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Yeah, I'm still alive. I've mostly been using my own server on my RPi, but
with power outages being common in Spring for my part of the U.S., that might
be problematic. Plus, Pubnix servers are a bit more awesome. Just wish I had
more time to chat with people during the day/night.

.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

I was just reading from cmccabe's pholg[2] about how the steeper barrier to
entry of a pubnix like SDF might be a blessing more than a curse, but one line
in particular stuck out to me:

  "Would the average Facebook user (does that equate to the average person?)
  be willing to put in the effort to learn how to use UNIX?"

As someone who sees UX as a passion, I can sum up the answer to that in one
word: No. 

Most users either don't have the time to sink into learning UNIX, or don't have 
the mental facilities to do so. I groked *NIX just fine after 13 years of using 
it, and one of my spouses[3] uses it daily. Another only learned after getting 
a Mac and working at a hosting company, and another doesn't have the technical 
skills need to do more than basic Windows tasks.

This is why Discord is winning over IRC in adoption, and why things like
Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Telegram win over XMPP. We have implementations
of those standards, but nothing that makes them dead-simple to use. XMPP still
tends to be a hassle to set up across multiple devices, and outside of a BNC
server, you can't easily do multi-device IRC. And that's not including the
whole "someone stole my name" problem that even Mastodon has dealt with in the
past due to server federation.


A majority of silo-site users are so used to having a single unified system 
that trying to explain federated services where multiple people can have their
username is like trying to explain how to use an Apple II to a modern web 
developer. Most of them just won't care, or will think they don't have time to 
learn anything, and will gripe if it doesn't work as expected.

If we were to take cues from services like Discord and give services like IRC,
XMPP, Gopher, FTP, etc... a dead-simple portal for people to use, and explain
everything in the simplest of terms as part of an unskipable tutorial, we
/might/ be able to get more willing participants, but that's still a /maybe/
at best, and a /no/ at worst. I've still got ideas that I might try to write
out at some point, but we'd need something akin to Jobsian-levels of Simple
Stick use to really crank out something like while still retaining something
for pro users. Mostly because, if you make it easy to get to the pro-level
features, users will find their way in well before they're ready, and that
won't end well.


Above all else, the hardest part would be training people on how to use the
terminal. SSHing into something isn't simple, even if it seems that way to us,
and command line systems are notoriously difficult for people to wrap their
heads around outside of geek culture. I mean, I could install Gentoo on a
system no problem, but I wouldn't dare trust someone like my Windows-using
spouse to even know how to use `nano`.

Sites like Linux Journey[4] try, and I'll gladly give them a medal for the
effort they put into their tutorials, but in the end, it's down to the person's
willingness to learn, and that's not always an easy thing to win over.


However, cmccabe also finishes with this very beautiful line:

  "Maybe this barrier to entry is part of what makes SDF such a special 
   place."
   
And this is very true. Small communities tend to make for much happier users,
especially when those users aren't being overwhelmed by the crowd of voices
that Social Media has among its walls. That's something I've learned since 
leaving the likes of Twitter and Mastodon, where the voices do little but shout
over each other, or provide nothing in the way of actual content or discussion.

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[1]: gopher://gopher.prismdragon.net/
[2]: gopher://sdf.org/0/users/cmccabe/barriers.to.entry
[3]: I'm in a poly relationship with several people.
[4]: https://linuxjourney.com/