by BrenBarn | 2025-08-03 19:04:41+00:00
I appreciate the honesty here. At the same time that honesty reveals some things that are a bit troubling about how matrix/element are developing.

Without getting into a point-by-point rebuttal of this, the thing I don't ever seem to see from the Matrix team is a recognition that they need to undo bad decisions they have made, or make major changes in mindset/practices, rather than just saying "Well we're working on fixing Feature XYZ." The responses always seem to be of the form "Yeah, this is bad, but here's how we're working on it" rather than "Here's how we're going to ensure this doesn't happen again."

I think this may be part of why there's a perception that the Matrix/Element team is "defensive". They "listen" in the sense that they recognize people have problems, and to some extent they try to fix those problems, but they also keep moving forward in a way that creates more such problems that they then have to fix. And they don't seem receptive to the idea that it's that underlying modus operandi that should change, rather than just needing more work on this or that specific bug.

The biggest example of this for me is that in all these reflections from Matthew I don't see any recognition that maybe what's needed is not more delivering but less promising. Like there's this:

> And then really finally, I think a large part of it is just disappointment where people have been fans, expecting and hoping Matrix to move faster. We have basically over-promised and then failed to deliver in a fast enough manner. They've been waiting for two years for Element X to become the default, and it isn't, so they haven't started using it themselves, and so it might as well be that Element X stuff hadn't even happened in the first place.

Maybe people would actually be satisfied with Matrix moving slower, if that were done in a clear and deliberate way. But the attitude I always see is "well we're going to move on and get through this and excelsior and so on", and never "We are going to slow down and make sure everything is fully working before we start touting it as a big improvement". It's what happened with communities becoming spaces, it's what happened with enabling e2ee by default, it's what happened with the Element-vs-ElementX transition, it's what happened with various smaller updates that required room upgrades or server upgrades or whatever.

The problem I see with how Matrix/Element are operating is they are unwilling to make sure the system is good before they try to make it popular. They want to roll out update after update, each time proudly declaring how wonderful it is. And yeah, it is wonderful, it's remarkable how much progress has been made. But average users don't want to use a system that is this much in flux. So maybe just wait until it's been stable and working before you tell everyone how great it is? And gradually expand out in larger and larger circles of early-adopter nerds instead of trying to present it as something for use by the general public until. . .it's actually working and stable enough for the general public?

It's not just about "doing more" but about lowering expectations and being willing to grow slowly.