As I'm sure a lot of you will know, I've put in a lot of effort to help this project as best I can. I don't code but I know the issue list, and for non-code issues I can redirect duplicates and such.
If there's an issue I think has merit I'll post it here and help average non-coding users learn how to support a feature request.
I've made UI suggestions and mock-ups that have been implemented.
A while back I got anxious about whether or not my efforts were wanted, because I was never thanked or acknowledged, but I stayed because sometimes my ideas were carried out, right? And I posted about it here.
I got a WAVE of gratitude and appreciation and support from non-coders and non-contributors, thanking me. I was a little overwhelmed.
They said that I spoke up for things that coders would never recognise, and made it all more accessible. They said that devs NEED non-coders and people like me to report bugs and ask for changes, because they forget what it's like when you don't code.
There is no way I could ever fork the project myself! I ask for changes sometimes because I want something that works for me and people like me. But I've been told to #ForkOff so many times - it's the standard response when you're a user and you ask for something that the dev doesn't really get.
When most of the devs are straight white cis men and you don't code, if your experiences are met with #ForkOff, a website that is made only for people NOT like you is inevitable.
Ultimately every FOSS project like this that I've run into is (or becomes) selfish in this way.
This is hard to describe. It's like... in FOSS we are meant to all have equal power. But devs sometimes think that means we should all have equal skill, and if they can fork the project so can I. And if I can't, it's just because I haven't learnt how to code then that's just a formality and a matter of time and work, and I can go and do that.
"I only want to code something for me, and you are lucky that I am willing to share it." And that is true! I am lucky!
But the truth is that projects like this NEED the bug reports and feature requests and mock-ups and complaints by newbies and non-coders. No developer is so good that they can make something without that!
And if the developer or developers are all safe men who push anyone they don't understand away, they will ONLY EVER MAKE A WEBSITE THAT WORKS FOR SAFE MEN.
I have been saying from the start that this place gets MORE "well actually" and hostility for me than Twitter, and a lot of people told me it wasn't true. I'm starting to understand why that is.
It's because the people telling me these things are safe men, and I am a nonbinary non-coder, and I visibly try to get involved in a project when I can't code. I try to get involved as a user.
I have to block SO MANY White Man Avatars on here, so many more than I have to block TERFs on Twitter as a person who shouts about being trans and having trans experiences, even!
Here's a chunk of my regex filters on the federated timeline. I had to do this because otherwise my federated timeline was unreadable as a non-coder, no matter which instance I was on.
I have been sealioned and well-actuallyed when saying the fediverse is not diverse.
White men and furries and trans women is not diverse, people! I LOVE that furries and trans women have a home here, I really do! But the presence of a single marginalised group is not diversity!
@viomi Cisgender women, people of colour, disabled people, people of more extreme ages, people who post about their sexuality things (asexual people, for example)...
@cassolotl@viomi One of the main reasons I haven't entirely left is that there are substantial communities of Black & Indigenous users & the Fediverse does not have the same.
My feed is massively more diverse than anything I've been able to create here, & I have been trying. This sort of thing is never a coincidence IME. If a platform becomes or even just stays fairly white over time, attrition is def happening.
@shoutcacophony@Cobalt@viomi The response is always "invite your diverse friends!" and we do, but like... it's hostile for them here so they leave very quickly. Any time someone says "I'm off, this place is just like any other white dev dudebro place" or whatever I'm like, yeah, you're right, and I kinda hate a little bit that I'm still here! But... I love the idea and it has such potential and it's very usable. :/
And invites from enthused white ppl mean nothing when we're vouching for other white ppl, again IME. Hell, I don't want endorsements from white ppl. I don't really fully trust a place until I see that a lot of WOC have a strong guiding voice in it, which is why I didn't get active on here for so long; I was waiting for #Speekin, & still kinda am. Masto is my compromise platform. 🤷🏻♀️
Speekin looks interesting. If the intent (as I'm gathering from what I could find on here about it, which is next to nothing) is to move Twitter wholesale without nazis, that's promising. It'd be great if more people figured out how to discourse (tm) without it turning into *actual* hostilities at times, but it'd be a definite improvement, regardless.
@Cobalt@cassolotl@viomi "I'm done with nazis and the supposedly anti-fascist (yeah, right) platforms that enable them, I all but don't care what I have to put up with to get that" was the primary reason i left
The thing I really liked about Speekin was that he was deliberately and intentionally choosing a core of users based on their knowledge of what's oppressive an to whom and how, so that they set the norms that would otherwise be set by the kinds of early adopters other platforms get. And then they invite people they trust to get it, and hopefully by the time things are fully open the culture is solid.
And then there's the accessibility! We've got a (bad) image description UI and people make "add image descriptions for visually impaired users" posts that do the rounds all the time, but VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE AREN'T HERE because there are many things about the Mastodon UI that are not usable to people with screenreaders!
So yeah, I'm white, and I'm not a woman, and I'm technically-minded and want to be involved in the project, and this whole website and the Github issue list and the Discord for devs are very hostile for me.
Anyone less like safe men than me will have it worse. This project is wonderful, and I appreciate the work that Gargron and everyone else does, but it is a hostile and thankless near-monoculture and I have to fight to be here.
@verityvirtue Ohhhh yeah fair enough! This same thing, it just keeps coming up over and over like it's on a cycle, and each time it gets bigger, and this time it hasn't gone away after 24 hours. :o So it has indeed been drifting around for a couple of days. Oof.
@cassolotl I've been around tech for decades, and I feel like that.
i feel like i have an equivalent or better sense of community here than i did on twitter, but a) also with a huge chunk of the community i did have there being much smaller in numbers (WOC especially), and b) that sense of community is in spite of the dominant monoculture on here, not because of it.
so i guess the real deal here is "maybe i don't have that after all, in a lot of ways."
@zeezeemoomoo Not devs-only, you can join if you contribute to the Patreon or Liberapay or you're an admin too. (Hence me being there - I contribute on Patreon/Liberapay.)
@zeezeemoomoo Totally fair, it's not great at all. When I saw Gargron talk about it he said that (hugely paraphrasing here) he doesn't have the energy/attention for the Entire Mastoverse to chip in opinions about everything all the time, and so he wants people to be making a measurable contribution, ie: money, admining, developing, etc.
@cassolotl thats really creepy and elitist. I mean it makes sense to have a developer only channel to some extent butbeing able to pay to get in? that kinda goes against the whole point of having free software if you can pay to get it changed the way you want
@cassolotl@zeezeemoomoo you also have to be willing to link your patron and your discord to get an invite (i dont know how the librepay invites are handled) and I’m not exactly eager to let either of those companies have more access to data about me than absolutely necessary
@Satsuma@zeezeemoomoo I mean, you don't - you can message them and say "hi I'm a Patreon, can I be in?" - much the same as with Liberapay, which has no formal linky thing.
Its not actually a huge deal but more a subset of the general ‘man its unfortunate that building open source platforms relies on users having access to like ten different closed source platforms’ feelings I have which is why it bothers me
@Satsuma@zeezeemoomoo Yeah, you have to know how to contact them! I wonder if just messaging Gargron would be enough! But anyway, not relevant because it sounds like you're not very into the idea. I can very much understand your frustrations. :(
@cassolotl@zeezeemoomoo depending on how this particular patch of discourse plays out I may try to get access to the server (i do have a discord, i just dislike the fact that i have one) so i can be more effectively vocal - the alternative being switching my mastodon pledge money to whoever’s dev-ing the new fork :)
@Satsuma@zeezeemoomoo "(i do have a discord, i just dislike the fact that i have one)" - Same. :D I have no problem with proprietary software, but I find Discord really hard to use for some reason!
Anyway, if you would like an invite I can probably ask on the Discord server for you - like "hey Satsu supports the project financially, can you give me an invite link I can send to them?"
@cassolotl@zeezeemoomoo thank you for the offer! Will definitely ask you to do so if I decide to keep my pledge & @.ing him doesn’t work (i imagine he gets enough of those that its easy to just miss a bunch)
@cassolotl Wow. Breathtaking. I offered you a footnote relevant to your accessibility comment in a helpful spirit. Your own hostility here is unwarranted. And in light of the forgoing thread, in my case as a minority, ironic.
@Shufei I'm angry and your post was insensitive! And people new to Mastodon are not going to find Brutaldon without significant work! I really appreciate that you want to help, but this is not the time or the place, I am not asking for help or advice!
@cassolotl Can I gently point out that not all visually impaired people are screenreader users, and even fewer are full-time users.
I'm not at all saying that things shouldn't be more accessible, I've volunteered to do accessibility if there is a fork. But I have found almost as many visually impaired mutuals here as I did in many years of twitter.
is that there are substantial communities of Black & Indigenous users & the Fediverse does not have the same. 
Yes
#ForkOff Show more
Ultimately every FOSS project like this that I've run into is (or becomes) selfish in this way.
This is hard to describe. It's like... in FOSS we are meant to all have equal power. But devs sometimes think that means we should all have equal skill, and if they can fork the project so can I. And if I can't, it's just because I haven't learnt how to code then that's just a formality and a matter of time and work, and I can go and do that.
(I can't.)
#ForkOff