“The problem is, there’s a certain type of pedantry that has followed the internet through its various forms, especially in more technical channels, and it often creates a negative experience because it seems to be driven by ideology or disdain for people who don’t think the same way.” https://tedium.co/2023/11/21/mastodon-reply-guy-problem/
Curious to hear if others on here are experiencing what’s described in this piece. I enjoy most of the replies I get on here (though I never have time to respond to most of them, I like reading them)
I do think Mastodon could use more safety/audience limiting tools though, like what Ernie describes. Esp for larger-ish accounts on here who get a lot of replies, it would be nice to limit conversations on some posts. I would also love a real DM inbox on Mastodon! but that might be a pipe dream 😅
@taylorlorenz In case you haven't seen, we're experimenting with something in this area:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/11/improving-the-quality-of-conversations-on-mastodon/
I didn't expect to like this idea, but I do. I hope it comes to the clients I use.
If you really want to move the needle, make the reply button work differently when one is replying to a boosted toot: if my buddy Alice boosts a toot by Ben, and I hit reply from my stream where I see that it's an Alice-boosted toot, that reply should go to Alice, not Ben. I don't know who Ben is. Ben doesn't know who I am. Why should I be having a conversation with Ben, a complete stranger, when it was my friend Alice thought whatever he wrote was interesting enough to promote to her stream? It's my friend Alice I should be having that conversation with.
Ben didn't start a conversation with me or ask my opinion. Alice, however, very much did something to start a conversation with me: by boosting Ben's toot she said to me, and all her other her followers, hey, all, check out this thing Ben wrote.
The way replies work in the context of boosted toots, it's almost like a game of "Let's You and Him Fight" baked into the very architecture of Mastodon. Someone you know and might have some rapport with promotes something someone else said whom you do not know and do not have a particular connection with, and what they said might piss you off.
Ordinarily, if your friend sent you an article that pissed you off, you would tell your friend that. You might say something like, "I didn't think you thought like this. You actually share this point of view?" But that's not how replies in the context of boosted toots work. Instead you're putting the position of expressing an opinion to the person who is quite likely a complete stranger who just said this offensive thing. That's probably going to come out like, "Well that's wrong. Allow me to explain to you why the thing you're promulgating in the world is so wrong."
The way reply works in the context of boosted toots, it's almost as if the person doing the boosting was saying, "Hey, did you know this other person was saying this thing you really disagree with? Well, why don't you go on and tell them what you think. Sure, I'm the one inflicting it on you in your timeline, but leave me out of it."
It's just fundamentally such a recipe for causing conflict and hostility. It deprecates friends or at least friendly acquaintances discussing things amongst themselves, wish they might be expected to do with mutual understanding and charity, in favor of instigating discussion between complete strangers who are already at odds with one another, which is going to go about as well as we have observed it to go.
@siderea and this is one of the GREAT arguments for the #RT feature that so many talk about being, you know, the devil, the worst thing that could ever afflict a social media platform.
Retweeting/tooting/whatever allows people to discuss a post without having to involve the original poster, even for legitimately drama-free reasons.
And in other cases it allows a firewall to prevent escalation, just as described here.
I hear the feature will someday be added to #Mastodon but the resistance to adding it was always misguided.
A bunch of folks have noticed how similar what I have suggested is to QTs, but there's two important differences.
First,
QTs are an optional feature for the hinge person to elect to use. I'm actually talking about changing the default (software) behavior of reply in the context of a boost.
Giving people QTs maybe great for other reasons but it doesn't solve this problem that I am proposing this would solve. I'm proposing a change that will change a *default*.
Hitting a QT button *allows* someone to *choose* to boost something to their follower with their own commentary, as an *alternative* to replying. The fact it would give people an alternative to elect does not fix the present problems the *reply* function has, with driving conflict.
Hitting a QT button *allows* someone to *choose* to boost something to their follower with their own commentary, as an *alternative* to replying. The fact it would give people an alternative to elect does not fix the present problems the *reply* function has, with driving conflict.
@siderea @volkris @va3db @Gargron @taylorlorenz
the best of all worlds might be no QTs but every boost asking (or allowing) you to add a comment. your followers would see the original post but also be moved to respond to your comment, or comment just to you if you didn't leave a comment. no boosts would default with a comment mechanism that initially included the original poster.
also, the ability to rank comments (but maybe not original posts). I want mastodon and lemmy to merge basically.
@siderea in that case I simply disagree with your proposal altogether :)
I think replies to boosted content SHOULD go back to the author. When I put out content, and someone else boosts, I DO want to be engaged with by default.
I'd say it breaks the conversation, almost hijacking threads away from the author, to break it on the hinge like that.
QTs at least make this action clear, reframing into a new thread with a pointer back to the old one.
So @wjmaggos I'd say this without QTs is the worst of both worlds.
The author's thread is broken, but without a new contextualization to justify that break.
@siderea says the reply function as it is is almost as if the person doing the boosting is saying "Why don't you go on and tell them what you think?"
And that's EXACTLY how I, as an author of content here, expect it to work, it's exactly the value I derive out of the platform.
I'd hate to miss out on the conversation that my content prompted happening elsewhere.
@volkris @siderea @va3db @Gargron @taylorlorenz
but couldn't the original poster see the reply if they searched for it, just not be notified? the thread wouldn't be broken technically. wouldn't that be a nicer way to have these conversations? they could jump in if they want later.
@wjmaggos I don't think so.
When I put an idea out there, that someone would like to talk about, how do I know to go searching for it? How many conversations am I going to miss because I didn't know to go search for replies to some content I put out a while back?
No, if someone has something to add to something I've said, I want to be notified so I don't miss it.
OR, how about this, let the end user decide what notifications they want. Keep the functionality in the system, but let the end user decide how they'd like to set their notification preferences.
I always want to talk about empowering people to make their own experiences here, not take away options.
I *believe* the system probably already exposes enough info that it can tell if something is a reply to a boost, and it can mute that if the user doesn't want to know about it.
@volkris @siderea @va3db @Gargron @taylorlorenz
that sounds like a great compromise.
This is a general criticism I have--fine: ax I grind :) --about #Mastodon in that it could be doing so much more if it focused on empowering users to influence their own experience the way they wanted it to be, letting different users have different experiences on this platform.
It keeps coming up over and over with Mastodon. Developers either make decisions for users or they give posters the responsibility for figuring out what readers are going to see.
I just think the approach of Mastodon developers has often really missed that opportunity.
At every turn I would want to see Mastodon developers keeping in mind the focus of empowering the readers to have the client they want.
