Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.
It’s also the way we’ve used computers for nearly fifty years and the way we interact with every other display in our lives. As examples almost no one uses less than the full wide of their TV, Smart Phone, or Tablet. There’s no reasons that computer displays should be any different and they weren’t until pretty recently.
If you’re using anything full screen, you’re doing it wrong
I’ll make sure to start watching YT videos in tiny little boxes like we did in the 90s and 2000s. 😜
I have 3 curved monitors in the home office. Left monitor is browser, center monitor is primary task, right monitor is comms or secondary task. I can’t track more than three things at a time anyway and I bought these big ol’ curved monitors for a reason.
This is how computer monitors have been used since I first touched an Apple II+ in 1980. It’s how you use every other display in your life. The problem isn’t with people using apps full screen.
Stop making a single browser window full screen and use the additional space on the side for something useful.
So stop using monitors the way I’ve been using them since 1982? Stop using them the way that literally every other screen I interact with functions?
A chat application, a notepad, a calculator, file browsing, a second browser window, documents, etc.
That’s what 2nd and 3rd monitors are for.
Or rotate the display to be tall instead of wide if you really want the extra vertical space.
That’s not so easy when you’re using multiple curved monitors with a stand or mount.
I get what you’re saying, I really do, but from my point of view it’s incorrect. It breaks the usage paradigm that’s been in place since these things were invented and there’s no other screens in our lives where we intentionally use less than the full width available for a single task.
But web devs seem universally to assume that if it’s a tall narrow screen, to show the mobile version.
Web Devs are also highly allergic to using the 25% of the screen on both the right and left so only the middle 50% is useful space. It’s god damned infuriating!
With that in mind; a wide monitor is useful for … web browsing
Are you serious? As I’m typing this comment Lemmy has just over 4" of totally unused space on the left of my monitor and 3 1’2" of unused space on the right!
Granted that’s not the fault of the monitor but not only does widescreen reduce the amount of viewable area top to bottom modern web hackery doesn’t even fucking use all of that extra space side to side!
I have about the same viewable area now as I did in 2000 with a 20" “square” monitor!
XenoForo is a bit spendy but they’re providing the software, hosting and data storage. IIRC the forum I’m talking about is on the “Business” plan due to how busy it is.
there’s no persistence or community.
That’s it right there, that’s what you are missing. The older forum communities were small enough that you could keep track of whose who, something that isn’t possible when the user counts are in the tens of thousands to tens of millions. I think a lot of us olds would like to go back to that but its impossible; our monkey brains can’t handle communities of that size.
To use an extreme example, if I saw someone just spamming the hard-R I would want their comment immediately removed.
In the forum days those users would get attacked and / or blocked by other users. If they caused enough havoc for long enough then the mods / admins would step in. The expectation NOW is that the mods / admins will actively monitor every post and comment in order to remove disagreeable content before it can be seen. That’s quite the change over the last 20 years!
The funniest part is that this mirrors real life. If someone did that IRL, I would just leave.
“Mirror” is probably more apt than you realize. IRL you would leave but on the internet you want them to leave. I’m not blaming you or saying that you’re wrong, I’m just pointing out the difference.
I agree that all forums require some level of moderation in order to keep from turning into total troll-fests however there’s a wide chasm between moderating someone because they won’t stop posting racial slurs and moderating someone because they’re going against the grain / hivemind.
Being designed around persistent topics rather than the ephemeral post model
Hmmm, you’re probably on to something there. I think Lemmy could do that but no one cares to set it up.
and more visible user customisation (more prominent avatars, signatures, that sort of thing).
I’m honestly not sure this is a bad thing. Dear God, remember how threads would get blown out by hyper-configurations? Sig blocks that were 20,000 pixels long and endless GIF spam? Not sure I’m in a hurry to get back to that!
One of my favorite forums has been around since 1999 and is currently running on XenoForo which is very phpBB-esque. Anytime I get a nostalgia hankering I drop in for a few minutes. It’s not always as good as you may remember. :)
The fact that most internet discussion happens in extremely censored places is bad.
Many people, including a large chunk of Lemmy, are perfectly fine with censored discussions. They honestly want it that way…as long as the discussion is censored such that it agrees with their opinion.
I want the rest of the world to change and this is another tool to help towards that end, not merely an escape.
It’s extremely difficult to free people from things that they want.
What are we going to do about it?
Do nothing, nothing about it. The great hordes of the unwashed have ruined every single place they’ve showed up starting in the early 90s. They don’t want to be saved from the commercialization that has taken over the internet, to the contrary they thrive on it and are willing to put up with nearly anything to attract and keep it.
If most of Reddit shifted over to Lemmy it would get commercialized into a smoking crater. As soon as there’s enough regular people using a thing the companies and venture capitalists will show up and at that point the game is over.
The best of the internet has always been built by and populated with people who don’t fit into a box. It’s that internet people keep trying to bring back but you can’t hold the castle once it’s being assaulted by the normies.
So the solution is to do nothing. Let the normies stay in their palaces of commercialization and corruption. It’s for the best.
As to what we do about it?
Nothing. We do nothing about it. I’ve literally watched this happen over and over and over and over since the early 90s. $Place on the internet gets popular and is then ruined by the hordes of normies and the commercialization they attract. It’s even worse now with rise of influencers, troll farms, online advertising agencies, and power users.
The normie users add almost nothing to the online experience and they take so very much.
So the wisest move is to do nothing and let the flotsam and turds of the internet wash up in harbors like Reddit.
What do you think Lemmy is missing that phpBB had aside from strong user communities built over years where many of the users knew each other IRL?
I think old school internet folks are underestimating just how much of a grip Big Tech has on users’ attention.l, and their devices.
With all sincerity this is fine. Seriously, let’s leave it this way.
As someone who was already around when Eternal September happened the Internet was never for normies and inviting them into the space has destroyed it. Everything that attracts the attention of normies ends up ruined; MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Slashdot and so very many more…they are all trashed because when they attracted enough users the commercialization started.
So maybe lets just leave the Fediverse for those “in the know” as long as we can.
In some ways yes in other ways no. The urge to hivemind and purity test everything is definitely the same however the ability to move to another instance and get away from a group of power tripping mods is different.
Lemmy is essentially a collection of 2000s era forums that have agreed to share user accounts.
Whoo boy that’s funny, thanks for the chuckle. I’ve been technology professional so long that I literally predate NAT. To say that I’ve changed with the time would be an understatement.
Huh, media consumption. You mean like Lemmy or any other web media?
Here’s where we diverge and despite considering the issue for several hours now I’m still not sure if this is a generational issue or something else. Obviously I’m from the time before widescreen and it looks like to me like you’re trying to use a workaround (multiple windows on a single screen) to justify what is objectively a downgrade in display technology.
You are in essence saying “Yes I know the monitor doesn’t have enough vertical space but you are supposed to use the extra horizontal space to overcome that.” I am going to counter by saying that computer monitors shouldn’t be 16x9, that’s a TV / Movie format forced into the computer industry by display makers who wanted to leverage their investment in television panels to produce cheap computer monitors. In short you are forcing yourself to find ways to work around display tech that doesn’t fit the use case; the screen is wider than it needs to be while not being tall enough.
Amusingly I was discussing this with a peer about an hour ago and he brought up ultra wide monitors like the Samsung Odyssey QD-OLED G9 (5120x1440) and after looking at it we decided that a monitor with the same physical width (48") but double the physical height (20" vs 40") and double the horizontal resolution (2880) would be near perfect. With such a monitor there would be so much real estate that app windows would stay large enough to be readable while still being capable of displaying lots of data vertically.
Ahhh, now we hit the rub. I do a lot of remote GUI work and what I’m dropping into expects widescreen and uses all of it. Downscaling that into an app window makes the problem worse because it leaves large areas unused horizontally and there’s still not enough vertical. I could flip a monitor to portrait but then it’s too narrow to be handled correctly because what was a lack of vertical resolution has now become a lack of horizontal resolution. This is another symptom of 16:19 being a bad aspect ratio for computer displays.
This person is seriously considering a pair of frameless ultra widescreen displays in a vertical stack. Expensive AF but potentially oh so usable.
You do you with multiple app windows squished to fit into today’s displays. If it works for you then it works for you.
Enjoy your day.