legal reasons. People being harassed and evidence evaporating in Edits, or having to be kept with Edit History like FB does.
It's their decision, it's been there forever and I don't think they will ever do it. They just force feed it into people like the rest of their platform, manipulative algorithms and all.
@freemo
> Eugen was explicitly against it. So he did this on purpose, though I disagree.
He has a LOT of control in this project, and sadly that has BAD implications sometimes. It's best for Fediverse if other platforms grow.
Pleroma, Friendica, others all have value and LESS controlling lead developers.
Also -- NOT modelled on the twitter model.
Yes I am strongly leaning towards moving to pleorma myself. I'm playing with a local instance so i can understand it, then ill put up a demo instance for our users to play with, thenw e can have a discussion about migrating officially. I think the big feature id want to move over is the remote timeline feature though.
Its a big move and effects a lot of people. So discussion and playing around will be the first steps. But I think pleorma has a good chance of being a viable replacement.
@freemo
> I'm playing with a local instance so i can understand it, then ill put up a demo instance for our users to play with
...if the MastodonFE choice is explained and fully configurable, it is a natural for most users -- heck, it's all they have here, plus more sophisticated controls and added formatting options.
Just make sure that the Preferences full page controls for GS FE is fully accessible -- I find this not working i nsome pleroma nodes, sadly, and it is needed for many actions we take for granted
* account import and export csv files
* some settings, including selecting theme and flavours for the GlitchSocial FE which is the one used as Pleroma MastodonFE.
I need access to Preferences to enable my optimized AWI settings for example.
Do this --- And we will get people's hearts and minds in a heartbeat.
Well it isnt "all they have here".. the MastodonFE certainly has everything a vanilla instance of mastodon has, and more, as you say. but it does lack many of the custom features we implemented, namely remote timelines and about a dozen other features maybe.
Not that that will stop us from moving to it. Just means I'd like to port over some of the unique features we have before making the move ideally.
> but it does lack many of the custom features we implemented, namely remote timelines and about a dozen other features maybe.
At first, a straight exchange -- I would feel better served with the GS FE full features and access to preferences to tweek as needed.
Yes, there's lots of added features here and they do have value. Maybe you can port them over -- if they are Front End processing, it should be possible.
I honestly think you are probably the only (or one of a few) local users valuing the Remote Instance timeline access - as I prefer to have local accounts in any that interest me, and post locally, build friendships and follow people closely.
That is my opinion, as already stated in my detailed Blog :
https://write.tedomum.net/rgx/is-it-important-which-instance-you-are-in
Even yourself, you would not be deprived of it -- as Fedilab and Fedilab Lite both have this function. And since you do use a mobile, that is no biggie to access.
I personally might use that once a month, or less. I do value a lot of other things highly though, so thank you for all the effort.
That is fair, I really dont know how much value users put on our custom feature set, especially along side what we get from pleorma.
I can say your habit of using other local timelines likely isnt common. I'd say most users here use QOTO as their only account. Very few people have the time or energy for many different local accounts.
With that said just because most of our users use QOTO as their only instance I dont think that means they leverage the remote timelines. Also if pleorma implements groups (as is to be done soon) remote timelines are less critical in some ways.
All of that said I think thats why we need to start wtih a beta instance of pleorma for our users to play with. We will quickly see what response we get and the community can tell us how they feel.
I think it might be good to do a local poll to get a sense of how many users use our remote timeline feature too, that will give me a sense of what priority it might serve.
@freemo @design_RG Does remote time line mean a post on here can be seen elsewhere? and responded to.
No we get that in mastodon by default.
It means you can add a column that shows the local timeline of a specific instance. That way you dont need to get an account on another instance to see their local timeline in its own column. You can get that locally with just a singular account.
@freemo @design_RG I think I have that here, i mostly use Home and Notifications, tabs.
This thread has now made Notifications super active. :)
That example also shows the magnificent Reply Toot Editor it affords. I usually would have Notifications in the right panel.
I have a Draft in progress proposal and presentation i intend to take to the Glitch-Social Git Hub .[lots of details and examples]
Remote timeline means that here at Qoto, we can easily open a link and view a remote instance's Local feed -- all the Public privacy posts being made there.
We can respond to them, any of them if desired, and it can bea great way to get to know an instance without creating an account.
But we cannot create a new topic there, as you would expect -- as we are not Locals.
Example --> https://qoto.org/web/timelines/list/319
@freemo I think your 'switch to pleroma' idea sounds pretty good.
@zleap Idk why but the archetypal Mastodon user is obsessed with getting this feature even though they want mastodon to be a twitter clone even though they don't like actual twitter.
@admin
AAAAHHH ---- LOL. thank you!!
Yes, that it is.
I was thinking about along the lines of the classic BOFH -- which I always loved reading! 😝
So his logic is, its better, but its too much work?
Seems weird then he would close it rather than just call for a PR.
Hey @Gargron just out of curiosity if someone submitted a high quality PR implementing edit in place with a change log for you, would you accept it?
@freemo @admin @zleap @design_RG There are a few performance optimizations possible because toots are immutable. If they can change, you lose them.
What if a PR could be submited and demonstrated to have minimal impact on performance, would that be acceptable to you or is a no-go regardless?
@freemo @design_RG I can understand the reasons if the idea is to build something that looks / feels like Twitter, maybe if Twitter add this feature it will appear here too.