Submitted 9 months ago by realcaseyrollins@narwhal.city to Iotide@narwhal.city
What do y'all think of the state of Lotide? I'm thinking about being more active here and am wondering what the general concensus is on it.
I personally think the software is in a great place, we do need a far better interface (which can be found here: lotide.fbxl.net) and we also need more users.
Functionality-wise this platform is great, possibly at a very basic level even better than Lemmy.
Perhaps! I agree that instances need to be able to have their own branding. But the current interface reminds me of YCombinator, which has a lot of users.
It might depend on the meaning of a lot. I think this kind of visual flare appeals to a small usergroup, but that can be fine as well.
But a flagship instance you might want to have the most inviting an inclusive branding and interface that you can while following the goals one wants t meet.
Thanks for the shout-out, man!
I think that all lotide needs at this moment is a critical mass of users. It seems to do everything I want it to, and I think it's really cool that it integrates properly with other ActivityPub sites such as mastodon so it doesn't have to be an ivory tower.
I suspect that as time goes on and as more users pile in there'll need to be different tools for moderation and administration, but a lot of sites start with much less than this and grow to be huge -- we just need to get butts in chairs so to speak so they can start using this great tool.
One caveat, I think one feature we need sooner than later is a bit more work on federation. I wrote the above 12 hours ago and it still isn't showing up on the main instance, and as an admin I don't really know why or how to get it to transfer properly.
If we want more users we need to reach out an be seen. First step would be to create a mastodon that adverts about lotide.
Second would be to look at branding. IDK how large of an audience lotide is looking for but I think how it looks today can be a bit intimidating. So looking at some branding deciditions could be good too