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?
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.