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One thing I'm noticing here on Mastodon (mostly through observing experience of others, to be fair) is that there seems to be a point at which catering to people with, let's call it, overly-particular needs seems to embolden those people to foist those needs onto others and it devolves into a mess of opinions real fast.
One of the reasons Trader Joe's is successful is that they limit choices.
Do you really need to have two dozen varieties of peanut butter? Probably not. So they just stock a few. Gets people in-and-out very quickly, makes the stores smaller, and it's a very enjoyable experience for many despite being objectively quite limited.
Choice-overload is a real thing, and I think those steering this ship need to sit with that for a while.
@TechConnectify There is actually a term for choice overload. Look into the "paradox of choice." Its fascinating stuff.
@EddiKat I'm using Trader Joe's as an example of this as it's a well-known case study of this very phenomenon! It is legitimately a huge part of their success.
I could also compare Linux/Windows/MacOS in a similar vein but I won't because dear god
@TechConnectify Probably for the best. Down that road exists only pain.
@TechConnectify @EddiKat actual user study (albeit from 2001) that looked at this phenomenon in the Gnome desktop, it makes for interesting reading:
@fraggle @TechConnectify @EddiKat That study has interesting conclusions, but I'm not sure I agree with the general theme of "Users couldn't figure this out, so we shouldn't do that".
The approach seems to be to make Gnome so feature-limited that it's difficult to do the wrong thing, even accidentally.
That actually explains why Gnome looks how it does today - and also why a lot of people refuse to use it. If you disagree with it's approach, your only alternative is something other than Gnome.
@davidga @TechConnectify @EddiKat well if you think about it, that's a perfectly valid answer to give. "A desktop that anyone is able to use" doesn't necessarily mean "a desktop that satisfies everyone's desires". It's not like Linux has a lack of alternative desktops you can try instead
@fraggle @davidga @EddiKat yeah, this is kinda the whole thing I'm seeing here.
Mastodon lets you have an incredibly well-tailored experience which will often have friction with the broader "Just Wants to Post Stuff" population.
If the Just Wants to Post Stuff population keeps having run-ins with the "excuse me, but I have a filter set up that only works if you always label posts about snails with hashtag slimetime" or whatever... well they'll just leave.
@TechConnectify @fraggle @davidga @EddiKat one element that distinguishes it from e.g. heavy customization in a desktop ui is that sophisticated customization in a communication medium also also brings with it semiotic significance. Just as choosing a word instead of another (even synonymous) word impacts the meaning of a spoken sentence, so does using or refraining from using a given feature come to have meaning and values attached to it on a platform like the fediverse.
@TechConnectify @EddiKat Trader Joe's only works because you trust their brand will be high quality. If there was no choice and it was low quality it would have failed by now. So I'd say it's both limited choices but the ones there are are quality.