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Suggestions for Canvas and future events! (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by Ategon@programming.dev to c/canvas@toast.ooo

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Hey everyone! Thanks for participating in Canvas. I wanted to make a thread to collect together suggestions people have that can be worked on before the next Canvas.

Feel free to also throw in suggestions for future Events we can build and run for the fediverse.

Ill be collecting suggestions together and making issues for them in the repository for myself or some other contributors to work on (the projects open source so anyones free to contribute! https://git.sc07.company/sc07/canvas Feel free to reach out to me and I can help get you set up with the codebase)

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[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Encouraging anyone to stare at a screen for two actions per minute is brutal. Especially when those actions, to be optimal, have to happen the moment the timer rolls over.

This is an addiction mechanic.

This is some free-to-play mobile-game nonsense.

No matter how good the motivations are, no matter what narratives we can build around casual versus attentive use, this is a bad decision for software. It is deliberate manipulation of the user's incentives and habits for destructive patterns of behavior.

[-] Deebster@programming.dev 2 points 4 months ago

I didn't love it tbh. I had the canvas up in half of the screen and was doing something else but would look over too early then just be waiting for x seconds for my next pixel.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 months ago

Same. Watched some streams and found myself listening distractedly while staring at a window with nothing happening. It is, perhaps unfortunately, plenty of time to reflect on why, and to ask whether this is desirable.

The worst example of this accidental mistreatment (in my personal experience) was the idle game The Idle Class. From the genre and the title, you'd figure you can just leave it running, and come back whenever. But the dev added e-mail events that give a huge bonus if you catch them within thirty seconds. I cannot overstate - that is a Skinner box. That is operant conditioning on a random schedule. It's how brains develop obsessive habits, and eventually, superstitions.

Now that everyone's been exposed to real-money video games and at least acknowledges some of their tactics are criminal, we should all be mindful of how software influences people. Problems don't need to be malicious or complex. Reliable incentives over time are profoundly influential.

[-] carbon_based@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Thank you, very clear! I suggest to add one pixel every 30 seconds, plain and simple. If a modifier to this timer is required for reasons, that could be based on the number of pixels placed during the past x minutes or so.

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I'd rather not discourage consistent use, either. One valid purpose for modifying the rate could be soft botting prevention. Instead of handing people CAPTCHAs, just string them out on 40 seconds, 50 seconds, etc., as suspicion dictates.

What'd be great - and what I think would prevent some botting - is an official queue function. When I was filling in teal for half an hour at a time, I would have preferred to click a few spots in a row and let my browser do them for me. Automating an entire image would be ruinous. That's just a bot war waiting to happen. But if I could leave a dozen pixels floating, at any given time, I wouldn't give a damn when the timer says they'll get placed.