Forest @forestjohnson@pixie.town

@joepie91 @riley I don't think it matters that much whether its a docker container, OS package, git clone, etc. All of those work with ghost.

Point I was trying to make is, ghost is more self-contained, it "just works", it has its own sqlite that it uses if you don't configure a db connection, for example. Its minimum viable setup documentation is at **least** 3 times shorter than oldschool WordPress.

And hey, if someone uses one of those sysadmin app store projects, chances are they're a click away from a working secure config for ghost that receives updates.

Docker may not solve maintenance but in my experience it makes maintenance way easier, but that's neither here nor there. Some people like it some people hate it. But I'll say I've been using ghost for about 8 years, most of that time in docker, and besides having to do some maintenance on my custom template, I've had zero problems. I never had to go into the container to fix something, just upload the new version of the template into the web UI. Or take / restore a backup using the web UI.

The point of what I'm talking about: this software does not force me to live in the CLI. I can set it up once in CLI and barely touch it besides version upgrades for like 8 years. And when i do have to go into CLI, i'm always just editing docker compose. When I update the image version, no need to worry about nodejs version conflicts with other apps or anything like that.

@riley @joepie91 @ariadne@treehouse.systems

Not to mention the very platform we are talking on right now is a testament to the progress made towards breaking down barriers between users and admins.

Mastodon / other ActivityPub projects have a lot of the same pain points that wordpress did, or worse, but the fact that this network exists at all and is growing (it seems to have achieved enough "network effect" to "take off", i.e., its not going to disappear in a year) is definitely something.

5-10 years ago those "this just isn't possible" people would have claimed that something like the ActivityPub network will never happen because its too hard for sysadmins to build and maintain something that users will continue to choose to use _**instead of**_ something like twitter.

@riley @joepie91 @ariadne@treehouse.systems

Well first of all there has been a proliferation of "sysadmin app-store" projects that dramatically cut down on the amount of linux config work that folks have to do in order to do web publishing on their own hardware or to operate their own web services. Here are some of them:

https://coopcloud.tech/
https://nextcloud.com/
https://yunohost.org/
https://syncloud.org/
https://freedombox.org/

Second of all, more and more important "types of things" are seeing new application releases that have dramatically improved usability for the sysadmin -- remember how much of a massive PITA it was to set up WordPress? Well now you can set up Ghost with just a single `docker compose up`. In the past if you wanted to host your own video livestream... Good luck. It would have been very arcane and prone to the reliability issues that joepie was talking about. But now there is https://owncast.online which is very simple to set up and works reliably every time.

IMO Owncast is a great case study / inspiration on a very usable app that is friendly to the less-technical sysadmin. Gabe did an amazing job with it within the technical limitations and challenges of live video streaming... I would love to see more apps like this and honestly I think we will.

@joepie91 @riley @ariadne@treehouse.systems

Maybe off topic but IMO attacking the distinction between sysadmin and end-user is a lot more interesting and actionable, plus it has a recent history full of big wins.

@gabek Anyone who criticizes Gitea's UI/UX will be instantly checkmated because the UI is identical to GitHub

@gabek Or just because its not exactly identical to twitch.tv

@gabek

> like "Could use polish" or "Needs a better design"

tbh i wouldn't be surprised if people sometimes say stuff like this just because it's fashionable to say :(

@gabek They're all at work collecting Ores to pay off their Mortgages 😞​

@gabek Honestly I think you have been doing a great job, whoever is complaining about owncast's UI is just meme-ing or something IMO.

You made a bunch of design choices, like insisting on keeping things as simple as possible, that I think really helped.

I'm sorta curious to hear what concrete things people point to and say that it's bad UI. Are they saying the viewer experience is bad or the streamer experience is bad?

In terms of how to "fix" it, I would recommend just taking a moment to re-contextualize what these people are saying; rest easy knowing that you created a really great tool with best-in-class usability. IMO there will always be negativity around anything even if what you did was perfect.

Sure, it can always be improved, but I think largely, the complaints about open/free software UI are not about Owncast.

I don't know if I believe that it's possible to fix those problems, to for example, fix the usability issues in SSH and CLIs and the linux man pages, C, all the old stuff. It would be like trying to force people to change how they speak, read, and write English to make it predictably phonetic like German. It's just not going to happen.

IMO there has to be some meeting in the middle, computer users have to grow thicker skin and bring a little bit of motivation into their computer use, instead of letting the computer use them.

At the same time, IMO developers have to abandon old norms like manuals that start with "how to read this manual", and build new norms around obvious "intuitive" affordances, airtight error handling of processes, honest communication with the user (checklists over progress bars), and error messages that always contain the word "because".

I think you have already done a lot of the latter with owncast. Don't listen to the haters.

@gabek

Usability is really hard, it takes a lot of effort, and I think the kind of work it takes is uniquely hard for hobbyists to pull off.

One person programming in mom's basement can create functionality and maybe even write unit tests, but they are going to be hard pressed to bring in 100s of users and sit them down for strictly administered in-person usability testing sessions.

Horizontal "free" structure of development means that there are no "KPIs" and "engagement metrics" ruling everyone's existence, no marching orders... I think it boils down to, usability and accessibility work isn't fun to most people, so it rarely gets done. Instead, nerds bicker over nerd stuff and build nerd software for nerds only.

Communities route around bad UIs, the only people in the user community are people who WANT to be there, or they have no other choice, whatever the reason, they have _motivation_ to get the software to work, even if they have to put up with bad UI along the way.

I like to joke that "the user interface of **insert free open program here** is located on StackOverflow". Blender, SSH, ffmpeg, you name it. I think this effect has even started to bleed into money-backed corporate products as well. Experienced users with good search-fu and community connections are becoming almost immune to bad UIs, like some kind of pop-under-resistant strain of bacteria.

It's a different world from the early 90s and 2000s when no one would've had the patience for computers at all if it weren't for the buckets of cash Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others poured into meticulously researching and testing UI affordances.

@reese

RUM HAMMS :dannydevito: