Gregory's ServerIt's one of the main three reasons mastodon was left so far behind by the other Fediverse server platforms.
The other two are that ridiculous, default, hardcoded paltry 500 character count limit - you've done a lot of workarounds (setting pseudo max character counts for all links, etc.) to avoid changing that to a simple configuration by admins on running instances - and that, more than anything else I think, has been the impetus that has spawned so many exceedingly popular forks.
The third item is that you simply don't have any support for other text formats - like #Markdown, when almost all other major Fediverse platforms do, some of them for even longer than tootsuite/mastodon has been in existence.
You don't have any support for local-only posts either - a very popular and requested feature that you've virtually ignored.
The ability to edit posts without breaking threads that came in with this most recent release (4.0.0) was a few years behind most other Fediverse server platforms. Rhetorical question: Why did you wait so long to implement that?
But the most glaring, um... I'll call it an egregious offense, is that much like Canonical did when they scraped almost all mentions of "Linux" from the Ubuntu websites, you too have done so with respect to #Fediverse on your official brand marketing websites - this has resulted in enormous damage to the community, serving to fracture it to some measurable degree, to the benefit of your "brand", but at the expense of the community at large by confusing the consumer.
That last item, I don't know if you even realize the level of confusion this has resulted in with respect to all of the new Fediverse adoptees that actually think mastodon is a network - it is not. It's, "The Fediverse", Eugen, that's what the term is for our #ActivityPub powered network, and that interview you did with #Time_Magazine last month did not mention Fediverse even once. Not even one time.
As a well known, de facto spokesman for the Fediverse community, you have, if not a fiduciary obligation, at least a moral duty to fairly represent and promote the Fediverse community at large.
So now that funding isn't an issue for you so long as you listen to where the money is coming from, you're being told to do all of these things, and to be certain, you will. You've even announced a public roadmap to coincide with this realization that you now must cater to the community and it's desires, instead of dictating the constraints under which the community must, and will function... at least those who erroneously only perceive mastodon as the only extant option.
That's a mixed blessing. Development will now include work towards the things that the people actually want, but you'll continue to brand your product as if it is the network instead of getting the language and message right that it's simply one Fediverse server platform amongst all of the other (often more appropriate and) capable server platforms.
So yes, quote posts are popular, and with utility. Practically every other platform has it too. You will implement it, so just go and do it now, because it really isn't even your choice after all.
Well that's my 2¢ 🙂
I hope that helps!
⛵
.