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With each new #Facebook scandal like the recent WhatsApp-related one, the #Fediverse welcomes a wave of new users and admins. #Friendica gets its tiny share of the newly converted to decentralized social media. Some stick, most don't, but there's always this one guy (it's always a man) whose first few messages on GitHub are to angrily complain that Friendica isn't user-friendly enough and that it is spelling doom for a project they didn't know the day before and for the #Fediverse as a whole.

This has been going on ever since I joined the project in 2016, and we're still here. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ
#friendica #fediverse #facebook
utzer [Friendica]
utzer [Friendica]  
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@Hypolite Petovan joined as a Programmer or as a user?

When did @Michael Vogel join?

How did you two happen to start programming for Friendica?
@Hypolite Petovan @Michael Vogel
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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For myself, both! I first installed Diaspora late 2016, but I grew frustrated of not being to contribute to Diaspora and through Diaspora podmins, I heard about Friendica, GNU Social and Hubzilla. I installed all three, and finally decided on Friendica as my social and programming home.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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Hubzilla was confusing to use, even for me, and the theme was severely outdated. Friendica was simpler to use, and @Rabuzarus had the frio theme going that won me over for Friendica.
@Rabuzarus
Chad Walter Cummings
Chad Walter Cummings  
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Well, My problem was finding a good guide to get it all installed and working as it should.

https://tonyteaches.tech/postfix-gmail-smtp-on-ubuntu/
I ended up using this guide to get postfix to work.

https://websiteforstudents.com/setup-friendica-on-ubuntu-18-04-16-04-with-nginx/
I then followed this guide to get it to work because Apache2 Hates me and plus I like nginx more.

I even used certbot so I didn't have to do a self-signed cert. After all that I set up my admin account and said "hell yeah" when I got that E-mail from my Friendica node.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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My initial gripe wasn't that Friendica would somehow be user-friendly, it most definitely could use some improvement in that department, and I'm sorry about that. But you made it, congratulations! And unless you're the person I'm thinking about, you didn't complain to us all the way through!
Chad Walter Cummings
Chad Walter Cummings  
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Well, I don't make complaints on GitHub so I'm most likely not the person you are thinking about. I do thank you for the congratulations though as it was rather fun putting together a node. I will most defiantly stick with it.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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Excellent, feel free to reach out for any question you may have.
utzer [Friendica]
utzer [Friendica]  
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@Chad Walter Cummings instead of postfix it is surely easier to use msmtp. Just if you ever need smtp mail again on a Linux server.
@Chad Walter Cummings
Pierre Bernardeau
Pierre Bernardeau  
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@utzer@Chad Walter Cummings Just is over Ed msmtp this week. I wonder how I didnโ€™t find out this wonderful piece of software earlier.
@utzer [Friendica] @Chad Walter Cummings
Chad Walter Cummings
Chad Walter Cummings  
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Well, I'll look into it for next time. I got the idea to use postfix from hak5 but the video they made about it was 5 years old.
This entry was edited (3 years ago)
Pierre Bernardeau
Pierre Bernardeau  
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@Hypolite Petovan not friendly enough ??? Maybe because there is no mobile app with annoying notifications on iPhone. I am trying to explain to my friends why notifications are bad in our lives. I have to write something about that. If you want to try something not friendly, join me on freenet ;)
@Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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They obviously had very high expectations coming to Friendica that we didn't meet, and thought it was a good idea to tell us about it in a condescending manner. ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ
tallship
tallship  
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Yeah I've been seeing those types my entire life. It's not just the Fediverse, or Friendica.

What I've also noticed about those people is they seem to complain the loudest when they wish for something to be improved, but expect that someone else should do it for them for free.
chillzardโœ”๏ธ
chillzardโœ”๏ธ  
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Maybe next time they can better explain what aspects in terms of 'user friendliness' friendica can improve.
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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To be frank, I'd rather not. Over the years we've received similar reports and complaints about the same areas of Friendica, install (un)ease, confusing and/or dated interface, poor onboarding, sporadic and heterogenous documentation.

So we absolutely know the pain points of using Friendica, including because we use it ourselves, but these are domains that aren't very gratifying to work on for most of us core developers, so we don't spend much of our limited volunteering time on them and they simply don't improve as a result.

So we don't need someone else to point out what is painfully obvious for us. Of course we always welcome respectful feedback, but at this point we don't necessarily need additional feedback about Friendica's user-friendliness or lack thereof.
Anubis2814
Anubis2814  
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I think I first tried it out in 2019, it was still having issues. I just waited and then tried maybe half a year later in intervals until it reached a point that it got to my level of standards and then made tutorials for it so that others could understand what I didn't before. I feel like last year was when it reached its real stride. It may be counterintuitive to the casual user, but it's like the difference between adobe photoshop editor and to other social media platform's Microsoft paint because its filling all the niches of social media. It is all the social media platforms ever created combined into one. I love that I can make recommendations and have them taken seriously even though it may take a while because the developers are working for free or from donations. I'm always looking forward to seeing what new feature comes out now in the quarterly upgrades.
Anubis2814
Anubis2814  
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I think part of it is they are used to dealing with giant faceless corporations that will never actually listen any way. I know that once i got very detailed feedback and extra questions on github it boosted my feeling of community engagement. There aren't elites who cntrol our online experiences at a whim or for more ad revenue, they genuinely care about making it a good experience and act like they don't know everything and see a new good idea when they hear one but also know if its doable or not at this stage. Not also being condescending is one of the developers biggest strong points. Also app development especially apple apps probably requires a different skill set than building this site
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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You're absolutely right, mobile apps development requires a wholly different skill set than the Friendica website or API.
Marco R.
Marco R.  
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App development for Apple requires also a MacOS Computer and GPL software cannot be used (incompatible with Appstore rules).
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