how to find?

The discussion in this community (and others) often goes toward „where can I find [foss software] with [feature]?“

The answers are often similar. Sometimes its direct links, sometimes its a reference to the awesome list on github (why not forgejo?).

But many things are hard to find on that list and the - although repeating - answers are of varying quality.

elastic search for forgefed?

What if we instead had a (federated?) search engine for FOSS software with feature tags and PRs/Suggestions which features are in there but not mentioned yet. Basically like sepiasearch by peertube.

Also important: the current state of development, maybe user numbers and stars/ratings/comments. Because some stuff on the awesome list is borderline unusable if you‘re not really deep in tinkering.

Users are not the enemy

Considering that we are entering a critical phase for FOSS and walled gardens, we should do away with the RTFM approach entirely and embrace semi advanced users starting to use our programs. Although we shouldn’t take all of their shit, we should absolutely start taking criticism ok bad/unusable documentation of UI.

Thanks for reading. I hope my intention shows.

  • hauiOPA
    1·
    3 months ago

    Thanks for mentioning it! That would be great. It has one potential downside in opposition to peertube or fediseer: wouldnt it require the searching party to already be federated? So if an instance is new, federation doesnt kick in until they get followed by other instances or follow other instances by domain/c/community.

    Thats how it works on lemmy and mastodon atm and would be very bad for federation.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
      1·
      3 months ago

      Yes, but I don’t see how that would be bad for federation. Maybe slightly inconvenient for discoverability though.

      • hauiOPA
        1·
        3 months ago

        Sorry, thats what I meant. Discoverability and therefore user adoption which is extremely critical imo.