OpenStars

True... though Windows itself keeps changing things between major releases, so someone may feel that they need to learn a new interface either way, which lowers the barrier to such a switch-over. For myself I did not think it was that hard, but then again I came from Linux to Mac OSX so I am definitely not the average use-case:-P.

Anyway, good point.

As long as you are available to be on-call to fix literally all of their support issues:-). That's an old joke, back from the time people used to have "printers", and so like on a Windows and Mac machine adding a new peripheral is trivially easy whereas to install a new printer/scanner/whatever on a Linux machine, even if it is as simple "apt get whatever" can be quite intimidating to elderly people (tbf the OP does say "parent" and not "grandparent", but I was thinking both).

Anyway, that's a good point that I have no fully thought through yet:-).

That is a very good point. If the constraint was added that someone would need to purchase a new machine either way - their old one died lets say, and possibly they want to switch form factors from desktop to laptop or vice versa - then would it change your answer?

Trying to put Linux onto a new machine can involve literal horror stories, especially with a particular vendor of graphics cards (Nvidia) that seems to enjoy breaking things. And too many of the cool/special features that would "just work" on their machine if it were on an OS provided by the manufacturer - some neat-o keyboard buttons lets say - could take potentially hundreds of hours and ultimately writing your own driver coding to make it functional on Linux. Not always, obviously, but it can, whereas with a manufacturer-provided OS it is guaranteed to function right out of the box.

But yeah, getting a new Mac is something on the order of like $1000 USD, plus older machines have had more time for Linux drivers to have been written anyway, so cost and newness of the machine are definitely major factors.

I cannot see the source of the downvoting that would help illuminate that but since you asked, these are my guesses:

• no, b/c I fixed it within 10 minutes, and there weren't that many at that time
• potentially a brigade from lemmy.ml? I mean above & beyond the natural, organic disliking.
• people do not enjoy the pejorative term used there, despite how it is 100% character-for-character identical to the title of the post that I linked to (then I added lemmy, I suppose I should have called it lemmy.ml but in the top-left corner is this huge icon that just says "Lemmy" so that's probably why). People either did not bother to research far enough to see that, or maybe did not care - e.g. even if "they" can use it for themselves, for others to even quote it verbatim elsewhere is bad form? (And fwiw, at the time I was wondering if I myself am a "tankie", after all I do have socialist leanings so does that mean...?)

I prefer to take ownership of my own failings, even if if only potential ones - though again this is only guesswork, since nobody was brave enough to actually speak their minds since it would require stepping out of the anonymity provided by the downvote button - and have decided to rarely use "tankie" anymore, as in only if I mean to give offense, similar to "magat" in the USA (also maghat as in M.A.G.A. red hat, also sounds like maggot). (Probably I will forget though, so it will be a process to retrain my mind.)

Though I am still not certain what should be utilized instead. Perhaps "authoritarian" or lately I am leaning towards "fascist", though it is tricky b/c people with those type of leanings rarely are intellectually honest enough to be okay with a label that perfectly describes them - e.g. in the USA the far-right extremists are "patriots" who are "defending" (rather than violently overthrowing) "democracy" (oh, ahem, excuse me, only for a single day though, and if you believe that...). So not using that pejorative label is something that true leftists might sometimes want to do out of consideration, yet virtually no matter what term is used it will never be deemed acceptable (perhaps "Marxist-Lennin socialist" but that's a longer phrase and doesn't roll nearly as well as e.g. "tankie", plus ignores how many people claim to follow those principles yet in fact do not, nor are those claimed-to-be-believed-in principles even the subject of consideration when rather someone is talking about extremely heavy-handed authoritarian principles, that e.g. lead to literal murder, or defense of same), and ofc on the other side so very many people want the term to be as offensive as possible.

So in short I walked into it by discussing a contentious topic, which despite how it is preventing the Fediverse from growing, is something that most people would prefer that we not discuss. Well... certain people would anyway, and others are just tired of it so are collaborating with those. But since, again, nobody was actually brave enough to speak out as to why, this is all mere guesswork. And your guess is as good as mine:-).

I love that thought!

There is also the site.content_warning rolling out with v0.19.4 to consider - many of the details were not immediately clear to me from that page (is it just images and visiting the community, but what about text-based posts from a community? it says the warning will be delivered the first time a user triggers it, but will a cookie allow that to persist for a user across sessions or need to be re-done each time?), but it does seem a promising avenue to explore.

I liken it to porn - if you enjoy it, then have at it, but at least warn someone prior to it showing up unannounced, or regardless of the fact that it came from elsewhere, people will judge us for having brought it to them. People will ofc complain about being labelled - and fascists will complain the loudest of all (despite their own heavy-handed practices, yet realizing that we actually care about such, it is a tactic that sadly works far more often than it does not) - but honestly it's just a thing that they could/should do for themselves, akin to how people of consideration will add warning/apology labels for e.g. a long reply to a comment, to let the recipient know that perhaps the read-through may be easier to postpone until a more opportune time for it. And there is nothing preventing them (those people whose content would become labelled) from being included in the process of designing what the precise text of that label would entail? Though if they refuse to participate in good faith then as you suggested, there are ways around dealing with the situation that are just as effective. And maybe the latter solution using tried-and-true methods needs to be done regardless, while the labelling option is still in the experimental stages (especially if the code developers drag their feet making it work in a manner contrary to their philosophy - i.e. they simply remove content that they don't like, not label it but leave it up, as we are talking about here).

TLDR: opt-in offers maximum friendliness + welcomingness to people and will increase our overall content submissions, whereas out-out turns people away and therefore lowers that.

I did not even know that you were an admin - and would have written a much shorter reply had you not mentioned it - but since you have some ability to influence things for the good of us all, then I thank you for your consideration to actually implement some solution or another to aid with these matters that many of us care so much about: growing & maintaining a healthy Fediverse, even between people with such disparate ideals!:-)

Just a shout-out that Mac OSX is also a very nice OS that is neither Windows nor Linux. In fact I am interested: would anyone argue against this, again this is for parents, presumably someone who has (been forced to) used Windows their entire lives at work yet knows nothing whatsoever about tech?

I haven't been for weeks, but got sent there today from Lemmy and saw this https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1cv9g73/after_recent_fuckup_from_reddit_what_is_decent/.

And schips too, apparently.

Okay so they are both quite "fun" :-)

C++ is a bit easier to use on a daily basis though, and a scripting language easier still:-D.

Damn asm was fun though...

I too have been somewhat of an agitator in this. In my defense, data getting removed from the modlogs sounds indefensable to me - as in, incompatible with the principles of the Fediverse where we are supposed to "trust" the instances that are federated together?

In Dessalines' defense, that may very well have been real yet merely a bug in testing the newer features of v0.19.4? Only an instance admin would be able to dig deeper into that, and even that requires some bit of coding or data wrangling skill to either constantly monitor the differences in the modlog before vs. after the alleged edits, or as was suggested to have happened, be caught purely by chance (as one person claimed).

I am not volunteering to spin up an instance to test though, so I will drop this matter and give lemmyl.ml the benefit of the doubt on it. i.e., Lemmy.ml having been in the process of upgrading to 0.19.4-rc.6 wasn't widely known at the time, but now that we know that, bugs may be more expected than not during such a process?

Even so it does not change how hearing about (or observing first-hand?) such heavy-handed moderation practices as nahuse described will drive people away from the Fediverse, thereby lowering overall content for us all. Saying that it is their instance to do with as they please is like saying that it is fine for porn to appear on porn websites - which it very much is! (or should be, imho) - but my goodness, please label it so that people do not walk into it unawares!?!?! Similarly I am not... entirely happy that hexbear.net has a community dedicated to dunking on people (Chapotraphouse; maybe it is therapy for them?), but now that I know that, let them feel free to be however they want, but oh my, please WARN someone before letting them just walk into that hailstorm of comments!!! (which continued for WEEKS after I made some comment about President Biden doing better than I expected in some small matter, long after I stopped responding but my consent to continuing the conversation no longer seemed to matter to them; and then the next week I similarly walked into a lemmygrad.ml post and had the same thing happen)

The very concept of Federation makes that significantly more complicated b/c "we" choose to show that content in "our" spaces, so it is both theirs, and after it comes over, ours too. Fortunately, the site.content_warning in v0.19.4 will allow such warnings to be delivered, though I am not certain how it is implemented (it says prior to showing images or viewing a community, but what about a post from a community? e.g. !memes@lemmy.ml has a great deal of content that can be... off-putting to people). Note that it says that the warning will only be delivered the first time a user triggers it - though again the details remain to be seen, e.g. will a cookie remember that past a session for the same login?

So I personally would like to see an option "f" added that would use the new site.content_warning ability as/if it rolls out with v0.19.4. Though I have no say in this as a non-member of sh.itjust.works, so I say this only to explain my thoughts in case they were of interest. The tricky part about that might be how to implement it: the temptation would be to do so only in the more "controversial" communities, and yet the admins of lemmy.ml are doing blanket bans among many communities, e.g. !memes@lemmy.ml, despite people never having commented in them before. So they seem to think that the entire instance is one big community in that respect - or else how can that be justified? - hence the warning should be to anywhere across all of the instance, not just each community, should it not? (and again, whether that is even possible, or if it would have to be applied to each individual community plus all future ones created, remains to be seen)

Indoctrinate the younglings

Hrm... seems even legitier now? :-P