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Since the mid-2010s, it has been common for users to interact with Internet services through a phone much more often than through a desktop or laptop computer. The friction of using web forums on a mobile device, with its small screen and finger touch as the primary means of input, has led some users to prefer chat silos (such as Discord) over web forums. This is unfortunate, as Dave Cheney has described in an article titled "Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications" (published on April 11, 2017) that explains why web forums are more inclusive than chat silos.

Today in the gbadev server, I described a few sources of friction in using web forums on mobile.

Join friction: Major email providers with many mobile users mistakenly block signup confirmation messages from websites with less traffic as spam.
Join friction: Forums with past spam problems requiring manual approval of new accounts by a global moderator and then not approving them for several days. I've seen this on neogaf, spritesmind, and sonicretro.
Reply friction: Lack of tools to compose longer texts with detailed quotations and citations. This comes from the combination of slow, error-prone text entry (which goes double for the punctuation in markup), inconvenient text selection and task switching for copy and paste, and tendency to purge open web pages under device memory pressure (and lose the user's position in a web page or the unsubmitted message body).
Reply friction: Safari for iOS and other web browsers for iOS not supporting Push API for notifying users of replies and new topics. Safari didn't support Push API at all until 2023 according to Can I use, and even then without sound, vibration, or screen wake.
Safety friction: Users not wanting their words to be permanently publicly searchable via Bing and Google, for safety from misuse by cyberbullies as "receipts".

Others in gbadev and SMS Power added these:

Join friction: A community's landing page shows the Discord server much more prominently than the forum. (Applies to gbadev more than SMS Power.)
Join friction: Needing to set up a new name and password for each community, as opposed to what kbin, Lemmy, and chat silos provide.
Join friction: Mobile users happen not to be aware that they can add a website to the home screen.
Reply friction: Reply buttons that don't look like buttons. (Applies to SMS Power more than some other forums.)

Which of these should be addressed to make the SMS Power forums more usable to mobile users?

We are lacking competent, committed, web developers who are willing to help move the code forward, pushing existing fugly tech toward staying long-term stable (rather than fancy webstack which will be unavailable in 5 years), and who have a great attention to details.

Lacking this, Maxim has been doing a majority of the web backend work and has other things to do, in addition with not being a specialist in that field in the first plqce:

We would gladly accept help on this front but people underestimate the commitment and attention to details required to perform good work. I came to accept that the like hood of either Maxim or I eventually finding a way to allocate large amount of time is more likely than us finding a miraculous contributor.

Keep in mind smspower has been online for 25 years. Our forum posts have been archived, links and attachments preserved, very few things were lost. We have even been archiving some websites that have now disappeared. On this aspect, we have been doing a better job that a vast majority of websites and communities (amator and commercial) where half of the things are lost and nuked after a decade.

I'm extremely worried that we are losing ground on gathering community, with some intended audiences (e.g. collectors, but recently some SC-3000 people including devs) scattered on facebook, instagram, twitter, discord, where things are not consistent, not indexed, locked down, god knows if e.g. twitter will be around in 10 years. That worries me a lot and under that ground I would happily push to make changes to make our forums more attractive and have less friction.

For example I think making it easier to attach files here (with drag and drop) I believe would be helpful too.

I'm personally against the Discord server, and unlogged from there years ago as a matter of principle. But apparently I am a single person minority on that front :)

One thing I strongly disagree in the listed suggestion is "Users not wanting their words to be permanently publicly searchable via Bing and Google". We strive to be indexed and searchable, this is one of our most important principle inline with preservation. We strive to have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than most forums (I think we do) because this is a place to exchange useful information and not e.g. drama found in other communities, and that information is aimed to persist. So I'd argue if you post here you'd implicitly argue to get your post indexed (which is the default state of anything on the internet). People may be anonymous here and are free to delete selected posts or ask to have their account deleted, perhaps user name changed before account deletion.

Author	Message
PinoBatch Joined: 05 Dec 2019 Posts: 56 Location: USA	Sources of friction in using forums on mobile Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2023 5:40 pm
PinoBatch Joined: 05 Dec 2019 Posts: 56 Location: USA	Since the mid-2010s, it has been common for users to interact with Internet services through a phone much more often than through a desktop or laptop computer. The friction of using web forums on a mobile device, with its small screen and finger touch as the primary means of input, has led some users to prefer chat silos (such as Discord) over web forums. This is unfortunate, as Dave Cheney has described in an article titled "Why Slack is inappropriate for open source communications" (published on April 11, 2017) that explains why web forums are more inclusive than chat silos. Today in the gbadev server, I described a few sources of friction in using web forums on mobile. Join friction: Major email providers with many mobile users mistakenly block signup confirmation messages from websites with less traffic as spam. Join friction: Forums with past spam problems requiring manual approval of new accounts by a global moderator and then not approving them for several days. I've seen this on neogaf, spritesmind, and sonicretro. Reply friction: Lack of tools to compose longer texts with detailed quotations and citations. This comes from the combination of slow, error-prone text entry (which goes double for the punctuation in markup), inconvenient text selection and task switching for copy and paste, and tendency to purge open web pages under device memory pressure (and lose the user's position in a web page or the unsubmitted message body). Reply friction: Safari for iOS and other web browsers for iOS not supporting Push API for notifying users of replies and new topics. Safari didn't support Push API at all until 2023 according to Can I use, and even then without sound, vibration, or screen wake. Safety friction: Users not wanting their words to be permanently publicly searchable via Bing and Google, for safety from misuse by cyberbullies as "receipts". Others in gbadev and SMS Power added these: Join friction: A community's landing page shows the Discord server much more prominently than the forum. (Applies to gbadev more than SMS Power.) Join friction: Needing to set up a new name and password for each community, as opposed to what kbin, Lemmy, and chat silos provide. Join friction: Mobile users happen not to be aware that they can add a website to the home screen. Reply friction: Reply buttons that don't look like buttons. (Applies to SMS Power more than some other forums.) Which of these should be addressed to make the SMS Power forums more usable to mobile users?

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8652 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2023 10:29 am
	We are lacking competent, committed, web developers who are willing to help move the code forward, pushing existing fugly tech toward staying long-term stable (rather than fancy webstack which will be unavailable in 5 years), and who have a great attention to details. Lacking this, Maxim has been doing a majority of the web backend work and has other things to do, in addition with not being a specialist in that field in the first plqce: We would gladly accept help on this front but people underestimate the commitment and attention to details required to perform good work. I came to accept that the like hood of either Maxim or I eventually finding a way to allocate large amount of time is more likely than us finding a miraculous contributor. Keep in mind smspower has been online for 25 years. Our forum posts have been archived, links and attachments preserved, very few things were lost. We have even been archiving some websites that have now disappeared. On this aspect, we have been doing a better job that a vast majority of websites and communities (amator and commercial) where half of the things are lost and nuked after a decade. I'm extremely worried that we are losing ground on gathering community, with some intended audiences (e.g. collectors, but recently some SC-3000 people including devs) scattered on facebook, instagram, twitter, discord, where things are not consistent, not indexed, locked down, god knows if e.g. twitter will be around in 10 years. That worries me a lot and under that ground I would happily push to make changes to make our forums more attractive and have less friction. For example I think making it easier to attach files here (with drag and drop) I believe would be helpful too. I'm personally against the Discord server, and unlogged from there years ago as a matter of principle. But apparently I am a single person minority on that front :) One thing I strongly disagree in the listed suggestion is "Users not wanting their words to be permanently publicly searchable via Bing and Google". We strive to be indexed and searchable, this is one of our most important principle inline with preservation. We strive to have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than most forums (I think we do) because this is a place to exchange useful information and not e.g. drama found in other communities, and that information is aimed to persist. So I'd argue if you post here you'd implicitly argue to get your post indexed (which is the default state of anything on the internet). People may be anonymous here and are free to delete selected posts or ask to have their account deleted, perhaps user name changed before account deletion.

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