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It's hilarious to see comments talking about how nobody in their community wants to use Matrix alongside comments recommending that you should obviously just us

It's hilarious to see comments talking about how nobody in their community wants to use Matrix alongside comments recommending that you should obviously just use Matrix. The reality is 1. FOSS alternatives have awful usability compared to Discord for the average person 2. Advocates for those FOSS alternatives are frequently utterly blind to those usability issues (which partially explains why they're present in the first place -- can't fix what you can't see!); they literally cannot even perceive what the problem is

chillfox 3y ago
Using Discord also results in a lot of zealots who are unpleasant to interact with self-filtering by staying away.
LightFog 3y ago
It’s true - it’s a frustrating side of free software projects that user experience isn’t taken seriously. I think those that push back at criticism on that side aren’t considering that a key point of ‘free’ software is evangelism and encouraging adoption and are letting something else (eg ego) get in the way.
- skydhash 3y ago
  > it’s a frustrating side of free software projects that user experience isn’t taken seriously. It's taken seriously by the users. The maintainers don't owe anyone to implement your ideas. If you have some issue about some software, you go and do the work. FOSS is not about delivering a software product to you, it's more about giving you freely the foundation that may be suitable or not for you. If it's not, you take it and do the extra work to get it more suitably aligned to your purpose. That may require some technical knowledge, but a bit of education is always helpful. I don't think I've ever seen FOSS marketing. More often than not, I've stumbled into it or I found it when searching for a solution to a problem that I have. If you do not like the default, you're encouraged to fork it and make it your own. Don't try to enforce your preferences on everyone.
  - LightFog 3y ago
    Yep - this is exactly the attitude I have a problem with. Telling someone to go fork a project and write it themselves if they find using it awkward stinks. Free software is exactly marketing, it is a movement that is trying to spread its values. Technical implementation/software are important conduits but secondary to that goal. If you reject input from those without the resources (technical, time, financial) from participating then the movement will never grow.
Arathorn 3y ago
Speaking as project lead for Matrix, I agree that Matrix clients tend not to be as polished as Discord - we are not blind to usability problems. However, it’s not that clearcut - for instance, Element has a full product design team (albeit focused on making sure Element works for paying government customers rather than FOSS developer communities, currently). Does https://element.io/labs/element-x https://element.io/labs/element-x look like something from people who don’t care about usability? So I am not convinced that blanket statements like “FOSS alternatives have awful usability” (N times over in the same thread) are helpful. They are often grounded in groupthink or completely outdated info - “my friend Alice tried Matrix in 2019 and it sucked”, or “all my friends say Matrix sucks so I’m going to copy them”. Meanwhile, communities like Mozilla, FOSDEM, KDE, GNOME, Nix, Debian, Ubuntu etc all seem to manage to use Matrix successfully in practice. Some even like it. I suspect the bigger issue here are folks who refuse to use a system which doesn’t have total parity with every feature Discord has”, or who are annoyed at having to run more than one chat app; Discord is where my friends are. Alternatively, can someone actually articulate the showstopping usability issues which are being referred to here (say, when using Element Web)? Weirdly enough we would like to fix them, as fun as it is reading the “Matrix has bad usability and they can’t even see it themselves” trope.
- esdf 3y ago
  Here's some of my pet-peeves and experiences from the webapp, the webapp wrapping desktop app, and the iPhone app. Maybe they'll qualify for awful usability, maybe they won't. There's been an issue open for Push-to-talk in element for 6 years. Insane. The voice and video calls/conferences aren't very good interface-wise. You could defer to this Jitsi being bad though. Screen-sharing is just broken so your alternative is to use OBS and its Virtual Camera, which means audio-sharing doesn't work. You won't actually see the video until you find the quality option somewhere to slide it all the way up. The whole screen-sharing or conference thing remaining visible, after everyone has disconnected, until the "starter" closes it? I'm not sure. Element X is mobile only (correct me if I'm wrong) so it's irrelevant to many users. You can't reorder your "favourites", only sort by Activity or A-Z (and showing recent first). "Favourites" being non-American English was something I noticed right now which doesn't matter but is worth noting for i18n. The lines after a `>quote` also get swallowed up into a quote block which I'm not a fan of and requires you to have an empty line after. Github does something similar afair. The inexplicable Unable to decrypt messages that happen sometimes. Can likely be deferred as user-error. Trying to sync or transfer keys across devices and not knowing if it worked so you just sit there and wait to see if the Unable to decrypt messages resolve. >"Use the Desktop app to search encrypted messages" (from the webapp) And finally, one of the most annoying things: shit scrollback for messages. It loves to jump to the very bottom/latest messages. >folks who refuse to use a system which doesn’t have total parity with every feature Discord has”, or who are annoyed at having to run more than one chat app; Discord is where my friends are. Well, they are on Discord. And Discord has PTT(LOL!!!) and working screen-sharing (very important!). And Element has a bunch of these random things that make it annoying to use in comparison that makes everyone call it shit and then only use it for text chat and maybe Mumble for voice, when not using Discord of course. One more bug: some combination of right-clicking on the Element tray icon causes it to be covered by Windows' task-bar right-click menu.
astrobe_ 3y ago
A difference between Discord and Matrix(/IRC since it was brought up in the comment as well) is that there isn't a single client because they are open protocols. If a person doesn't see a usability problem, it might simply be because they are using the right client for them. Always remember that nothing is free, and FOSS is no exception; you might have to invest some time and efforts to make it work for you.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Matrix has a flagship client that you can find endless usability complaints about. I myself downloaded the new Element X app on my phone to evaluate it a bit just now, and it doesn't even have a way to sign up during the onboarding process. Do you realize how much of a failure that is in terms of UX design? When the average user won't even be able to get past the sign in screen?
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    Element X is not finished or intended for average users yet, as https://element.io/labs/element-x https://element.io/labs/element-x makes clear. It’s a preview of the future of Element.
    - AAAAaccountAAAA 3y ago
      That is not made very clear in the Play Store, though.
AAAAaccountAAAA 3y ago
I don't think Discord's usability is good at all. It is overengineered, cluttered, confusing and messy. However, according to what little experience I do have with it, at least it works reliably.

chillfox 3y ago

Using Discord also results in a lot of zealots who are unpleasant to interact with self-filtering by staying away.

LightFog 3y ago

It’s true - it’s a frustrating side of free software projects that user experience isn’t taken seriously. I think those that push back at criticism on that side aren’t considering that a key point of ‘free’ software is evangelism and encouraging adoption and are letting something else (eg ego) get in the way.

skydhash 3y ago
> it’s a frustrating side of free software projects that user experience isn’t taken seriously. It's taken seriously by the users. The maintainers don't owe anyone to implement your ideas. If you have some issue about some software, you go and do the work. FOSS is not about delivering a software product to you, it's more about giving you freely the foundation that may be suitable or not for you. If it's not, you take it and do the extra work to get it more suitably aligned to your purpose. That may require some technical knowledge, but a bit of education is always helpful. I don't think I've ever seen FOSS marketing. More often than not, I've stumbled into it or I found it when searching for a solution to a problem that I have. If you do not like the default, you're encouraged to fork it and make it your own. Don't try to enforce your preferences on everyone.
- LightFog 3y ago
  Yep - this is exactly the attitude I have a problem with. Telling someone to go fork a project and write it themselves if they find using it awkward stinks. Free software is exactly marketing, it is a movement that is trying to spread its values. Technical implementation/software are important conduits but secondary to that goal. If you reject input from those without the resources (technical, time, financial) from participating then the movement will never grow.

Arathorn 3y ago

Speaking as project lead for Matrix, I agree that Matrix clients tend not to be as polished as Discord - we are not blind to usability problems. However, it’s not that clearcut - for instance, Element has a full product design team (albeit focused on making sure Element works for paying government customers rather than FOSS developer communities, currently). Does https://element.io/labs/element-x https://element.io/labs/element-x look like something from people who don’t care about usability? So I am not convinced that blanket statements like “FOSS alternatives have awful usability” (N times over in the same thread) are helpful. They are often grounded in groupthink or completely outdated info - “my friend Alice tried Matrix in 2019 and it sucked”, or “all my friends say Matrix sucks so I’m going to copy them”. Meanwhile, communities like Mozilla, FOSDEM, KDE, GNOME, Nix, Debian, Ubuntu etc all seem to manage to use Matrix successfully in practice. Some even like it. I suspect the bigger issue here are folks who refuse to use a system which doesn’t have total parity with every feature Discord has”, or who are annoyed at having to run more than one chat app; Discord is where my friends are. Alternatively, can someone actually articulate the showstopping usability issues which are being referred to here (say, when using Element Web)? Weirdly enough we would like to fix them, as fun as it is reading the “Matrix has bad usability and they can’t even see it themselves” trope.

esdf 3y ago
Here's some of my pet-peeves and experiences from the webapp, the webapp wrapping desktop app, and the iPhone app. Maybe they'll qualify for awful usability, maybe they won't. There's been an issue open for Push-to-talk in element for 6 years. Insane. The voice and video calls/conferences aren't very good interface-wise. You could defer to this Jitsi being bad though. Screen-sharing is just broken so your alternative is to use OBS and its Virtual Camera, which means audio-sharing doesn't work. You won't actually see the video until you find the quality option somewhere to slide it all the way up. The whole screen-sharing or conference thing remaining visible, after everyone has disconnected, until the "starter" closes it? I'm not sure. Element X is mobile only (correct me if I'm wrong) so it's irrelevant to many users. You can't reorder your "favourites", only sort by Activity or A-Z (and showing recent first). "Favourites" being non-American English was something I noticed right now which doesn't matter but is worth noting for i18n. The lines after a `>quote` also get swallowed up into a quote block which I'm not a fan of and requires you to have an empty line after. Github does something similar afair. The inexplicable Unable to decrypt messages that happen sometimes. Can likely be deferred as user-error. Trying to sync or transfer keys across devices and not knowing if it worked so you just sit there and wait to see if the Unable to decrypt messages resolve. >"Use the Desktop app to search encrypted messages" (from the webapp) And finally, one of the most annoying things: shit scrollback for messages. It loves to jump to the very bottom/latest messages. >folks who refuse to use a system which doesn’t have total parity with every feature Discord has”, or who are annoyed at having to run more than one chat app; Discord is where my friends are. Well, they are on Discord. And Discord has PTT(LOL!!!) and working screen-sharing (very important!). And Element has a bunch of these random things that make it annoying to use in comparison that makes everyone call it shit and then only use it for text chat and maybe Mumble for voice, when not using Discord of course. One more bug: some combination of right-clicking on the Element tray icon causes it to be covered by Windows' task-bar right-click menu.

astrobe_ 3y ago

A difference between Discord and Matrix(/IRC since it was brought up in the comment as well) is that there isn't a single client because they are open protocols. If a person doesn't see a usability problem, it might simply be because they are using the right client for them. Always remember that nothing is free, and FOSS is no exception; you might have to invest some time and efforts to make it work for you.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
Matrix has a flagship client that you can find endless usability complaints about. I myself downloaded the new Element X app on my phone to evaluate it a bit just now, and it doesn't even have a way to sign up during the onboarding process. Do you realize how much of a failure that is in terms of UX design? When the average user won't even be able to get past the sign in screen?
- Arathorn 3y ago
  Element X is not finished or intended for average users yet, as https://element.io/labs/element-x https://element.io/labs/element-x makes clear. It’s a preview of the future of Element.
  - AAAAaccountAAAA 3y ago
    That is not made very clear in the Play Store, though.

AAAAaccountAAAA 3y ago

I don't think Discord's usability is good at all. It is overengineered, cluttered, confusing and messy. However, according to what little experience I do have with it, at least it works reliably.