Oddbean

Damus needs to put the user experience first. I regularly encounter this for instance (screenshot below). Damus can’t load the profile info while Nostur does it with no issues). Damus needs to be great for enabling creators to publish content and media and great for enabling users to interact with each other. Content/media is everything. It drives user activity and engagement. Here’s my reply to Will with some other comments. nostr:note1gyyl9ffa2ypq0u2lywjf2jjcymxphj3xqhvvgqzec9kekga0v5ms4cqvht https://image.nostr.build/41f47c11573f1f90498a8e88f2e036e5ffa6d211a5922923ecc5d3019797414e.jpg

I decided to go back and improve foundational tech instead of incrementally adding features. it may look line “deprioritizing development” but only if you think development means adding badges and gif keyboards.

In the past year we have created the fastest embedded nostr relay/db which powers our note opengraph previews, android/notedeck, ios profile and note search. This tech will enable damus to have note stats without relying on centralized services like other clients. Soon it will enable a completely offline and speedy experience on ios. We pioneered image blurhashes and image metadata so damus and other clients don’t have a janky feed when scrolling. We added the limit feature to nostr queries so that you don’t have to pull down thousands of notes when querying. We added zaps, reactions and reposts. We added command results so notes can actually be saved to relays reliably. The reason you can even load nostr notes on your phone is likely due to the optimizations we have made to the protocol and will continue to do so. But sure, knock us because we don’t have a gif keyboard.

And I’ve been here for just over a year watching you create all of those things. That is what captured me when I joined Nostr and why I’m still here. I feel very privileged watching creators create. I love seeing the collaboration that occurs - the openness, the sharing of knowledge and skill sets. I’m loving the Damus/Nostr rabbit hole into which I stumbled. 😊😊 I can live without GIFs until you’re ready to travel that road.

My original post was t specifically about any specific client or person, but since Vanessa replied about Damus I decided to lean in. You and your team have done incredible things for Nostr. But where I used to exclusively use Damus, I now barely ever use it at all. Im not the only user either as I’ve heard that directly from several people. Does that not concern you? The constant app freezing and crashing, the terrible navigation between threads and replies, the failure to load users’ profile data, the failure to show which notes are being replied to, the god awful video player, and I can go on. The gif keyboard comment I make is an ongoing thing I like to bring it up because it’s such a simple fucking thing that every user wants and would use. It’s as basic as image uploads. When I started using Damus you seemed to care about some of these things that users actually needed, but now I don’t see that from Damus. The protocol level stuff you do is no doubt crucial so thank you for that. But Damus is hurting. Users post content and media and interact with each other, and Damus is not great for that. Like I said the original post wasn’t about Damus. There are a lot of people on here with their heads up in the clouds about some imaginary level of Nostr adoption that will never happen if user needs are the priority, and it will probably look different than everyone imagines anyway. So it’s better to build onto what exists and give existing users what they need and ask for. Existing users know the end user experience here better than anyone.

Many developmental changes are easily overlooked if they're not large or user facing. I too often wish that clients had certain features or were more stable, but in the end I also immensely appreciate every single bit of work, every single line of code, and every bit of time sacrificed in the name of building. I understand that you work hard and that your client is your baby. Don't stop. Love you, brother and keep up the amazing work. I look forward to complaining about Damus on Android soon 🫂🥹 nostr:nevent1qqsd639eteupufspredqm68mr4rfg8fed4rf4wgavppze7tggnjwdvgpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qxtscya34g58tk0z605fvr788k263gsu6cy9x0mhnm87echrgufzsxpqqqqqqzlttsfd

I appreciate Will’s work, but Damus has a long way to go to win me back as a user. Other clients have simply surpassed it in ways that matter to end users. The longer he goes between updates and the more time he spends on other stuff without fixing the issues in Damus, the more users he’s going to lose. If retaining and growing the Damus user base matters, then he needs to fix a lot of issues fast. If that’s not his priority, then maybe he’s on track for whatever he’s trying to accomplish.

Appreciate your feedback Corn. We have our head detective and master bug and issue fixer @danieldaquino working very hard on this. Our new AppStore build 1.8 will be coming out next week (pending approval), so hopefully you can try it out and report back. In terms of the crashes you mentioned, pls send reports when you can as we haven’t heard much of that lately. Same goes for issues feel free to tag me or @elsat and we’ll add them to the list. 💜

Sorry I was offline much of yesterday so just getting back through my notifications and saw your reply. I’m hopeful to see how Damus develops. I truly believe it has the potential to be the best client on iOS. “Best” meaning giving users an experience they will enjoy more than other clients. I stopped using Damus a few months ago because the app freezes and missing notes simply became too bothersome to keep dealing with. Whenever iOS prompted me to send a report, I did so hopefully those were helpful. I switched to the App Store version after that so I’ll look forward to trying the next update.

Current follows list is 700-something. It got up to 900+ at one point but I removed a bunch of inactive accounts. Mute list is probably several hundred because I was muting a bunch of bots back early last year before the relays started mitigating spam better.

Then you don’t spend much time on Nostr, or maybe you don’t spend much time listening to your users, or maybe you don’t actually look at the crash reports submitted in iOS, or maybe they’re just useless. Idk wtf to tell you Will. Damus became shite compared to other iOS clients and you’re more concerned about arguing with users who point it out than you are with actually fixing the problems. Some of the problems have existed for over a year without being fixed, like fucked up navigation between replies in threads.

I used to get crashes in Damus frequently but lately they seem to happen much less often. I do click "send crash report to developer" button when it happens as well, but not sure if that report makes it's way to @jb55 or @damus or maybe they just get lost in the ether along the way.

Pretty sure we have one of most responsive teams on nostr: @elsat is meticulously tracking all issues that users report here on nostr, and anyone can @ me at any time if they are having a critical issue that is preventing them from using the app. So far we are tracking a bunch of mute related bugs https://github.com/damus-io/damus/issues/2222 and a stalling issue when your contact list gets to a certain size: https://github.com/damus-io/damus/issues/2194 We recently fixed a major issue where if you don’t have a contact list you can’t use damus really. We are currently not tracking any major crashing issues, if it is still happening let me know. This claim that we don’t care or that i don’t use Nostr enough is just wrong, i probably use nostr too much. I am constantly dogfooding damus and have one of the busiest accounts to test on, but sometimes we miss things due to weird relay and contact list, and mute edge cases.

I haven’t had crashes/freezes for a very long time. It was something back many months ago. But not anymore. I have other quirks which I reported to @elsat though not sure if they are tracked. Because the one I have is very odd.