The important thing to consider is that the inconvenience of setting this up is measurable and real, and there’s only so much coping one can do about it before the final answer is “no this is trash” to someone who isn’t invested ideologically in this.

@NEETzsche
@theorytoe @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @meso
It took longer than I had expected and yes, they do have e-mail verification now — and that was the longest part. Average user probably won't be using a VPN exit point for signing up and won't have to enter ReCAPTCHA, and will definitely not get prompted about using ntfy for notifications. "Help us improve…" — it's good that they even ask.
Overall — not bad at all.
Can anyone do Discord?

@NEETzsche
I don't think it's as bad as some try to paint it — I use Matrix for communicating with my non tech-savvy friends and family — all of them managed to signup without any help from me, including my mom and girls who prefer Instagram as their primary social media, none of them are bad with computers though.
My mom often complains that it takes a couple of seconds to decrypt bigger images — but that's what Telegram doesn't even have.
@theorytoe @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @meso

So, here’s me getting into my Discord server. I did have to do a CAPTCHA and enter a birthdate, but notice how it dropped me directly into the server. I also didn’t have to install an app. It’s clear from your video that Element has seen a lot of improvement, which is to their credit.

@NEETzsche @theorytoe @dcc @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso what happened to discord creating temporary accounts? i remember back when i got on this was a 0 step onboarding process, youd open the link to a server and there you are, temporary account, nothing to do. and then from there you could change nick/pfp/set a handle and add your email to verify it
that was good onboarding.

Yes, I’d say this is a step backwards. There are other UI advantages to Discord, like most notably the “servers” (guilds) structure where one server has many channels and roles and blah blah blah. I play TTRPGs online and that’s a big boon.

@NEETzsche @theorytoe @dcc @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso yeah, matrix communities are such an awful hack. they are literally just doing matrix and then making all the spec and everything revolve around it. they have SUCH power to do it properly, which is not hard its such a basic concept, but instead the just take existing channels (and users!) and group them in some wholy other new item but weirdly, like it has users but its not in line with the contained channels and you still have to join each individually
its so dumb, its literally just a directory for matrix basically. and i think it might be element specific? but i forget
atleast the discord metaphor kinda makes sense comparing to irc. one server, with many channels, even if redefining server, but i suppose matrix is close in this regard, in a bad way, and still worse.
xmpp has a spec in the works for MIX instead of MUC which should allows similar but has the same design flaws as the matrix one and generally seems destined for faliure
its not hard to do even if its a hack! just group them in join/leave and users aswell

@NEETzsche
Element has also seen a downgrade in fact. Like I said, when I've been signing up and it was still called Riot — there was no email verification, they probably just couldn't come up with better anti-spam measure. I think you can not have one on your server.And I've just checked — they do have invite links, I didn't even think of that as I've never used this function. And they even offer a selection of clients if you follow such a link
@theorytoe @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @meso

@NEETzsche
I think they also have some embeddable thing — so, same temporary accounts. I'm just not sure it works for matrix.org
And they of course could've got rid of the terms of service and telemetry questions and do it like Discord does "By clicking okay you agree to this and that…" — but it's good that they didn't, I'd probably not trust them with such an "improvement". Overall it's perfectly balanced now, not night and day difference.
@theorytoe @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @meso

I’ve considered writing a federated Discord clone with the guilds structure and so on but it’s just such a time-consuming task. But at this point I think the thing that will save federated services is focusing on UI/UX, and Pleroma/forks have been doing great at that.

I think the next step here is rich presence, but for these chat services they still need a lot of work. They need to implement something to the effect of the guilds structure from Discord, they still need custom emoji reacts, and so on.

@NEETzsche @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso
I am one of the opinion that putting federation into the chat service might be more of a hassle than its worth
especially for instant messaging

but I could be entirely wrong

I think they’re just doing it wrong

@NEETzsche @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso
thats honestly what I think too
but it seems like people end up getting attached to the protocol too much and forget about the service itself

HEWE GO YAW

@theorytoe It's an issue of how it's designed. I usually frame this sort of dichotomy as top down versus bottom up, but I think this time it's best to frame it in terms of inside out versus outside in.

Let me elaborate on what I mean by that. Inside out is when you design the backend and work your way outward to the UI. Outside in is when you design the UI and then work your way into the back end. I think the mistake they made was leaning very heavily into the former. They really fleshed out the back end. But then they only implemented front ends that are sort of a proof of concept, and in the case of Element, they're now just starting to escape that problem.

Considering how events work in matrix, it's actually feasible to implement a Discord like system outright. Just create a new client that sends Events that are designed in that way. For example, if you frame a channel as a guild, just start issuing Events that specify which subchannel they're in. That sort of thing.

The more I think about this, the more I'm coming to the idea that we can salvage Matrix by just writing a new client that abandons this pretense of being compatible with any of the other clients, and we just make up a new Event structure that suits our needs more.

Let's sleep on that for a bit. This could be genius. This could be total retardation. Let's not jump to conclusions.

@dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso

@NEETzsche @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @m0xee @meso
:marseythonk: interesting I see what you mean
I think the ui-first approach would definitely be a benefit overall. Though if it is federated I think the best approach is to keep the overall protocol as simple as possible and only implement the needs of the ui. With that it would be really eassy to make new backends/frontends/clients (assuming this is federated) and would lead to a hopefully richer environment of stuff to choose from.

@NEETzsche
Stickers are also horrible in Matrix — and I think there are two separate implementations: one that you can add to your room as an extension and your own personal ones. The latter are accessible in e.g. Fluffy chat and they are synced across devices so it's definitely not some client-specific thing, but I don't know of any way to post those in Element 🤷
@theorytoe @dcc @maija @dushman @sun_eater @meso