One consistent criticism I’ve seen of Mastodon is that its “preachy”. Lots of people posting to tell other people how (or how not to) use the software.
I’ve seen a lot of that type of post myself: boost don’t like; don’t do threads; do threads in this specific way; you’re using content warnings wrong, or not at all; don’t post about your own projects, etc, etc.
It can all feel very tiring at times.
You don’t have to tell me how to use the software. I have my own preferences and comfort levels for how I will use it. Maybe what goes on @rando.masto isn’t true around these parts? Can’t we just get back to the chatter, discussions or memes which is why we’re all here after all?
But I’ve been trying to remind myself that this type of chatter is essential. It’s essential because its how we form and share norms.
If we don’t talk about what works or doesn’t work for us, and our communities, then those norms won’t get surfaced, shared and adopted.
Nobody is going back to regularly read a Mastodon user guide to check in on the latest best practices. We can’t rely on server admins to police everything. And there are no single set of norms, because each server is different.
In order to reinforce and share those norms we need to have these discussions in the places which we already inhabit.
I think some of the design choices around Mastodon — e.g. (until recently) the lack of search, and the sheer difficulty in finding all discussion and comments around a particular topic — makes it harder to do some of that norming activity. But we still have to work within the tools we have.
Rather than let yet another post about some basic feature of the software annoy me, I’m trying to use them as a prompt for a quick bit of reflection.
Is there something different I could be doing? If I’m resistant to changing then why is that? Does my server or community have different norms that are also worth sharing?
Reinforcing norms works. I’m now routinely adding alt-text to my Mastodon posts when I was only rarely doing so on Twitter. Yesterday I added an image to another blog post and without thinking just added some alt-text to it. I’ve finally internalised the need to do it after >20 years using the web.
The magic is working…
Lost Boy 