Eighth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

It's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )

Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Coding

[(Anonymous)]

Saw an MK Fain post from a while back; I like her but I have Thoughts on it. xD

Post:

https://soapbox.pub/blog/take-down-big-tech-with-great-ux/

Post it references:

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2640786/why-foss-is-still-so-unusable.html

I found it odd that MK took this article seriously, because this man is an idiot. Evidence:

> "it’s hard to see how the FOSS movement will ever deliver anything of lasting value to the larger IT community.”

Straight away, this is a guy who has no idea how much of the world's infrastructure depends on FOSS.

But anyway. Yeah, everyone knows that the reason foss projects have less uptake is because they're less usable. That's not news to anyone who works on them. The issue really does just come back to the idea that for work to be done, someone actually needs to do it. This man spends a whole article whinging that nobody else is doing work he wants done...

> another reason many FOSS projects fail on usability: arrogance. “many FOSS developers don’t try to make their products more usable or accessible because, frankly, they don’t care if anyone ever uses them,”

I wouldn't describe it as arrogance to not want to tailor things to this guy's tastes for free. If he doesn't want to write code himself, his dude is free to start a company, or several companies, financing whatever FOSS projects he wants. But looks like he doesn't want to:

> Others resist change, or worse still, pass the buck by inviting those making the suggestions to "patch it themselves" (the classic FOSS "source code shuffle")

> In fact, if you don't have something to contribute to the project, they'd rather you simply disappeared and left them alone to continue on their endless quest to write even more pointless code.

wah wah wah nobody will work for me for free

("they tell me to actually help when i drive by to complain; the CHEEK of it!")

Back to the MK Fain article:

> In a recent debate over the direction of Fediverse software, one regular contributor admitted that he was uninterested in improving usability or supporting the growth of the network, stating, “the way I build software is mostly for myself and friends. Normies mostly aren’t in that demographic.”

> This brazen statement finally confirmed long-held suspicions within the community: many FOSS contributors are intentionally creating generally bad and unusable software with the specific goal of keeping the masses away. These sorts of contributors prefer being a big fish in a small pond, and any growth to the community is perceived as a risk to their limited status.

This was the point I realised this was just a project-squabble turned into a blogpost. But, lol, what's wrong with using your free time to make a project that suits YOU? :P

As for barriers to entry, idk about in software dev communities, but in discussion communities, yeah, I absolutely put some in on purpose. Not as a status thing, but just because I want one corner of the internet where I can have a decent fucking conversation. Most of the net is terrible. "Normies" (lol) can already go anywhere and be happy about it. I can totally see why a dev would leave out handholding from their project, if they only wanted contributors with experience and didn't have the time or energy to help anyone new get started.

I find it weird to moralise about it, anyway.

All in all, good luck, but projects differ and growth of a project isn't necessarily success.

Re: Coding

[(Anonymous)]

(also at the start I should have said: less usable for the majority. They're often MORE usable, but tailored to minority tastes that aren't visible to most people. So you'll get eg: software that works much better than the mainstream offering on the commandline, but looks like shit in the browser.)

Re: Coding

[(Anonymous)]

(ALSO the dude's article is like 10+ years old, so FOSS had less visibility and status back then, but MK's article is from 2022. And there was still plenty of infrastructure around in 2010 anyway...)

(WE DON'T CHOOSE OUR FANDOMS OUR FANDOMS CHOOSE US)