#social 2018-07-22
2018-07-22 UTC
fr33domlover2, fr33domlover3, fr33domlover4, fr33domlover, fr33domlover1, tantek, Guest84, xmpp-social, timbl, vasilakisfil, tDwtp and JanKusanagi joined the channel
# 
saranix uses all of fr33domlover's disconnect/reconnect messages to separate luls in conversation
dlongley, fr33domlover, fr33domlover1, fr33domlover2, fr33domlover3 and fr33domlover4 joined the channel
# donpdonp ignores part/join msgs
# donpdonp saves a lot of cognitive load.
# fr33domlover1 Ugh idk why it's happening :-/
# fr33domlover1 It's not happening with my connection to freenode
# nightpool[m] i'm pretty happy with matrix's solution to The Problem
# nightpool[m] uploaded an image: image.png (37KB) <https://matrix.cybre.space/_matrix/media/v1/download/cybre.space/KNbxsaybRfPHlRXfHsvcCUKv>
# saranix fr33domlover1: what client are you using? wireshark it and see what the PING/PONG exchange looks like. A pretty safe bet is that it is getting mangled somehow. Other possibilities are the TCP layer and lower, but less likely.
# saranix nightpool[m]: Riot was darn near unusable before they collapsed them. 99.999999% of the activity on matrix is join/part anyway. No one talks :-P
# nightpool[m] I dunno, i'm in a couple of active chats
# nightpool[m] I talk here :P
# saranix hah... how many of them are bridges to IRC, where the actual activity is? ;-)
# nightpool[m] only this one
# saranix I'm in like 15-20 channels on mine and I get notifications every few hours of someone talking, usually 2 ppl having a convo by themselves, and then it's dead the rest of the time
# nightpool[m] k
# JasonRobinson[m] saranix: says an IRC user ;) I have several active matrix only rooms and several active irc bridges - it's no the technology but the people that create discussion
# saranix I'm in all the channels that interest me. Perhaps no one on the whole network shares my interests. It's not as if the rooms are empty though. Pretty large counts of idlers.
# JasonRobinson[m] I could say the same for most of the IRC rooms I am in
# donpdonp the Eleanor Rigby/Lonele People song could be easily rewritten for IRC lurkers. Where _do_ they all come from?
# saranix I suppose. On IRC, the channels that have the most activity are the help channels, or about a particular software which then becomes de facto help channels...
# donpdonp no matter the size of the channel, i find about a 10:1 lurker to activity participant.
# donpdonp which i think is true of nearly all human organizations.
# saranix this is actually a long-standing problem in the field... especially now that most communications go through social. But even if we look at that, it never solved the problem. Following a hashtag? That has more irrelevance than not. Centralized sites that focus around physical meetups? Double fail on the physical and the centralization counts.
# saranix We, decentralized social web, actually don't have any solutions yet either, do we?
# JasonRobinson[m] solution to lurkers?
# saranix solution to be able to chat with people about topics of interest. Lurkers become lurkers because they are waiting for something that will never come...
# JasonRobinson[m] everybody doesn't need to be active. I'd say it's more of a human nature thing. most people are lurkers
# donpdonp nods in agreement
# technomancy lurking is how people learn the social structure and customs of a channel
# saranix Like say I have interest in Ham Radio. Check the Ham channel on matrix. It isn't only dead, it's always been dead. No convo. Ever. And yet the channel is full. My best bet, is to just go to a physical ham radio meetup. Message boards are all crusty and inactive, there's no chats anywhere. The only real Ham activity is on the airwaves themselves, and via clubs that physically meet on a regular basis. There is no "casual chat" to be found anywhere though
# technomancy more lurkers doesn't cause conversation to stop
# saranix technomancy: no one is anti-lurker, you're focusing on the wrong thing
# saranix technomancy: lurking is a symptom of the problem I'm describing, not a cause
# saranix causes, best I can figure, are all rooted in time-shifting. No one is interested in the same thing at the same time. However, the world is huge, and there are 7 billion of us, so the reality of that is very unlikely. Technology, if not preventing synchronization, certainly isn't doing anything to provide it.
# technomancy it's not too surprising to me that people don't spend time using IRC to talk about a technology that's literally designed for talking with people outside IRC =)
# saranix technomancy: that might be worth something if the same weren't true about every single other topic
# technomancy I can point you to plenty of counterexamples but I'm sure you're aware of that
# saranix as a matter of fact, the only channel on Matrix that I have ever seen conversation, is the matrix channel itself, and the decentralized web channel
# saranix counterexamples are not helpful either, the fact remains, there is no technological solution for instant access to conversations around a particular topic (**the topic only, not a group that meets about the topic**)
# technomancy guess I'm missing the whole point then
# saranix everything is so fragmented. decentralization should solve this, but it won't by itself. We have evidence of that. If the solution is, for example, following a hashtag on ActivityPub in some future world where that is not only possible, but everyone does it... that still wouldn't work to solve the problem: proof: currently if you follow a hashtag on Twitter, a service with billions of users, the problem is still not solved.
# nightpool[m] i think you're focusing on technical solutions to an intractable social problem
# nightpool[m] which is that—at it's core—any discussion is made up of the individual people that are part of it. there's no "abstract discussion space" that we can pull interesting conversations from.
# nightpool[m] there's only people, who we can talk to
# saranix nightpool[m]: I almost incessantly say "It's not a technical problem, technical solutions won't work", so I seriously doubt I'm making that mistake here
# nightpool[m] forums are an asynchronous method of communication. they die or fail to gain traction just like anything else does
# saranix nightpool[m]: there's no "abstract discussion space"... -exactly, we should come up with a solution for that
# nightpool[m] no, what i'm saying is that there is no "platonic realm of discussion"
# technomancy I'd rather talk with people, personally
# nightpool[m] there is no possible platonic discussion space because it's an incoherent concept. You can't have discussions without other people being on the end of them
# saranix technomancy: yes, but the first step is meeting the people. What if your interest is only in meeting people that have certain interests, and physically there is no one anywhere near you like that?
# nightpool[m] Any matrix chat or irc channel is going to be inextricably linked to the social realm of its creators and its audience—where it pulls new people from.
# technomancy if I'm truly desperate, I'll browse the subreddit
# saranix nightpool[m]: you're talking about pools of people, I'm talking about how the problem will still persist in the hypothetical world where all people use ActivityPub.
# nightpool[m] i'm saying that irc channels, matrix chats, web fora, or any of these things are nothing except pools of people
# nightpool[m] filtered through whatever discussion medium they happen to be taking place in
# saranix the 2 closest solutions in prior art are: following a hashtag, and physical meetups (e.g. meetup.com)... but as mentioned multiple times already, neither of these actually solve the problem (regardless of all the extra downsides they bring)
# JasonRobinson[m] I doubt all people will or should use Activitypub
# nightpool[m] "everyone" (who can pay for internet access, a device to read it on, etc) uses email, but that doesn't mean mailing lists are booming
# nightpool[m] And even if they were, just because a mailing list was "about" ham radio doesn't mean that all ham radio people who use email are interested in subscribing to it or talking about it.
# saranix that isn't the point either. The point was *EVEN IN A HYPOTHETICAL WORLD*, that *STILL WOULDN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM*
# nightpool[m] because the problem is intractable. it isn't because of time-shifting, or whatever. it's because any social space is going to be colored by so much more then what it's nominally about.
# saranix nightpool[m]: Here's how I know you're wrong about it being intractable. In a hypothetical world where our brains are all linked by some magic voodoo, there is 100% chance that I can find someone who wants to think about the same things I'm thinking about at any given time (given that there are 7 billion of us)
# nightpool[m] ha, I just thought of the same thought-experiment after closing my computer.
# saranix lol
# nightpool[m] let me make my opposition a more nuanced then—there is no signal-to-noise trade-off that ensures all the conversations you want to have will happen.
# nightpool[m] in a noisy world, like twitter hashtags or a brain voodoo magic, you'll have lots of equally useless conversations because they don't come with any context—everyone is just shouting their own ideas at each other
# saranix nightpool[m]: you're referring to the current drawback of hashtag following, where people try to hijack your attention by claiming they are talking about the thing you are interested in?
# nightpool[m] yeah
# saranix I dunno, I feel like that one is still solvable. If not, our civilization is doomed...
# nightpool[m] in a signal-y or structured world, there's Too Much context, and things are limited by more then their conversation topic, they're limited by platform, accessibility, audience, etc
# saranix why can't there be something in between those 2 extremes that hasn't been tried yet?
# nightpool[m] discretization
# nightpool[m] we're working with bits of information, not a continuous curve
# saranix I thought we were working with people? ;-)
# saranix Just for for thought, one thing I've imagined for a very long time, is not only all living humans being connected, but all 50 billion from history as well... it's a fun thought experiment...
# saranix along those lines, what if time were just as traversable as space?
# JasonRobinson[m] Civilization is doomed but surely not being able to chat is not going to be the most imminent problem to tackle 😬
# saranix I'll give an example, how many times have you stumbled on an old forum conversation, and felt like you were there, participating with those people?
# saranix even though it happened 15 years prior
# saranix or found a solution to a problem, as if they too were all experiencing the same problem with you, even though they have all moved on in their lives
# Gargron back to relays for a bit. so i managed to allow relay subscribing using only AP syntax by making the target of a Follow the public collection, and so you could potentially target a hashtag collection instead to only subscribe to hashtag posts. But how would you express subscribing only to particular languages?
# nightpool[m] unfortunately, I don't think any of the work we're going to do here has a chance at reversing the linear arrow of time
# JasonRobinson[m] Lol
# saranix if that's possible, then it should be possible to at least bend time a little bit, to make it *feel* like we are able to chat about topics whenever we want
# saranix Gargron: perhaps
{ type:Follow, target:{id:'#tag',context:{@language:en}}}timbl joined the channel
# uw_fluxus re: discretization or filtering in order to up relevance, I think that could be done by trust networks, either advogato's or by relational distance
# uw_fluxus re: prior art for an abstract discussion space centered around topics, hashtags and physical meetups mentioned.. I'd include usenet into that list. Unless I misunderstood the concept somehow?
# uw_fluxus Anyway, I agree that such a discussion space is missing in today's world.
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# widowclip Gargron: perhaps have multiple feeds, one for each language? Also how does a relay differentiate itself from a sharedInbox, that has always confused me. A link to prior discussion or your thoughts would be equally appreciated :)
# widowclip perhaps endpoints is a clearer word than feed in that case^