Re: Alternatives To Xwitter

Marco Moock <mm+usenet-es@dorfdsl.de> wrote:

I've tried fediverse, but I still don't like the concept of the short
messages, especially when people post long text on multiple posts.

The nodes in the Fediverse are very diverse:

+ Message lengths range from 500 chars to unlimited.

+ Some nodes have no ways to format stuff, others can use simple text,
  MarkDown and HTML to spice up things.  "Simple text" unfortunately
  isn't fit for code snippets.  So they even got plain text wrong by
  reflowing it and butchering indentation.

+ Some nodes can use hashtags, some cannot.
  (Or has that changed meanwhile?)

And can you imagine sitting in an instance without usable markup and
limited to 500 chars and then huge beautifully formatted posts from
other instances fly by?

I think this feature inequality will doom the Fediverse in the long run.

I enjoy Usenet and I enjoy that it is text-only

Plain text that does not get butchered on the fly is more useful than
even MarkDown in the Fediverse and I have never had a post rejected
because of its size.[0]

I clearly prefer Email and NNTP[1] over the new global noise.  Hashtags
not being able to mimic newsgroups even when they are supported leaves
you with only some separated typically very noisy timelines.  On small
instances the purely server local TL is kind of bearable like a small
forum, but big instances' local TLs aren't much different from the
global TL which imo is just noise.  Even assuming hashtags would work on
all instances, hashtag hygiene is near to impossible to reach in large
crowds.  So groups, rooms or however you may want to call them need
"solid walls" and I see no way ti get those there..

and not full of pictures and memes.

I definitely have no problem with HTML and images in posts gated from
RSS or mailing lists to NNTP.  Those origins have their own rules and
having all this side by side with Usenet in the same reader definitely
is nicer than needing to get used to an extra program, UI, keystrokes,
... for each type of those.

____________

0: I've even disabled "beautifying" *b*, /i/, _ul_ in my newsreader to
   not disturb tables and ASCII art and I expect every serious Usenet
   user to use a monospaced font as default or to know how to toggle
   their reader's rendering on the fly.  This might be kept for an other
   rant in some long winter night.

1: IMO: SMTP + NNTP = the original Fediverse

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