Mastodon -- Snail-pace Development
Mastodon has to be one of the largest applications on the Fediverse. Depending on which stats service you look at, it has around 10,000 active servers and 800,000 regular users (of 8m registered).
The latest published Annual Report (for 2023) shows donations of just over half-a-million Euros for the year. A 65% increase on the year before.
Compared to other fedi-apps there is a small industry of people behind it; planning, developing, testing. And yet, it is the slowest to actually deliver any changes.
Other apps may have one, or a handful of developers, beavering away -- adding new features, and fixing little annoyances. Mastodon seems to be at the other extreme.
I've been a serious user of the Fediverse for over 3 years. Like most people I started on Mastodon but slowly discovered other, better, more dynamic applications doing a similar job to Mastodon.
During my lifetime here, I have observed many a request for new features on Mastodon, but three stick in my mind as regular wishes.
500 characters
Mastodon seems hell-bent on sticking to a maximum of 500 characters for a post (or as they used to call them, toots). People have been asking forever to have this increased. It's not actually too difficult if you are an admin and want to get your hands a little dirty. There's a few files you need to edit, and then compile the app.
But why make it so difficult. Mastodon can handle huge posts received back at it. Many other fedi-apps allow you 5,000 characters or more. Mastodon will happily show those. You are then forced to limit your response, or new toot, for no obvious reason.
Why can't the Mastodon boffins just make it a config setting like almost every other app out there? It is not rocket science.
Quote Posts
As the Fediverse has grown, people use it differently. One of the most requested additions is the ability to quote toots. Again, not beyond the realms of possibility.
The lack of QT (Quoted Toots), seems to fall back to Mr Mastodon himself -- Eugen Rochko who in effect created Mastodon. He decided he did not like quoted posts and saw no reason to consider implementing them.
His own post from March 2018 said:
I've made a deliberate choice against a quoting feature because it inevitably adds toxicity to people's behaviours
However, more recently he seems to have caved and suggested they were working on such a feature.
In a 2023 a blog post, Eugen Rochko said:
We’re always listening to the community and we’re excited to bring you some of the most requested features, such as quote posts
And two years later, their most recent blog post on the topic of Bringing Quote Posts offers a raft of words but nothing concrete.
Markdown
Mastodon only allows plain text. How archaic. The world has moved on. People need a little bit of text formatting to convey their message. Some use these toots (albeit short at 500 characters) to blog. A string of constant text often needs a little bit of formatting for emphasis, or a heading.
Again, it has been asked for (since 2017) and the Mastodon machine has suggested it is coming, yet we wait and wait and wait. Almost all other similar fedi-apps support markdown for basic formatting. Mastodon will happily show formatted posts from other apps, but their own users can't use it to respond, or in new toots. Mastodon, get on with the job and implement it.
New-comer experience
New-comers usually fall into Mastodon first. Some of them soon realise these trivial issues, which hinder their own growth on the platform. They either move on to a new fedi-app more capable of supporting their needs, or get disenchanted and leave the Fediverse completely.
All these little niggles are quick fixes. Come on Mastodon, get your finger out.
The original Mastodon Mammoth of some 5million years ago was not known for great speed, but perhaps Mastodon needs a new icon -- a snail!
Thankfully there are alternative apps, and even tweaked versions of the Mastodon code which offer fixes to the above.
What do you think? Comments... or reply to the fediverse post