More friends for Scuttleville

I think Scuttleville has a fair amount of diversity. I certainly love telling people how we've got passionate gardners, boatmakers / tinkerers, solarpunks, mycologists. There's a channel for vegan-junkfood, and I started one for crypto-dads!

Lovely beautiful humans... it's just I've got a bunch of lovely beautiful human friends who aren't here, who I'd love you all to meet, and who I'd love to be part of our conversations. Alanna is here a bit, but there aren't enough people she knows well enough to feel like sharing a couple of lovely photos of spring in Christchurch, where she was jsut visiting for the Social Enterprise World Forum. It took me ages to convince her to install Patchwork. I've had other friends who were happy help me test onboarding ( @nanz @rose @Viv @nati ), but none of them have really found a place here. Why should Silvia Zuur or Marrianne Elliot care? These women are role models and master level wizards (or witches). They've organised Open Source conferences which bridged government, bususinnes, education and tech, they've offered legal aide in warzones.

My local views of the Scuttleville community is pretty alright (see New Zealand for the best ever). Maybe it's alright there are less women here. I guess I dream of a future where part of what we're doing aligns with the needs of those doing political activism, or community work, and we open whole new channels for the new schools of magic that we can learn about.

If you're #new-people , or you're a woman, or you're trans, or you're not a programmer, or someone who didn't feel like this place fit easily to start with, &&I would love to hear about what Scuttleville looks like to you**. I would love to hear stories about what might not work so much for you, or how the welcome was, or how joining conversations was. Here or direct messages, whatever is easiest.

If you've been on here ages, or are a programmer and a dude, I am interested to hear your views. I politely and respectfully invite you to practice pausing, curiosity, and listening. :heart

I love your suggestions.

When I started, active channels in the sidebar are flying past faster than I can click on them.

The initial sync is overwhelming - I saw someone compare the channels jumping up and down to a flock of excited swallows, which I found beautiful - and there is work or at least discussion going on to address this.

I think it's a side effect of the UI ordering channels by most active so although there are no metrics displayed, the channels at the top of the list should be the most active ones.

If you use patchbay instead of patchwork then when you click on a channel it opens in a new tab which makes it easier to inspect without losing your place. If you are comfortable installing from source code then this might be an alternative - https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay

I was lucky in that kind people responded to my initial posts and by following them I was able to find other good people and interesting discussions.

There is however an implied commitment and/or judgement in following people which can be offputting - and calling mutual follows "friends" in the UI exacerbates this. It takes an initial leap of faith and a willingness to be wrong :)

At the moment, the majority of people here are kind, conscientious and courteous and I hope that this compensates for the absence of some features that might make it easier to navigate the social space.

Added context: I'm a former arts/media/literary type who got into computers later in life lured by the kind of dreams that power scuttlebutt (and then lamented the apparent passing of that "utopian" era). While SSB addresses both sides of the two cultures, I think I might have found it overwhelming without technical knowledge - although people have been incredibly generous with their time. I present as male and identify as genderqueer and the only things that make me hesitate to express myself fully here are the exposure of posts in the wider web (which is not a safe space) via viewer.scuttlebot.io/ and the inability to delete posts. Both also hesitate to make me recommend this to activists without explict warnings.

My key impression so far is that this is far more like a real world social space than a social network and that the strategies we learn to navigate the former (watching our friends, seeing who they interact with and how, seeing what they recommend) work better than the strategies we use to navigate the latter (following people and reading material algorithms explictly or implicitly recommend or promote). It's also small enough to treat like a party full of strangers where you can drift at random and join conversations that seem interesting. The community is self-selecting and that helps: if you are here, chances are we have something in common. I've only encountered one person who delights in malicious behaviour and I am grateful for the blocking feature.

Pubs are clearly a necessary evil, possibly a transitional one. I am grateful for their existence because otherwise I would not have got to meet all the people I have met since joining. I would like it if they asked people to agree to the Contributer Covenant Code of Conduct before issuing an invite and did not sync with other pubs that did not do the same. This might keep the spirit of the place salient in newcomers' minds although clearly malicious people might choose to ignore it.

hey @haileycoop it uses the same identity and database (all stored in ~/.ssb on your computer if it's mac/ linux).

The interface of patchbay isn't nearly as polished as Patchwork. It's like a parallel testing ground in some ways, but it's also optimised more for devs (see vim keyboard shortcuts, and access to raw message data).
Oh and it has chess, and will soon have book reviews ... there are already book reviews in the data, but someone is getting an MVP interface up.

If you have a recent version of node installed (7 or 8) It should be as easy as

git clone https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay.git
cd patchbay
npm install
npm run rebuild
npm start

You can't easily run Patchbay and Patchwork at the same time at the moment - they use the same ports. It will just not start (you don't need to worry about corrupting anything). So close one before you open the other.

private groups are on the roadmap, but there are other things happening before them (like more reliable and efficient replication, to make joining less scary and slow).

It's possible to make your own private network using your own pubs (or running peers just locally) and running with a key which means they won't share info with anyone else not using that key. This is like running a parallel universe.

Thanks for relaying your friend's message @haileycoop. I was genuinely surprised, and feel kinda sad. I think it's a really good thing to hear. Thanks also @marina for making clear where you're at in terms of inviting your friends.

@matt @mikey @cel @dominic @ev / anyone building clients, I highly recommend reading this thread for direct communication about what really matters to make this a welcoming space.

@substack I'm happy to receive feedback anytime. I was surprised you only now mentioned that parts of that article were problematic for you (sorry if I missed an earlier comment). I'd like to clarify that Johnny Null does not get a pass, but that doesn't mean I'm up for the same response as you. I appreciate the reminder of the cost of toxic behaviour on community - that's actually why I haven't blocked him, I really don't want to forget. Maybe part of me feels a bit shit about the idea that I was the one who put the energy into noticing that Blocking was missing from the interfaces, I implemented it, and I tried to communicate about it. Whereas you give feedback and retrospectively thow me a problematic.

My (hopefully) clear feedback / requests for you would be:

• please give me timely feedback when something doesn't land right for you
• please join us by doing some active comms or code work to help make this a more diverse and safe community

thanks @haileycoop I'm not offended or regretful. I'm a mix of things right ... and part of that is sad being reminded how shit the internet is for some people

@haileycoop

• blocking should be easy, and the user should have lots of control over it (and what they do and don't see afterwards... I might also like to block someone, but still be able to record their abuse)
• the defaults should be skewed towards safety and narrower connection, even if at the expense of generating new connection

Thanks for your feedback, and it is good to hear both of these ideas re-enforced.

I'm currently sitting on a big update to Patchwork that reduces down the replication distance (you only see people you follow, and replies from people they follow instead of the current 3 hops), and adds an easy block button on every profile. Block stops all replication with that person (both directions) and hides all posts made by them in the past from your view.

Also, when you hover over someone, you get a popup showing you if any of your friends block the person, and if not, how many and which of your friends are friends with this person. If you view someones profile, the interface now gives you a hint as to whether they will be able to see your posts.

I am interested in your idea about "one-way" blocking someone (i.e. you still see their posts but they can't see yours). This should be possible, however if enough of your friends block them, it would be less likely that their messages will even propagate to you.

I'll hopefully get this published in the next couple of days, but anyone is welcome to try it out by building from source off the current github master.

cc @marina @substack

publish it early then iterate @matt. I thought blocking was in at least!

@mix

There was a pre-release 1.8.0.

Actually my big hold-up has been concerns about the stability of ssb-friends and then I got busy. Just gotta push the button now! (after I fix one more bug)

@mix oh also, pushing out patchwork builds is kind of hard because it is all manual (building for 3 platforms sucks). And people get annoyed when the "Update available" appears too often...

I can help with builds if that's ever useful @matt

@substack thanks for expanding, I think your critique around target audience is probably quite right. I enjoy writing but need practice and input to write for different audiences.

What I heard you say was that you understand my intention + the dynamics of scuttlebutt at the moment, but that that didn't come through. In terms of amending that message to reduce confusion, or speak in language that lands the message in a better way, Medium lets you leave comments, so perhaps a couple of people posting corrections could be good. I'm also happy to edit the body of the post directly.

Would you be interested in pairing on (or proposing changes to) that writing?

@marina I will add a block button on profiles in patchfoo

@marina yes, I think it is about ready

eeeeI just want to say that comprehensive moderation features have been part of the plan since the time that ssb was just an idea. I won't be happy until marginalized people feel that ssb can be a safer space than twitter, fb, etc. There is a lot of work to do to get there, though, but we are working towards it.

I intend to implement private groups (like fb groups, etc - for controlling who can see messages) - this is fairly complicated, probably next few months.

Also, another idea is delegative moderation - basically you choose someone (or multiple people) and you automatically block who they block. I think this would have the best of both worlds - you can have moderation, but without having moderation thrust upon you (since that can also be a vector of abuse). This would actually be fairly simple to implement. Maybe you could also have a invite code that defaulted to the inviter's moderation policy - this way when you invite someone, they'd onboard into the space you inhabit, so you can be confidant they'll land safely.

re: hiring Tiara - I think it could be great to employ her (or someone) formally. My read of the current grants are that there needs to be someone leading out on a proposal who is going to do the work. I don't think Tiara is really here at the moment so having her be the recipient might be strange (considering we're running a process where we invite people to socialise their proposals and adapt to feedback). I think it's more likely that someone else proposes doing a piece of work, and that person may employ Tiara. (That's my read on how it could run successfully anyway)

re: releasing a revision - I agree that writing a new piece and then putting a link on the top of that article is a good idea. I'm against hiding failures, I think they're important to role model, so don't like the idea of taking it down.
On writing it, I don't think I can or could write it. I am sleep deprived and my primary responsibilities are with @Ziva and @Alanna, and this work obviously requires care and time.

Would anyone like to take up the mantle of writing the clarifying piece?

I would love to support by contributing or editing, and I'm sure others would too. I just can't be the primarly person expected to deliver anything at the moment.

The twitter conversation was feeling ok and respectful but I think it's probably done as a conversation now... I think there's not enough shared care and context to be able to have a constructive conversation.
I thiink there's a dynamic where there's a totally reasonable need to conserve energy and have firm boundaries, and some of what we're talking about with scuttlebutt is straying too far into a grey space that isn't safe or looks like old patterns.
I personally think and hope we're doing and enabling new ways, but perhaps I'm too close and idealising.

thank you so much @marina, I think you'd be amazing at this. I'm happy to do anything that's helpful for you writing a response.

agree backing up from the conversation on twitter is a good idea for the moment. cc @serapath

This thread is definitely deciding me to get behind implementing more interesting moderation systems in the medium term (next few months).

thanks for the kind words @zach, they've helped me frame my experience.

the response and engagement on this topic has been really heartening. It's been greater than I expected, I'm learning more about myself, about you all, about community dynamics, and the values we want to lift up together

so much

hi @marina, regarding privacy / protection features, i think flags is a missing feature that is important for signalling to peers when content or people are unsafe, harmful, or unnecessary. if you want to quote me for anything to a public audience, i'm happy to respond to any prompt or question that is not yet answered.

if i were a user looking at a profile of another user that i don't follow, it would show how many flags they have? and what could i as the user do about that?

@marina

if you were a user looking at a profile of another user you didn't follow, you would be able to see any flags given to that user by your friends.

this is meant to be the ssb approximation of when you go to a party with some friends, either before or during you might have some conversations or quick glances regarding any unsafe people to beware at the party.

(i think @substack summed this up really well: %kvtQkJc...)

at the moment, newbies who join our scuttle party can't immediately know who deemed "unsafe" by their friends who invite them, unless they are told directly via a private message or read through the thousands of posts to gain context on the social dynamics of our network.

if you were someone who was flagged, if the flag was public and you are in the social neighborhood of the person who flagged you then you will see that you've been flagged for a specific reason by a specific person, potentially with some context attached to the flag.

however i don't actually know the best way to do flags, i think there's a problem with us not being able to signal negative feedback about our peers, i'm interested in starting a discussion and gathering feedback on how we could approach this problem. i know for example @Dominic has a different take on flags: %IOkhjB9..., %+bLn6BZ...; i'm keen to learn more.

@marina one challenge I've faced when writing or speaking about scuttlebutt is that there's sometimes a lot of dependent ideas. This might be just me, but I find it hard to talk aboutwho can see my messages? without talking about how the messages get around (gossip), and this normally takes some time.

Solutions to this are analogies which might compress those ideas, or some hand-waving (with follow-up if more detail is needed). I think that article I posted about safety and blocking backfired a bit in part because of this missing context. Specific example was the phrase

information flows along trust lines

This sounds poetic, but is actually a shorthand for the programmatic truth. (but you need to know that trust means following and trusting the follows of people you follow, and infomation flow means p2p gossip).

I think there was a similar problem with not expanding on

We’re a p2p network, where messages are gossiped — how do you say things publicly and have them not get to that person?
You tell your friends that’s what you want, and they respect your decision!

This also sounds wishy-washy, but is actually just me trying to describe what the code does in human speak.

@marina i'll try to address these when i next have time

@marina

1) whose content do you see by default?

You will see your own content and that of feeds that you follow. You may see content by other users if those you follow dig it, reply or link to it. If you navigate to someone's feed you may see their messages.

2) who can see your content?

Potentially anyone may see the content of messages that you publish if they are not private (encrypted) messages. If you block someone, they may be prevented from seeing your content. In practice, people may need to follow you or follow someone who follows you to see your content.

3) how can i block someone?

On their profile page you can click the "block" button. This will publish a message to your feed saying that you have blocked their feed.

4) what does a block do?

Blocking a user will stop your scuttlebot server from getting their feed from your peers if it was before. It should prevent you from seeing new messages by them. It may prevent them from getting your new messages, but this is not guaranteed.

Note: blocking is implemented in scuttlebot. patchfoo is just a client UI for scuttlebot

what's coming down the pipeline in the arena of privacy/protection for your client.

I don't have anything planned, but I am open to suggestions and feedback.

what do i do if someone is being abusive/harassing?

You can block them. If this is inadequate, I will need help to come up with a better answer.

When I raise issues with capitalism, I often immediately get labelled a "communist"

i've seen this too. especially with the older generation. talking to my friend's father about cooperatives and he starts talking about stalin... meanwhile he wants to hear about bitcoin.

i have also observed people refering to decentralization in a negative sense: twice today at the platformcoop conference %d/DuWxy... - by a union person and a workers alliance person. also have heard it in that sense from government people.

it's interesting to hear about how someone would not care about decentralization in the social network. for me, it is the main feature. oh well!

@marina

This all applies to patchwork too. Although still waiting on an official release of 3.8.x for some of these.

Not sure if this is the case in patchfoo, but blocking someone in patchwork also removes all of their past replies from your feed.

Also patchwork now has info about why you are seeing someone when you hover over their name or visit their profile. If you don't follow them, it tells you how many of your friends block them, or how many of your friends are also friends with them. By friends in this case, I mean bi-directional following (which as @tim has brought up, friends might not be the best description for this state).

Patchwork now also only replicates two hops rather than the default 3 like most of the other clients. This can lead to missing messages (which the interface will tell you about and hint who to follow to find them, or try to guess who the message was from), but I'm hoping that this will encourage better use of pubs and avoid conversations being hijacked by strangers.

Sorry this is pretty rough. I'm planning on writing up a proper detailed post about all this when 3.8 is finally officially released.

@marina

the default in patchfoo is now to only replicate and see content from friends.

I think this is a display only thing. AFAIK patchfoo still replicates 3 hops, just doesn't show you this data in the feed. Is that correct @cel?

Patchwork also only displays content from your friends in the feed. However, it will show you content from your friends-of-friends for channels and replies, and you can browse your friend-of-friend profiles to see all of their posts. You will also see posts you your friends have liked (of people you or they follow) on their profiles.

By the way, in the context above, friend just refers to people you follow, rather than mutual following. Possibly a better word would be "contact". This friend thing is getting confusing!!

if i wanted to change that, how would i do it?

Currently it is not an option in the interface. However you can do it as a command line flag on startup. I think it would be npm start -- --friends.hops 3.

Oh something that I didn't mention before is that you only see profile images and nicknames on profiles from people that they follow directly, or you follow directly.

@marina

Oh, also you can view all posts from your friends of friends by going to "More" > "Extended Network".

I think this is a display only thing. AFAIK patchfoo still replicates 3 hops, just doesn't show you this data in the feed.

Yes, it is display-only. patchfoo does not handle replication.

@marina @mmckegg

what would be the ssb equivalent of 'deleting my account and destroying the content i've created from the network?

Hey @marina, this is also my current assumption, that it isn’t possible or at least not implemented.

We were warned about this with our TALEnet project , too. The has established the right to be forgotten under which it has to be possible to remove a profile.

My idea for this is to establish something like a type:tombstone which abiding clients use to signal the wanted remove of a feed from the databases of other peers. Afterwards your key would be useless. An added benefit would be a way to break the chain, crippling replication even on non-abiding implementations. I’m not sure how that could be done though.

@marina I just realized you might not see %t+uW8wp... with the new filtering.

small corrections:

• The has => The EU has
• abiding clients => clients, other peers => abaiding peers

@marina scuttlebutt is like the fusion of two things in my mind :

• a diary that only I can write notes in
• a system for gossip which means that others can see open messages in my diary

Fundamentally, no-one can stop me writing in my diary. This is the freedom of speech part... I can say what ever I want into that diary.
The gossiping, which is set up by people following people is the freedom of listening part. You can write whatever you want, I don't have to listen, and in fact I can say I never want to listen (by blocking you).

This is different to facebook / youtube / twitter. The diary is actually a corporate platform and the pages are owned by that company. So I can try saying whatever I want, but some things will get me kicked off the platform (this is well and good, any host needs to take some responsibility for those they're hosting). So if I got my twitter handle @whimful blocked on twitter, I lose my 'identity' on that platform. On some platforms this means I will lose my record of events, photos, and will find it harder to be invited to parties.

Turns of phrase might not be what we'd want to use externally, but does that clarify? If not, what was it that didn't make sense ?

jargon : FoaF = friend of a friend.

When talking about range this mean how far are people interested in the messages of others. 1 degree = you care about only people you follow. 2 degrees = you care about people you follow, AND the people they follow (second hop out), etc.

@marina

congrats on the release of patchwork 3.8! did you ever end up writing up the doc you mentioned above? if so, how can i access it?

Still haven't officially released it yet. But just about to pushing out another pre-release v3.8.1

Been a bit busy, but will hopefully get this mythical release officially out this weekend! (and the accompanying docs)

thanks @Teq

@marina wrote a sweet overview of some of the features that I linked out to here %As+/+SO...

My experience here has been that if you start a channel it starts the converstion and I've been consistently delighted by the way people engage. I learn more about people I thought I knew all the time. I guess I'm saying i'd love to encourage you to start these channels. I for one am fascinated in learning more about #non-binary-gender

Do you want to start a new one, linking this comment you made : %9aQ3YKN...

(just paste %9aQ3YKNRIdVOSvvcBKCDKsw9Mv/bI5B9gO9cimgN09E=.sha256 into your message)

and we can discuss the topic in that new channel?