if you are writing a feature request, please try and be clear about what problem you face, as well as explaining the feature you think will improve things
it really does make a huge difference.
it'll let the admins weigh up their options, rather than photocopying from the engagement factory—and maybe in the future other people will be wanting to copy cohost instead.
(edit: i wrote a whole post about this, but this summary is the most important part, so i've put it at the top. if you're into it, there's a whole post underneath, but you don't have to read it)
not to be a big whiny baby, but it must be extra tiring to hear "why isn't it like twitter?" when you set out to build something that wasn't twitter, or even a replacement for twitter.
for example: over on the fediverse, someone got very upset with the maintainers about not having quote tweets.
although the maintainer gave a thorough explanation, detailing the negative consequences, of the behaviours it encouraged, it wasn't enough. fast forward through a very long thread and you end up seeing "mastodon is anti-free software". it felt like the punchline of some onion article come to life. my head is still spinning, frankly.
anyway, if we put aside the one or two very loud nerds, there's still going to be people asking for new features, often ones they already know how to use, and usually very politely too.
there are still problems, however.
twitter has been such a dominant platform that often people just can't imagine software working any other way—be it retweets, quote tweets, message length limits, or stuff like "every post comes with a summary of metrics"
for example: people are used to twitter's "everyone you follow is public knowledge", and have already asked cohost to do the same. i can understand why: i use this feature to pre-emptively block nazis and terfs, but so far i haven't missed this feature on cohost. unlike twitter, cohost actually blocks nazis and terfs.
sometimes a feature isn't a necessarily a solution, but a workaround to an unfixed problem
another example: people want a way to leave short replies like "i saw this" or "heh" without replying to a comment, and it regularly gets explained as "why can't I like comments?", even though "liking comments" comes with a whole load of unintended baggage—be it social pressure for receipts, or turning a discussion into a spectator sport.
sometimes a feature can cause more problems than it solves. sometimes features have unintended consequences.
in particular: twitter's features aren't always designed to make things better, they're usually designed to boost engagement. personally? i don't want another hell site, even if some of the features have benign uses.
this is why i have a polite request: if you are writing a feature request, please try and be clear about what problem you face, as well as explaining the feature you think will improve things
it really does make a huge difference.
t'll let the admins weigh up their options, rather than photocopying from the engagement factory—and maybe in the future other people will be wanting to copy cohost instead.
