Scott M. Stolz

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 22:48:18 -0500

Sean Tilley wrote the following post Tue, 24 Jan 2023 22:32:02 -0500

@ev There's a lot of cool things going on with the wider #fediverse. Many of the ever-growing platforms are capable of interoperability through federation, and many are also getting specialized clients. There's some interesting research going into permissions systems and privacy.

A while back, I wrote about some of the emergent concepts of what's brewing, and what could eventually form an absolutely incredible platform: https://deadsuperhero.com/2022/02/towards-a-greater-federated-architecture/

Ema エマ

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 09:09:17 -0500

Yeah I read that article when it came out.
So you think the concerns by @Sean Tilley will be minimized by your new UI approach for Hubzilla, @Scott M. Stolz ?

Scott M. Stolz

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 09:23:00 -0500

@Emanuel I think that is an important part of it, but I think it will take a concerted effort of the following:

New themes.
Better navigation tailored for newbies.
High profile example websites (public hubs).
Purpose-specific forks (i.e. apps that use Streams or Hubzilla as a base, but that have a different use case).
Better documentation.
Better technical specifications so others projects can incorporate the same technology.

Changing the user interface will be a major leap forward, but more has to be done if we want people to adopt this technology.

Some examples for purpose-specific forks include: a website that delivers courses, or a federated project management system, or a recipe website. These are different enough to not be direct competitors to Hubzilla, and we can point to them saying that Hubzilla is not the only platform that adopts these technologies.

The high profile websites (public hubs) are important too. We need to get people onto the platform so they see the benefits of these features first hand. Once people get a taste, they will start asking why other platforms don't have these advanced features.

But, as you mentioned, the user interface is important. If people don't have a good user experience, they will leave, even if the features are awesome.