I want to keep improving SpeakBits and make this as useful as possible for all users. I would love to know what users here would like to see in terms of features or content that would make a site like SpeakBits interesting for you to use. So what is something that you would like to see on SpeakBits or something is missing on other sites that would make SpeakBits a better platform?
I've been browsing here without an account for a few days, found SpeakBits through a post on r/RedditAlternatives
I just created an account tonight, it's looking pretty good, I hope to see it get more traffic in the future!
So in my time with SpeakBits so far the biggest thing that stands out to me is that almost all of the posts (with the exception of posts made by staff/dev(s)) here are made by a bot. I obviously haven't been following development of this site as I just recently learned it exists so I don't know if anyone from your team (if there even is a team (I mean more than one person lol)) has touched on this anywhere else but I'd guess that's probably at least a bit off-putting to at least some new users. I get that there's a vicious cycle in new social sites where they need content to get new users and they need users to get content and that a solution to that might just be to automate reposts from (in this case, I'm guessing,) Reddit, but I think if nothing else people probably just don't feel any interest in interacting with posts made by bots. Part of the appeal of social media, I think, is to have a conversation about some subject with other people. Since there's little to no indication that other people use this site (certainly not many other people), and all the posts on the front page are made by a bot, it looks like there's no conversation happening here to engage in or with. Unless u/rss-bot is sentient lol
In fact, if I block rss-bot and go to /all it looks like there are ~20 whole posts made by other human beings? And most of them were made by staff/dev(s), and more than 3 months old.
That's just a guess, though, I could be totally wrong. And god knows I don't post much so it's not like I'm going to be the one solving the problem by creating posts (I'm a chronic lurker, comments at most).
Another thing I've noticed just since I created an account is that I'm getting prompted to agree to the End User Agreement and Privacy Policy a lot. Seems to pop back up every time I join a group or switch to another tab and switch back to this one as I'm typing. Does not seem to happen in tabs where I'm not typing, though. I'm currently on Firefox Developer Edition and Windows 11 with no extensions installed except for uBlock Origin.
Also making the sidebar on the right optionally collapsible might be useful/good too, or to make its width adjustable or something
Welcome! Really happy to have you here and really thankful for your comment!
Let's get the most important part out of the way: No, rss-bot is not sentient :P.
It's just me here at SpeakBits and probably will be for a good while. I'm a chronic lurker as well and the posts I've made about SpeakBits have been the most I've posted about anything in the last 12 years. I try to post a dev update once a month but that's still hardly anything in the context of social media content :).
My main thought behind rss-bot was for people to have SOMETHING to consume when they visit here, since I'm just not great at having content to put up myself. I didn't want to do the whole "just repost from reddit" thing so I have the bot subscribed to a list of RSS feeds that it pulls from, feeds that I created and also found by others, and posts the links. One of the feeds for g/personalfinance seems to have the subreddit in there, though, so I didn't quite get to get away with not posting links to reddit. I'm also trying to be fully transparent to all users so I have it labeled as a bot instead of trying to mask it as active users in the way that reddit apparently did at its start.
It sounds like rss-bot might be a detriment to the site though. Would it be better to just not have it at all?
The EULA popping up sounds really annoying and should not be happening. I'll be looking at this and hopefully have it fixed soon.
The adjustable sidebar sounds like a great idea! Adding it to my list of features!
It's awesome that you're so open to feedback! But idk if I'd want you to make that big of a change based only only on my personal opinion and feedback! lol I have no idea how to run a successful social media platform, and my primary use of Reddit for the last idk 10+ years was browsing memes. So I may not be the right person to ask. Mostly I'm just giving some context on my thought process and maybe giving you something to think about. Ultimately it's your platform and I think you should run it according to what you think is best. Since you've come this far I promise you know infinitely more about what you're doing than I do lmao. I fully don't know if completely removing rss-bot is the way to go. Like I said I agree that it's probably good for there to be something here for people to see when they come here, I just wonder if so many posts made by a bot may contribute to some people not wanting to bother to get more involved. To someone like me it's at least a little discouraging to see the site essentially exclusively populated by posts made by a bot. I remember this being a discussion on the Lemmy instance I joined during the initial protests when Reddit was changing their API and breaking third party apps. Some Lemmy instances ran a bot/s to automatically post content so that there was something for people to see when going to those instances, and others didn't. The people who ran the instance I joined asked users whether we thought they should do that and the majority of users who responded voted no. I even remember several users saying they block the bots from the other instances that do that.
But idk if me and the users of that Lemmy instance represent a majority mindset on the internet or not. I totally see the perspective that it's good for there to be anything for people to see when they come to the site, whether it's posted by a bot or not. Also, it /is/ obvious that it's a bot, and it's great to be transparent about that, and I didn't know that Reddit used to do that. I mean, I know that Reddit is currently infested with a lot of repost bots that are designed to not look like bots, and that's pretty scummy, but I had no idea they were sanctioned officially by Reddit. It wouldn't surprise me, though. Also, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with having the bots only reposting content directly from Reddit, but it's cool that you put in the effort to make RSS feeds with much more variety than that. For me personally it's not where the content is coming from as much as that it's being posted by a bot at all. On Reddit I would frequently downvote posts if I noticed they were made by a bot (mostly depending on the sub. I'd be more likely to downvote a bot posting in a small sub with a closer community than a bot posting in a big sub with thousands-millions of users. idk maybe I'm weird (not that I've been downvoting rss-bot, I have not been, I figure that wouldn't be helpful for growing SpeakBits lol)), whether they were open about being a bot or not. But again I don't know if I represent a majority of users with that opinion or not. It's just that I personally feel less interested in engaging with posts posted by a bot, and if I feel that way then I gotta assume at least some other people do, especially after my aforementioned experience on Lemmy.
I have not had the EULA pop back up since I closed my browser last night, so it might have just been a weird thing that happens when a user first signs up. Maybe a problem with cache or something? idk
Excited to see the adjustable sidebar! :D
Edit: altho i am a chronic lurker I will take some initiative and slowly post my entire meme collection over time to do my part for SpeakBits lol. Created a group at g/memes I was going to create g/sillymemes or g/mems as I particularly enjoy silly, wholesome, nonsense memes but I saw there was no meme group here at all yet so I figured getting that specific and niche could wait until there were more users
I live for user feedback so please keep it coming!
Thanks for writing this up, this is such an awesome perspective to read! Making a poll like the one on lemmy might be a good one to run once I get poll posts going! I'll keep all this in mind but definitely won't make any changes just yet :).
No problem, I love rambling lol. A poll sounds like a great idea and I will definitely give more feedback if I think of anything else!
Like for example, a couple small QOL (imo) things: I think it would be cool if we could middle click on the links in the dropdown that drops down when we click on our usernames in the top right to open those links in a new tab. And I can't find a way to go to the thread that a comment was left on from my profile other than clicking on the "link" button, pasting that link into the address bar, and then clicking "show all comments." On Reddit (on the redesign at least, I haven't used old Reddit in so long I don't remember if it has a similar function) you could click on the title of the post above the comment or click on the comment itself and then click "show all comments" to do this.
So many information in the comment section....
Thanks for the information. ....