#im just troubleshooting tagging problems

[copsecore]

milo x sweetheart public teasing smutshot anyone? 👀

[dawnthefluffyduck]

New game interest unlocked

(crow in bottom right belongs to @patchwork-crow-writes)

[gayrob0t]

"#but the wrist has gotta do so much crazy mechanical bullshit in the hand that it cant just#risk snapping something by doing what the neck does"

sorry i feel like i must be misreading this: our wrists can't risk snapping but our necks can???

Lol i may have phrased it poorly because I cant edit tags, but essentially the reason your head can turn is because of two specific vertebrae that sit on top of eachother called the atlas and the axis, they're right at the base of your skull

I believe this is the only place in the human body where a joint actually rotates transversely and it's because the spine is basically a bunch of socket joints sitting gently within eachother with the spinal cord threaded through and a fucktonne of ligament systems to keep it in place. Theres a lot of limitations to this system as you picked up, the main one being if you turn too far you uh, break something and get internally decapitated, which is game over immediately in 70% of cases and not fun in the remaining 30%. They also can sometimes dislocate from eachother and the ligaments that hold them in place and some people even have to have the two bones fused together. The point being that this is the only example we have of what seems the 'obvious' way to make a rotating joint in the human body and it already has so many problems. This brings us to the wrist

Imagine you're evolution, and you've got to figure out how to give an animal rotation of the limb. So why not put this kind of joint in the arm? You could probably already imagine how it'd work with the hand sitting in some neat saddle sitting within the radius or something. Why not? Well because you'd break something! We just finished talking about how the neck joint isnt the most structurally stable or safest thing to have (dont panic it's been there your whole life it's probably fine) and you twist your wrist so often! Much more often than you turn your head Im willing to bet! And your wrist has to sit in that turned position for extended periods of time! You may have noticed in that diagram of the atlas the label for the vertebral artery. Thats because it's not just your nerves in your spine, but you got blood delivery there too! Rotation can pinch these arteries, which is why owls actually have a flexible balloon-like bloodvessel in their heads to store blood when they do their 270⁰ rotation of the neck. So you'd have to put one of those in the hand I guess. And where are we putting all the tendons and muscles for the hand? Do we squeeze them all through that saddle now? How are we sure they won't pinch each other when rotating? Are we going to use ligaments to restrict movement so the bones dont guillotine everything off if they turn too far? And what about that extra bone just in the arm, is it going the way of the tibia?

An important thing to keep in mind is that evolution is a lot like a teenager doing their project the night before it's due, it's using what it has and by god if it works it works, final grade be damned. So it doesnt bother with the labor and material intensive task that is fabricating a whole new joint and troubleshooting the problems that come with it. It just takes the two bones already there

And twist

[shereen1]

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[spnfanficpond]

Survey results and responses

A couple of weeks ago, we put out a survey to get a feel for some things, and we got over a dozen responses! Thanks to everyone who responded and told us what you’re looking for! 

There were some responses that we would like to get some clarification on, and some responses that requested things we’ve already got out there. Below the cut is a rundown of some of the questions and responses, along with links to things that already exist and plans to enact some of the things you’ve suggested. 

If you responded to the survey, please read below! We need your input!

1. What things related to posting your works on Tumblr or other sites would you like to learn more about? For example, Keep Reading cuts, finding gifs, giving credit to gif and edit creators, etc.

A tutorial for adding Keep Reading to fics, both on a computer and on the app, would be helpful.

How far down should I put a keep reading?

Anything related to gifs

Best apps or sites to use for making gifs.

Finding gifs and giving credit to creators

when should I give someone credit for being a beta (for example: I bounced ideas with someone for a minute or two but they didn't technically beta read it; I can't decide between X and Y (with no context), pick one)

linking posts to blog bios

The facts on the search issues (re: links, tags, and anything else that keeps a fic from being "searchable") - I see people saying various things, so sourced facts would be nice, if possible

These are great requests, and we’ll do our best to address them in the next LiveChat Event!! There were some requests that we’ve already addressed, so here’s some links to those:

What should I be including for reader info, eg: Warnings? Word Count? Summary? Characters...? - Suggested Format for Fics

Feedback - December 2018 LiveChat Recap (Feedback and Beta Reading)

Building an audience/gaining exposure - November 2018 LiveChat Recap (Reader involvement)

There was one request for “troubleshooting”, but we’re not sure exactly what’s meant by that, so if you requested this, please send us an ask or an IM and clarify what kind of troubleshooting you’re curious about!

2.  What tags would you like to see our "#writer resources" tag broken down into? For example, grammar, publishing, etc. (Currently, we only have a couple of tags that are used consistently to tag posts that are reblogged from other blogs, like writing prompts and reference posts we think might be useful for our members. We would like to make finding information easier by refining our tags so posts about grammar aren't mixed in with posts about publishing, for example.) Please list below any tags that you think would be helpful for us to use to make these posts easier to find when you're looking for them.

Word choice/vocabulary

Grammar

Synonyms

Spelling

Punctuation

Editing

Tutorials

Challenges

Tips

Inspiration

Publishing

Plot

Characterization/character development

World building

Genre tags like romance, action, horror, etc.

Dialogue

All of these are great! We’ve got some questions about some of the others that were suggested, though. If you can send us an ask or an IM and clarify about these, we’d love to hear from you!

Writing Prompts - This tag is already in use. 

How to format - How to format what? Need some clarification on this.

Getting started - With what? Is this like inspiration or something different?

Brainstorming - What kinds of posts would be under this tag?

Comments - What kinds of posts would be under this tag?

Awards - We already have a tag for the AFA���s, so is this for something different?

We’d love your feedback on these ones we’re unsure of, so let us know!

3.  Is there anything you wish was easier to find on the blog?

Maybe a list of frequently used tags on the FAQ page so I'm not blindly trying tags when I try to search for something.

Once we get a set list of tags we’ll be using, there will be a post or page listing them with links. First step is setting up the list, which is why we asked question #2. We’re on the right track!

New pond member stories. 

By stories, do you mean fics they’ve written, or info about who they are? We post a list of new Pond members with links to their work every month. You can check them out here. If this isn’t what you’re looking for, please send us an ask with some examples!

The submit box!

Are you on desktop, mobile, or the app? Please send an IM to @mrswhozeewhatsis or @manawhaat about this so we can help you and figure out why it’s not easily accessible for you!

I wish ships and pairings were tagged so I can easily filter and find fics submitted to the pond.

This is something we’ve considered, but it’s been on the back burner while we focus on other issues. Someday, we would like to be a blog for readers, not just writers, and instituting a tagging system for fics would be part of that. Setting that up, though, will be a big project, since there are so many ships and tags to consider. How to do it without making the submit page four miles long with tag options is another hurdle. This is on our radar, but it might be a while.

I wish some things like pond members, tag list, and writing resources were easier to find on mobile./ Links are difficult to find on mobile.

The problem with the member lists is that they are pages, not posts, because pages are easier to manage than posts. Posts are slippery things that can be lost if we’re not careful, whereas pages are rooted in the blog where we can’t lose them. Sadly, the app can’t read pages, for some reason.

Another problem is that the app can’t handle a navigation block. Short of filling the bio with a ton of links, which gets very messy and hard to read, there’s no way to make these links available on the app.

That being said, if you access Tumblr via a browser app like Chrome on your phone, all of these links are available at the top of the blog! Not only are they available, the member rolls and everything you can’t see on the app are completely accessible!

Mobile friendly versions of beta and tag lists? The spreadsheets are awesome, but a little hard to read.

Spreadsheets are the only way we know to allow users to filter, which is a major part of the functionality of both lists.  If you’ve got suggestions for how to do this, we’re open to them!

4.  Is there anything you'd like to see more or less of on the blog?

More thesaurus/synonym like posts. For those that struggle to use other words for_____ and want to.

Interesting! We don’t see many posts like that out there, so this might be content we’d have to create. Perhaps we could solicit words from our members and create posts like this based on those suggestions? What do you think?

I think it would be good to expand the tags for submissions to include more info, like more specific other trigger categories, things that are typically taboo that a reader should know about, if the story is smut/angst/fluff, etc.

This was mentioned and addressed above, so we won’t repeat it all here.

I'd like to see more writing prompts.

More than just what’s in the #writing prompt tag? We’ll need more clarification on this one!

More things about the community like fic recs, nominations, maybe get-to-know pond member posts.

Since we’ve already got the Angel Fish Awards and the monthly New Members posts, which both include fic recs, we’ll need some clarification on what you’re looking for there. As for posts about getting to know individual pond members, this sounds like a great idea! We’re open to suggestions on how to choose what members get chosen!! Send us an ask with your ideas!!

I wish there were more active big fish in the pond.

Being a Big Fish is a big responsibility, and we understand that not everyone is up to it. We ask that our Big Fish be consistently kind and generous with other members, spend some time every month in the chat room so Guppies and Jellies can ask them for help, signal boost posts when asked, assist with Pond projects when requested, be involved with the Angel Fish Awards, and like/reblog fics by other Pond members. Doing all of that AND having a life outside of Tumblr can be a lot. 

Because of all of that, we don’t usually approach Jellies and ask them if they’d be interested. We wait for Jellies to come to us. It’s a big thing, and we don’t want to pressure folks. If someone is interested, they should read this post about how Big Fish are chosen, and let us know that they are interested!

5. What kinds of prizes would you like to see more of in the monthly Angel Fish raffle?

Not sure what's currently being given away.

It changes slightly every month, and we make a post with the list of prizes. The post for June hasn’t gone up, yet, so keep an eye out on the blog!

I think it would be fun to incorporate Pond members that create stuff (like that have etsy shops or stuff like that) into the raffle.

If members would like to donate things from their shops as prizes, we would welcome them! 

Hmm maybe a fic commission from a big fish? (If they’re open. Or anyone the winner might want to commission, not just big fish. Also specifically one where the writer’d still get paid in lieu of buying another physical prize lol.)

This is an interesting idea, and we’re considering it from a few different angles!

6. Are there any topics you would like to see discussed in the monthly LiveChat events?

There was only one response to this one that we need some clarification on: 

Outlining series, how to give feedback, how to make your fanfics flow

We talked about Planning vs. Pantsing back in March, so check that out, and if it doesn’t give you what you’re looking for about outlining, let us know! As for feedback, we talked about Feedback and Beta Reading in December. Your last suggestion sounds interesting, but we need maybe an example of what you’re talking about to be sure we know what you’re looking for. Send us an ask and tell us more about your flow questions!

7. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us? Suggestions for improvement? Let us know here!

I love the Pond and I love the community that has been built from SPN. I feel like Big Fish are active (which they should be) and then a handful of people (category unknown, but I suspect they are Guppies) seem to be kind of active, but based on the descriptions Jellyfish seem like they should have a role as well. Could we do something with Live Chat where a Jellyfish helps answer questions or host with a BF maybe? JF should be approachable too but if we don't know them then it's hard to ask them anything and they seem just as intimidating as a BF. (BF are less intimidating to me because they interact with everyone more often actually). *shrugs* I don't know, maybe that's just me.

This is a tough one. Jelly Fish are basically Big Fish without the responsibility. (See above about Big Fish and our expectations of them.) We’ve focused on Big Fish with the LiveChats, but we aren’t against the idea of having Jelly Fish chat with us, too. (In fact, three of our events have featured Jellies.) This will take some thought to find ways to encourage Jelly Fish interaction. All suggestions are welcome!

I feel like a quarterly raffle would give more people time to vote/enter. Doing it every month feels a bit over saturated. Unrelated, but a Discord server would be nice. In my experience, those feel more open to community than a Skype chat bc there are different chats that people can interact in and it’s easier to moderate.

A quarterly raffle is totally doable, though the AFA’s will remain monthly. Would that still sound good?

Michelle has had learning Discord and setting up a server as the next thing on her to do list for three months, but just hasn’t had the time to sit down and learn (you know, when normal people are available to teach her, not the crazy hours she keeps). Kale is on Discord for other things, but is also just a beginner. We’re working on it! Discord is coming!!

If answering questions from surveys or comments or submissions in the live chat (or even interesting questions) could you post the question and answer on the blog for those that miss the chat and don’t want to/can’t scroll through it all to read everything.

You mean like the Recaps to the Monthly LiveChat Events?

I think it's great you put out these surveys. Maybe a designated suggestion option? You have the list for betas, how about a list of those that create aesthetics or art for fics?

These are awesome ideas!! Putting them on the to-do list!!

I think the Pond is really good, I just wish I knew/interacted with more people who are in it.

Tell us what would better enable you to interact, and we’ll see what we can do!

I'd suggest something to motivate people to take the time to submit to the pond? I feel like nobody hardly does it anymore, including myself, because it feels like nobody really interacts through the pond anymore.

The admins have discussed some ideas about this, but haven’t found a solution they can all agree on, yet. One admin suggested limiting Angel Fish nominations to fics that were submitted to the blog. Don’t submit, you can’t be nominated. One of the other admins hated the idea, and the third abstained. The only other suggestion has been to increase readers of the blog so writers have more incentive to submit to reach a larger audience. As mentioned above, we’re working on ideas towards that goal. What suggestions might you guys have? Another raffle for prizes? 

Just maybe add a few more big fish? If that's possible? Maybe more interaction with everyone to make them feel like a part of the pond. 

See above about adding more Big Fish. We need volunteers who are willing and able to keep up! Beyond trying to keep the chat room active, we could use some suggestions about how to increase interaction! Give us your ideas!!

That’s a lot to read, and kudos to you if you made it this far!! Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey, and we look forward to hearing more from you all!!

[mttonki]

Does exiftool for mac work with catalina

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA INSTALL

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA DOWNLOAD

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA MAC

If I could do what I want to do with x-plat, I’d seriously wiggle out of Apple exclusivity at the moment. Most macOS apps (even written by Objective-C devs) are littered with version checks (something Apple says you should never do) simply to work this broken API in this OS, that broken API in that OS, undocumented changes which effectively break this. You can also write your own logic and specify different conditions across entire libraries of images without having to use any kind of shell. I suspect the issue is broader though, Catalina calls home to check for infected.

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA MAC

You can even define custom tags too Exiftool does more than just read tags though. Upgraded our Mac to new Catalina OS and now Office 365 doesn't work at all. I replaced scope.sh with scope.sh.orig and now ranger works OK for me.

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA DOWNLOAD

Meaning that java 8 is now supported again, also means that many Windows and MacOS users can now download the version without the extra JRE (java runtime environment) as on most Windows 7/8/10 and MacOS versions 'of the last years. There are so many problems with Apple’s toolbox at the moment, with very little concern over quality or stability, which just amounts to a really worrying experience. Exiftool is a tool with an enormous array of features able to work with over 23,000 tags over 130 different groups. Add exiftool supported languages for displaying metadata tags (also in 'export metadata'). I still use Xojo, but almost everything I do is direct Apple API, which has locked me into a decaying platform. Well, by leaving Xojo and going all in with Swift, you’re removing Xojo from the equation, so you’re one level closer to the OS vendor.īut you’re giving up x-plat, which to be honest is something I’d recommend you reconsider. Im using exiftools to remove the Meta Data.

DOES EXIFTOOL FOR MAC WORK WITH CATALINA INSTALL

The Atomator App works in such a way, that I drag and drop the File on the App, and the App starts a shellscript, with the filepath as input. A good way to troubleshoot this is to check the metadata dates with the following exiftool command: exiftool -a -G1 -s -api QuickTimeUTC1 -time:all -api RequestAll2 movie.mov But for most users that is too difficult because they must download and install exiftool and have some basic Terminal skills. Which is distressing as I’m now wondering it the “safe haven” I’m fleeing Xojo for is more or less as problematic as what I’m already faced with. Im on MacOS Catalina 10.15.3 Im using the zsh I want to create a Atomator App, that removes metadata from files for me.

[teddy-feathers]

oh hell dont take that rant as a... reason to go to therapy i can do better

here

Its understandable to be worried. That theyll judge you, that theres something "wrong" eith you - or not "wrong" enough

but EVERYONE needs help in some form or fashion and yes SOME people can get by talking to their neighbors or their priest or their family

but if youre thinking you want to see a shrink - or really dont want to but think you might need to or are afraid of being sent away for wasting their time

i suggest you find someone and go.

and ... you find someone who feels right to you.

if you dont feel like you can trust or build up a relationship of trust with your shrink you wont be able to talk or listen effectively. and thats okay. its more than okay to shop around for a shrink. hell there are religious shrinks who merge both that i think would suit you, at least here where i live.

the first meeting is just... to see what you feel you need or want from therapy. what you need help with and if they can help you with it. the second meeting, at least both times ive gone, they give you tests - questionnaires really - and do some weird calculations and then the thrird meeting they tell you what they think and you build up a... tentative plan together what youre going to work on.

the tests are... expensive but worth it i think.

and just being able to vent to someone wholl listen and wont judge is... unburdening

but more than that they have tools. they teach you how to deal with things. to let things go. to accomplish your goals or to change the things in your life that are stoping you from reaching them.

and it wont seem like much but sometimes making it to the next shrink appointment is enough to keep from giving up on everything. its a manageable goal.

and you dont have to go often for it to help because again they give you tools.

and i only went to a few sessions the first time but i used those tools and im NOTICEABLY in a better place and managing my life better than i was two years ago.

and ill put forth again the assertion that everyone, even perfectly well adjusted people, could benefit from a proper shrink.

and theyre there for you. maybe youll go and talk about nothing serious or mybe youll cry for your first few meetings for no reason or maybe youll walk in and say "this happened" or "i feel this way" and feel like theyll tell you "so what" but that last wont happen if theyre a proper shrink. theyll listen. theyll help. theyll understand no matter how big or small the problem may seem to you and theyll HELP you deal with it. thats what theyre there for.

and yes, because im still feeling petty and small minded - this is just what they do with talking.

you dont have to take medication if they recommend it. they may not recommend it or may not be that sort of shrink. theyre not going to push that onto you or even push you into doing things you cant or wont do as a solution to your problems. theyll listen and work with you. if you try one thing and it doesnt work or cant do it theres another way

at the very very least of the things a shrink will do for you is theyll be there so youre not dealing with everything alone.

I know there are horror stories. i know there are pushy people with their own agendas in every sort of profession. i know there are people you wont like. but i promise you there are good shrinks and youre allowed to keep looking until you find someone that works for you - that the second you think you cant agree with or trust or want to hear from a person or feel uncomfortable because of that person you can walk out and find someone else.

and the help they give you is tailored to you

@moss-flowers-trees

@nebulasreblogs ill tag you in this too because im calmer now and ready to be less of an asshole. i apologize for going off on you and maybe this... will help explain some of what that talking is about. its specialized talking and it does help. like troubleshooting for the brain.

[nickyschneiderus]

Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, early morning by cybre.space’s standards. Few have logged on to the microblogging social network, and it shows: A follower feed filled with more than 31 users updates at a snail’s pace. It’s much slower than one would expect on Twitter. But then again, cybre.space isn’t Twitter. It runs off a decentralized social media software called Mastodon, and is part of a much larger network of Mastodon communities.

Over on Twitter, users post jokes about President Donald Trump, this time of a fast food feast he prepared for the Clemson Tigers football team amid the ongoing government shutdown. But the words “Trump” and “shutdown” only appear once each on cybre.space’s “local timeline,” which shows posts on the site and any other connected “instances,” or Mastodon communities. It’s even more barren on this reporter’s home timeline: No one is talking about hamberders.

Posting works differently on cybre.space than Twitter. It’s much more like living in a queer house, one that prefers to talk about political theory over current events. Some users chat about democratic socialism and queer identity, while others talk about games, music, fandom, or their difficulties navigating trans healthcare. One user posts a message that reads “re: hrt” with a few lines about their hormone replacement regimen hidden underneath, accessible only via the “show more” content warning (CW) button next to it. Another boosts a post praising Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, calling it a “visceral experience.”

Cybre.space has just over 2,000 users. Over on Mastodon’s flagship community, Mastodon.social, there are over 300,000 users. But despite the larger userbase, discussions are even less political. On the community’s local timeline, one user troubleshoots installing a Linux distribution. Another shares a news story about a man who tried to turn his home into a restaurant. A third links to an article about Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford. Here, Trump is not the sun; tech, gaming, and the occasional NSFW post largely prevail. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist.

Mastodon

Visiting Mastodon feels like strolling through the first “apolitical” social network. There’s no urgency to talk about the Trump administration’s policies or break down ongoing political events—but while that may seem like a pleasant reprieve, it’s actually an indication that all is not well on Mastodon.

Mastodon has long been hailed as a friendly and inclusive safe haven, one by and for people who want the far-right out of social media. But instead of losing the far-right, the platform has lost all politics entirely. That’s a problem for its queer userbase, who cannot be apolitical by nature. Being queer isn’t a hobby; it’s a political identity. And so while Mastodon seems fine on the surface, there is a much larger schism at play across the social media project regarding who should run it: its community, or its creator.

The creator

It’s impossible to understand Mastodon without considering its architect and understanding its structure. Eugen “Gargron” Rochko, a 25-year-old German programmer of Russian and Jewish heritage, began working on Mastodon while studying computer science at the German public university Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jenahad (or “University of Jena” in English). Rochko had experience with decentralized social networks as a teenager, and by 2010 he had already decided Twitter’s corporate-driven structure just wasn’t the proper way to handle online messaging. But it wasn’t until early 2016 that he decided to sit down and look at GNU social, a decentralized social network software and precursor of sorts to Mastodon.

Originally, Rochko considered making an app for GNU social, but he ultimately decided to start from scratch and create a custom implementation of GNU social’s protocol. This became Mastodon.

Simply put, Mastodon is a microblogging software where users can communicate with one another through character-limited messages, called “toots.” The project, which released to the public in October 2016, supports embeds for images, GIFs, and videos, and there’s even a “boost” system similar to Twitter’s retweets. But Mastodon’s biggest feature by far is its “fediverse.” Instead of throwing every account into a gigantic melting pot on one main website, Mastodon users can splinter off into dozens upon dozens of miniature Mastodon instances, which are servers governed by their own rules and with their own communities. These create one large federation, and while each of these instances—like Cybre.space—runs off of Mastodon’s software, they simultaneously exist separately from one another and as part of a larger whole. Instance users can interact with one another or blacklist other instances.

Mastodon is a free and open-source software that functions entirely on community contributions via GitHub. Over Discord, Rochko described Mastodon’s development flow: Features, changes, or fixes are submitted as pull requests on GitHub. A contributor codes the feature for Mastodon within the pull request. The pull request must pass through tests for review. But even if a pull request passes those tests, “only the owner of the project can decide” whether a pull request is merged, as Rochko puts it—although he has given that ability to “three or four more people than me” for redundancy’s sake (“in case I get hit by a bus,” as he says).

Since graduating in 2016, Rochko has given Mastodon his full attention. Today, he works on Mastodon full-time with support from over 900 patrons on Patreon (at the moment, he receives over $4,400 per month in total, or over $50,000 per year). But he’s far from the only person making Mastodon a reality, and many of its users take umbrage both with what features Rochko implements and how he credits the project’s contributors.

Mastodon’s former project manager, Maloki, founded a separative community that criticizes Rochko’s “Benevolent Dictator For Life” (BDFL) model for negatively impacting “already vulnerable and marginalized people.” Many queer critics feel Rochko implements features into Mastodon that make it easier for users to discover—and by extension, harass—people of color, queer posters, women, trans folks, and other marginalized groups.

The community

Decentralized social networking isn’t a new idea, nor is the “fediverse” as a concept. But the Mastodon project quickly became popular with queer and left-wing users after Trump’s election in November 2016. Most of Mastodon’s early users shared a common background: Some were furries, others worked in tech, some even developed video games. Many identified as queer and trans. As one Mastodon user said on Nov. 23, 2016: “Holy shit everyone Mastodon is basically gay furry-adjacent Twitter without risk of racist eggs, get here immediately and help us en-culture.”

After Trump’s election, Rochko paraded Mastodon as a Nazi-free alternative to Twitter, pointing out that Mastodon.social, which is personally administered by Rochko, bans Nazis. To this day, Mastodon is the progressive Twitter alternative, one repeatedly praised everywhere from Motherboard to Wired.

But Mastodon’s politics are more complicated than merely banning Nazis. White, queer, middle-class tech workers migrating to Mastodon treated it as an escape from the outside world. CWs effectively hid politics from plain sight, and to this day, the occasional Trump conversation is concealed and tagged under the warning “uspol.” This turned Mastodon into an apolitical space, one where users debate queer theory but try to keep the outside world’s happenings out.

Mastodon’s apolitical approach reflected larger problems at play on the platform. One early Mastodon adopter named “voz” left the platform in February 2017 after feeling increased alienation from Mastodon’s predominantly white userbase. Voz, who is a brown queer trans woman, considered Mastodon “a very white space” that gradually mirrored real-life versions of gentrification: White users made the service “more and more hostile to the Black and Brown users” that were among Mastodon’s initial adopters.

Mastodon

“Whiteness insists on hiding itself, and a veneer of respectability given by ‘banning (overt) Nazis’ is really just a kind of fig leaf for the more mundane white supremacy at work there,” voz said via Keybase.

part of why Im not as active on Mastodon anymore even tho I think its a more ethical funding model is cuz its full of fragile white gentle porcelain dolls earning $150k/year in tech calling me ableist for making them uncomfortable by talking about politics under a content warning

— Shel (@DataPup_) December 14, 2018

Some people of color blamed Rochko, arguing he doesn’t properly moderate Mastodon.social to protect people of color from abuse. Others came to believe Mastodon’s hyperfixation on avoiding politics fundamentally hurt users of color, eventually driving them away.

“What sort of culture thinks talking about politics needs to be behind a content warning? Is me talking about the intersections of my life and society in need of a CW because it’s political? What the hell?” writer and performer Creatrix Tiara asked in April 2017.

The process and the politics

Mastodon’s community and its development cannot be separated from one another: Whoever controls development also steers how its users interact with one another. For example, more privacy and anti-harassment features mean better protection for marginalized users. But these requests don’t always align with Rochko’s vision for Mastodon.

Mastodon’s development process is pretty standard in the free open-source software community, but Mastodon isn’t a standard open-source project, and its queer users have long fought with Rochko over how credit is given out for features. Hoodie Aida Krisstina, who uses fae/faer pronouns, helped push for Mastodon’s content warning system in November 2016 by opening an issue on GitHub after the feature was “born from the community consciousness,” as fae said.

In a Dreamwidth post from July, fae sharply criticized Rochko, arguing queer users initially “begged” him for feature changes to support the community that ultimately turned Mastodon into what it is today.

“Evidently sometimes what [Rochko] does is take the pull request, close it, use that code as a starting point, then later commit it himself,” Krisstina said in an email. “This, tied with how [Rochko] credits others (read: he doesn’t, except for GitHub commit history), means that there is very little evidence, and virtually no recognition for the folx that actually made a feature happen. It’s not unrealistic to state that without the pull request, and without my GitHub issue, there would never have been content warnings.”

Rochko admits that contributors weren’t originally acknowledged in release notes. However, he argues there are an enormous number of feature requests and bug reports, and that he is “a little more ambivalent” toward crediting users for making feature requests, as GitHub automatically records their requests, and “they’re asking somebody else to put in the work and everybody’s got ideas.”

Granted, Rochko thinks it would be “fair” to credit users who come up with a thorough design as part of a feature request, although he claims he hasn’t “seen any feature requests that actually designed a system.”

“Pull requests take higher precedence because people actually put in the work to contribute,” Rochko said. “Also translators, I would say, are a step below that, as translators who submit translations for various languages. So they put in the work of actually writing code and submitting it and I agree that those people should be credited.”

Queer users seem to view the issue differently.

Shel Raphen served as a developer for Mastodon from January to spring 2017 and worked as a “de facto” volunteer coordinator, project manager, and community manager for Mastodon during its boom in April 2017 (or “Eternal April,” as Raphen calls it). Raphen, who uses ze/hir and they/them pronouns, first joined Mastodon in the “November wave” that hit the project after the U.S. 2016 presidential election, one month after Mastodon was officially announced. They became interested in Mastodon thanks to the decentralized fediverse’s potential to protect marginalized users.

“When everyone joined there wasn’t per-post privacy or CWs or anything that people associate with Mastodon today,” Raphen said over Twitter DM. “The new wave of queer users came up with, designed, pushed for, and implemented those features.”

Because Mastodon relies on the BDFL system, ongoing conflict with Rochko can quickly become messy. In one case, Raphen said that they designed a welcome modal in April 2017 that Rochko “hated” and harshly criticized, calling it “stupid.” Raphen confronted Rochko over the modal, telling him that he has to “thank people and appreciate their work” on the project.

After Rochko introduced his own alternate welcome modal, Raphen claims community pressure led Rochko to add Raphen’s design—without crediting Raphen in the project’s release notes.

“I went in and edited the release notes myself and added myself, since I had that privilege, and Eugen got pissed and removed all my privileges and basically booted me from the project,” Raphen said.

When asked to comment on the incident, Rochko stressed that he should ultimately have the right to edit and tweak the onboarding modal as need be.

“I wanted to change some stuff around and they were very upset when I just touched anything and that’s not how it should work,” Rochko said. “If I have some feedback about how this onboarding modal should work, I should be able to change it without causing a drama.”

Raphen’s treatment was a breaking point for Mastodon’s queer community, and its users began openly criticizing Rochko’s control over Mastodon. Two weeks later, Mastodon user and GitHub contributor Allie Hart wrote a post-mortem called “Mourning Mastodon” and a follow-up post, “Mourning What Now?!?!”—both of which Raphen considers “Important Historic Documents” for Mastodon’s history.

In “Mourning Mastodon,” Hart argues its initial leftist, furry, queer, and disabled base was the “most vocal and most frequent of Mastodon’s unpaid contributors,” designing Mastodon’s features from November 2016 to April 2017. After Graham Linehan and Dan Harmon temporarily moved to Mastodon.social and an April 2017 Motherboard story sparked media attention in the project, a new base arrived at the site, one that gave the project’s queer community less leverage in demanding changes from Rochko, Hart argues.

“The recent influx of users to the platform has brought with it new contributors and an expanded revenue stream that has rendered the original nearly obsolete,” Hart wrote in April 2017. “Queer users could leave en masse without harming the project’s survivability, which means that the reciprocity of their relationship has been terminated—queer users still depend on the project, but the project no longer depends on its queer users.”

Granted, Mastodon’s queer community isn’t perfect, and some of the same criticisms leveled against the Mastodon project could be made against the white queer community found on the service from the very beginning. For instance, Hart claims Mastodon’s white queer community would simultaneously demand a bigger voice in development while driving queer people of color off the site. The gentrifiers were now being gentrified, so to speak.

Warring philosophies

While speaking with the Daily Dot, Rochko called Mastodon “the child of my imagination,” arguing he “created it the way that I wanted to do it” and that he “did things the way I wanted them to work.” For the record, he doesn’t consider BDFL a harsh description of the Mastodon project, but rather a programming term to describe its governance. He also believes it’s more efficient than rule by committee.

“When you separate the decision making between different people that can come and go, you sort of have a tragedy of the commons where nobody is fully responsible for it and people have disagreements over all sorts of things, and you add the bureaucracy of [a] voting system, etc,” he explained. “Often times you’ll get requests from the community that are directly mutually exclusive to each other, and you have to make a choice, like, which direction will you go or how do you make a compromise.”

Rochko describes Mastodon’s users as separated between two “camps”: those who prefer discoverability, and those who discourage it. It’s more accurate to say Mastodon is increasingly forced to choose between its marginalized, queer userbase and white, well-off, and male tech workers who support Rochko’s BDFL vision.

Mastodon

Raphen believes Mastodon is “getting better, slowly” thanks in part to new queer users challenging its “fragile” privileged queer users. But even then, the platform’s remaining queer community has grown increasingly upset with Rochko’s leadership. After Rochko unexpectedly introduced “trends” tracking for words, phrases, and hashtags in summer 2018, marginalized users who feared harassment from the feature criticized its unexpected implementation. Rochko replied with a toot, arguing he “built Mastodon the way I wanted” and that those who disliked the project should not “give me shit about your failed expectations.”

“There’s the door, there’s the code, there’s the alternatives,” he tooted on June 2.

The future

A June essay from Mastodon user Cassian, titled “I left Mastodon yesterday,” argues Mastodon’s problems start with Rochko’s approach to development. Cassian claims users are rarely acknowledged for their contributions unless they are programmers, and Rochko controls the original instance and gets to decide which features make it into the Mastodon project.

Combine this with Rochko’s perspective as a white male programmer, and his decisions will constantly come from a privileged point-of-view that clashes with Mastodon’s marginalized userbase.

“Like it or not, he is in charge of the main branch of a huge community project and he promises various advantages over Twitter to attract members,” Cassian writes. “The users of his software have needs that he refuses to address but he wants to remain the sole decision-maker and have complete control. He has a right to do that, but it is unhealthy for the project overall.”

Again, Rochko thinks Mastodon users are split between two sides: those who believe the project should help users find one another, and those who prefer to stay hidden from others. But Mastodon’s internal community conflicts can better be described through a queer lens—that is, between privileged users and marginalized ones, and their diametrically opposed philosophies for what Mastodon should be.

“He’s a programmer. Not a leader,” Raphen said. “He’s an amazingly talented programmer. But that’s not enough to lead the project. He takes all the credit for making Mastodon what it is when it was extremely a group effort, not just the programming (the only labor he sees as legit).”

Raphen and Rochko’s beliefs are at Mastodon’s core, and yet they are fundamentally in conflict with each other. One wants a community-driven government system to protect vulnerable users. The other believes only a BDFL can efficiently maintain Mastodon and promote its decentralized, open-source fediverse structure. Both are hopeful for Mastodon’s future, and yet, they represent diverging paths that Mastodon can take.

Meanwhile, Mastodon’s users can’t even agree on how Mastodon should function, let alone whom it should serve. Figuring out an answer will decide Mastodon’s future—and whether its marginalized userbase has a place to call home.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-fediverse-eugen-rochko/