#social 2018-02-23
2018-02-23 UTC
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# 
bengo_ hi
# gobengo-irc-bot <ben@mattermost.ops.bengo.is> and hi to you
# bengo_ Hmmm. It seems like https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge is pretty powerful. I wonder if it could support activitypub, and then bridge it to the other chat things there.
# melody i really wish this practice of using these kinds of bridges would die, the user experience is bad for everyone, it locks down the feature set to the absolute lowest common denominator or gets so out of sync between platforms that the only result is constant miscommunication because of things that can't translate
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# bengo_ melody when is the user experience bad?
# melody whenever a bridge between platforms is introduced
# melody when the feature sets aren't equivalent
# bengo_ Oh. It doesn't bother me so much. It's inevitable that some apps will have features that others don't. I'd rather have them interoperating in various ways than not at all.
# melody i'd much rather have them not interoperating at all, IRC bridges into slack consistently cause way more problems than the connectivity problem they solve
# melody it's been as bad or worse with other platform bridges
# bengo_ what are the problems they cause?
# bengo_ This is my first time trying to run one.
# melody lack of feature support can break a lot of cultural and interaction containers that are really important for managing a community that has grown beyond a single channel, so like, lack of support for threads can cause serious problems when threads are used for sensitive or triggering content, lack of support for emoji/custom emoji can break important social cues
# melody but even seemingly less important things like the kinds of names used and in what contexts can change the tone & feel of a space when interacted with through certain bridges that repurpose fields of a different type or with different expectations
# bengo_ I see. And so in your experience, do you just prefer to manage a handful of separate chats?
# melody and like, avatars can be much more important on some platforms than others for limiting accidental misattributions
# melody when usernames are not unique
# melody i'd rather manage a handful of separate chats or just deal with only using one and leaving people with different platform preferences out, good interoperability requires robust standards, one that's too narrow with non-standard extensions just leaves you with a feature set that isn't comprehensive enough and makes everyone miserbale
# saranix you mean like how mastodon abuses the summary field into a content warning? And that's not even a bridge...it's "native"... :E
# saranix ducks
# melody basically: thinking that different platforms are "functionally equivalent" to one another tends to be a sign that certain really important aspects of user interaction are being undervalued or ignored, so a bridge is indulging that dangerous tendency in sort of the worst way
# saranix for me the biggest issue with bridges is always the CAT (Chatter Address Translation?) ;-) the fact that identities are rarely mapped and just substituted most often
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