Saphire Lattice❄️🌙

@magenta-luna

Rawr!

she/her, shi/hir
saphi.re/

Name's Saphire, but also go by Luna. Dragoness, somewhat cybernetic, mildly moon-y, like programming and fancy looking things~

I'm also on fediverse/Mastodon too: @saphire@dragon.style, and check out my site and the projects on it! 💜

20+ 🎂 April 6th

Saphire Lattice❄️🌙@magenta-luna1/16/2023, 11:34 AM

walking mirage @atomicthumbs

@garudina1/13/2023, 7:15 PM

Dear Cohost,

who is this message for? if I have someone silenced, it's because I don't want to see their posts. I could just block everyone whose posts I don't want to see, but I hate doing that for a variety of reasons. please stop telling me about these posts.
as a user of "your website" I am logged into "your website" right now. if I would need to log into something else to receive technical support or suggest features for "your website" I will instead simply Not Do That.

this second is a historical problem with social websites. having a second system for handling technical support/administrative issues/otherwise receiving an audience with the site owners makes it so only a tiny fraction of people will actually engage with that system, which is always the beginning of a long slide down into Hell depending on who actually invests the time and energy to get this access

walking mirage @atomicthumbs1/16/2023, 8:23 AM

the second one bothers me because i have seen folks and friends say "i guess i'm not gonna use the site" when they have an issue and the solution to getting it addressed is "register an account on a forum that works completely differently and is hidden behind several links."

i suspect it marginalizes people who aren't either fairly invested in cohost, or used to jumping through technological hoops.

edit: not saying I have a good solution to this problem, to be clear. The old "report a bug!" form would have required a lot of manual intervention and work unless (and even if) one is extraordinarily comprehensive with Freshdesk ticketing/email automation, and it doesn't allow people to click an "I have this problem too" button on bugs or "I also want this" button on features.

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in reply to @garudina's post:

www.coolstation.space @warc1/13/2023, 8:03 PM

this is because the alternative is erasing the entire thread from your timeline if one silenced user posts on it, regardless of who else has been sharing it, including yourself. Users complained about it, so you have An Option.

@garudina1/13/2023, 8:58 PM

is there not a button I can push to "not see the chosts that were made by this user, regardless of who rechosts them"? I'm not all that worried about who comments on stuff

www.coolstation.space @warc1/13/2023, 9:11 PM

from a design perspective it sounds like hell... you'd have threads full of replies and rechosts to nonexistent content. It's probably something they could just give you an option to suppress entirely, but if you don't wanna see your friends replying to blank lines, it's probably either this, or you just miss that thread entirely.

"someone you dont like is at the party, fyi" vs. "youre not invited, since you dont like X"

... and you already said you didn't want to use the block, which is probably the actual solution.

godspeed you! big animal @niss1/14/2023, 1:01 AM

the thing is, this box only shows up (that i have seen) if you click the "n new posts!" banner, and one of those involves someone you silenced. any other time, like if you reload the page, the whole post would be hidden. so why not here

蒸しルビー @YuushaRuby1/16/2023, 8:38 AM

yeah I think it's just a bug that it shows up at all, I've noticed the same behavior when clicking on new posts pop up

PinballsWizard @pinball1/16/2023, 3:25 PM

related, seeing "n comments" and then loading the post and seeing n-1 comments, i can see that someone muted was here

in reply to @atomicthumbs's post:

jack @JackDotJS1/16/2023, 11:03 AM

i really wish more people would talk about this. i guarantee this is the #1 reason we don't see more activity on the suggestions/bug report forums.

the simplest* solution would be to just let people use their existing cohost accounts to sign in, similar to "login with google/facebook/github". it baffles me that they haven't done this to begin with.

*for users, anyway

meredith @meredith1/16/2023, 2:57 PM

Yeah I think it's safe to assume the issue is human time and sorting out any odd cases / mismatches. They could add an oauth server to the main site and configure a client on the second that doesn't require the usual approval page but they'd also need to have a "pick your identity" interstitial to pick one of your pages to use for name and icon or the oauth only gets email and you have to re-enter a new nick and avatar there etc

walking mirage @atomicthumbs1/16/2023, 6:26 PM

that would mean integrating Cohost and Freshdesk authentication, which is an extremely non-trivial task

jack @JackDotJS1/16/2023, 6:36 PM

i realize that, but it would still make a monumentally huge difference in making the forums easier to access for many, many people. i honestly think it'd be worth it.

at the very least, they could probably implement "sign-in with [x]" type authentication, so ppl wouldnt have to worry about remembering yet another password

ROTSHARP, mirror-ape ogre @rotsharp1/16/2023, 11:56 AM

my brain is mostly rotten cheese rn and i simply dont remember there is a forum when people are not talking about the forum

Osmose @Osmose1/16/2023, 5:51 PM

The problem is that, to do that, either you build the support app yourself, or you use a support vendor and integrate your auth system with them somehow. Both are significant amounts of work and it's not clear that they result in a meaningful benefit (i.e. the UX may still drive off folks or they might have never been invested enough to submit a formal suggestion anyway).

The third alternative is just letting people post in the normal feed but we've seen already that the visibility and discourse quality of those posts isn't great in a post context vs a help center context.

Draggo @Draggo1/17/2023, 12:17 AM

Yeah I agree with you.

All this does is make me want to just look at the post anyways. I dealt with this on many sites where I blocked them and it'd still show me their profile and their posts. I have BPD so I have problems with looking at peoples pages that I've had bad experiences with. Blocking them generally makes me stop.
Yeah I don't like this either. I already had issues with Discord on how they changed their font to something that strains my eyes, and I had to log into another account to write a ticket saying I don't like the new font. It's ridiculous. :(

eevee @lexyeevee1/17/2023, 4:53 PM

one advantage of separate sign-in systems is that people can report relatively personal issues without giving away who they are on cohost (since feature requests, at least, are public)

i'm surprised this is a falling-off point though since like... how do you even report a bug to e.g. twitter? i have no idea. i think you just complain about it and hope you go viral enough for a twitter employee to see