@switchingsocial Whislt I agree on principle, I'd rather not pathologise people who aren't technically inclined, or haven't had the opportunity to educate themselves in that particular direction.
Technophobia, save for rare cases, is not a pathology you see out in the wild very often.

I agree with the sentiment and I'm wholly supportive of the project and initiative. Just something about discourse that could be improved.

@h

Apologies for the use of language.

I meant it light-heartedly, didn't intend any sort of medical/psychological connotations and will avoid it in future.

BTW I don't use that word on the actual site :)

@switchingsocial It's all good 😃

Keep up with the good work 💪

@h
A lot of the selfhost has this problem. "What, aren't you using Nextcloud? And hosting ttrss?!". If you see the installation guides for those from the perspective of a non sysadmin — they're complete gibberish. The amount of assumed knowledge is almost insurmountable...
@switchingsocial

@eladhen @h

That's exactly what I've tried to avoid on switching.social.

By the way, Nextcloud is listed too, but the focus is on third party providers that let you sign up as an end user, just like you would on Google Drive.

A lot of ethical alternatives don't actually require self-hosting, even though that is an option for more advanced users.

@switchingsocial
The funny thing is — I now got a selfhosted Nextcloud. I installed Mail In A Box, which walks you through setting up a domain, a server and then basically runs a script to set you up with a self hosted mail. And as part of its setup script it also installs Nextcloud.
This still might be too complicated for many user. I'm no sysadmin but I am somewhat technically minded and experienced. But it's a step in the right direction.
#mailInABox
@h

@eladhen

If you're going to do self-hosting, Nextcloud is definitely one of the easiest things to install 👍

However, as you say, self-hosting isn't for everyone.

@switchingsocial
What I'm saying is it's more complicated than it needs to be, if Mail In A Box could script-install it for me without me knowing anything about it...

@bob Can Freedombone host something lightweight (compared to Gitlab) such as Gogs?
@switchingsocial @eladhen

@bob

Shoutout to Freedombone then, that needs to be promoted with more insistence!

@switchingsocial @eladhen

@h
I'm not sure what freedombone is. I saw you posting about it, but didn't understand...
@switchingsocial @bob

@h
I mean, I saw Bob posting about it...
@switchingsocial @bob

@freakazoid I didn't think of that parallel, and I don't relate much to that feeling, but glad it translated into something positive and you got something to take away from it anyway.

@nonlinear Computer-Human Interaction?

@nonlinear I'm not sure what's the reason not many people in UI/UX/HCI dedicate themselves to free software. None of the explanations people usually give for not joining totally satisfies my curiosity.

It all sounds like a chicken and egg problem to me.

@h oh it’s really hard to work as a UI designer on open source projects.

The momentum is not there, the phases are not respected... and the approval process is murky.

Most of the time, when I offer help, they point me to issue tracking and ask me to pick one. If the scope is already there, that means not much can be done for UI UX process.

I can talk about it all day.

I’m slowly building a design scope methodology with other UX designers, to clarify the issue.

@nonlinear @h I'd be interested in reading it!

And yes, I can see this being a problem. We developers need to split our problems up before we can solve them.

But we need to remember others don't necessarily work that way.

@alcinnz @nonlinear @h I'd also be interested in the methodology.

Only my being a full-stack developer with ops exp has enabled me to contribute to UI on open source projects. Docs for running projects locally typically assume all kinds of knowledge.

I don't think I've ever seen a style guide in a FLOSS project to provide constraints for design work, nor narrowly scoped tasks. Finally, there is in IMHO a dismissive attitude by devs to front end work that is endemic to the industry.

@stephen @nonlinear @h We'd do well to remember the vast majority of code is there to communicate with other people and programs.

Very little of it actually computes answers to the questions we ask.

@stephen @nonlinear @h Then I'd add that in most programs the core computation is nothing then the kernel for looking up a file on disk.

And that even "backend" programming is mostly about modeling the sort of data that'll be presented to users. It doesn't often compute anything, it saves it.

@alcinnz @nonlinear @h After I left college, I was talking to a friend of a friend who worked for a big tech company. I told her I have focused on web interfaces but wanted to transition to backend, that in the industry backend is presented as being the more illustrious of the two of those false binary options. She said, "Why? It's just pipes." I'm glad she gave me that perspective, otherwise I might have persisted in my misconception of backend skills being more valuable than FE.

@stephen

Not a very deep insight, your friend didn't understand anything at all.
But glad it worked out for you despite her absolute equivocation.

@nonlinear @alcinnz

@h @alcinnz @nonlinear I consider it a generalization, not an equivocation, and I don't find it any less absolute than your description of "a massive industry enamoured of form, completely disregarding function and social concerns." I think I'll withdraw from the conversation then, thank you.

@stephen @h @nonlinear I enjoyed discussing this with you.

@stephen
Well, "it's only pipes" is a completely ignorant remark, with a total disregard for function, consistent with my earlier description, there's no way around that.

Perhaps unwittingly, you have made my case stronger.
You may not like facts that contradict your beliefs, but that is just a fact.

Good bye.

@h @stephen

My posts here so far are to argue the backend is as much a part of the UI design as the frontend. And while we do need to make more ethical choices regarding the backend, it's rarely more than that.

As such I don't view backend skills as being more valuable, but neither do I view them as any less.

But if backend is promoted as having all the abstract logic of CompSci that's very rarely the case, which I'm pleased you've learnt.

@stephen @nonlinear @alcinnz

There's a lot of miscommunication between the two fields, and a lack of good pattern recognition.

1) There is a massive industry enamoured of form, completely disregarding function and social concerns

2) Traditional hackers are distrustful of this industry with good reason

3) Both hackers and UX people have helped the industry to become what it is

4) Most FOSS usability sucks, not all UX/UI people are horrible, FOSS could use more of the good ones

@h @alcinnz @nonlinear @stephen https://opensourcedesign.net try to work to fix this a little

@nonlinear I'm not much for division of labour. That's just a capitalist industrialist constraint.

I'd be more happy if UI/UX people understood engineering better, and if engineers understood UI/UX better.

There's plenty of misunderstanding and lack of innovation stemming from division of labour alone.

@nonlinear @h

It doesn’t help that some my fellow devs don’t respect good UX or even recognize it when they see it.

Fundamentally, devs tend to think about the needs of similar devs so UX is an uphill battle for most OSS projects.

@mkb @nonlinear

I agree that's a problem. No doubt about that.