Suggestions for Canvas and future events!

Ategon@programming.devmod to Canvas@toast.ooo – 107 points –

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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Escalating timers are an antipattern. It punishes anyone who looks away for more than thirty seconds - and thirty seconds per click is not exactly a brisk pace for maintaining attention.

Other than that, good shit, well done. Undo was a welcome surprise. Ditto the repetition prevention.

No wait, one other thing. (Complaint sandwich!) Scaling should be in integer powers. Everything but fully-zoomed-out and extremely-blown-up looked lumpy and distracting. Especially with all the pixel art going on.

I think it was 30s between every pixel at the start.

It was sort of, but it was a bug. If you just left them, you'd get one every 33ish seconds until you had 6. But if you had 2 then used one, you'd have to wait 66 seconds until you got another, unless you used your last one then it was back to 33.

It was fixed partway through to be as originally intended.

I think I agree on the cooldowns. Often times I wanted to step away and let the pixels accumulate, but it's hard to resist when you realize you'd be missing out on double or triple the amount of pixels you could be placing. If the goal was to reward the player for actively placing pixels, all I can say is it didn't feel very rewarding.

I kinda disagree about the integer scaling. 1x to 2x zoom is a very big shift without any in-between. It would also feel strange on pinch-to-zoom on mobile without in-between. I think instead it could snap to an integer scaling, or have a zoom slider that works to integer scaling. Overall though I agree, having a way to snap into integer scaling makes the pixel art look better

Have whatever between 1x and 2x, but the desktop scroll-wheel options cannot be 1x, 1.6723x, Ο€x, and so on.

One effect of this is that someone steadily editing got more pixels than someone editing in batches, which felt like a feature when defending against trolls.

Except when the trolls have more free-time than oneself and so can place every 30s while oneself want to get other things done and so would prefer placing in batches.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like the escalating time, but the pacing issue is a fair point.

So perhaps the escalation could be delayed? Give it a tiny larger timer (let's say, 40s?), and make the second pixel take as much time as the first. Like this:

  • current times - 30s, 60s, 90s, 120s, 150s, 180s; total 630s
  • my proposal - 40s, 40s, 80s, 120s, 160s, 200s; total 640s

This way you'd be only getting less pixels per minute after 80s of inactivity, not 30s.

Longer waits would be worse.

It should be one every thirty seconds until you hit some limit. Do not incentivize continuously staring at a timer. Do not incentivize obsessively checking a timer. Just rate-limit people in the simplest way that could possibly work.

I get why you're saying this, and I agree with base reason. However, I feel like fixing the problem by removing the feature is not the way to go, as I think that active playing should be rewarded.

Regarding the base time (30s vs. 40s): I proposed 40s because the total waiting time would be roughly the same. It could be also 20s, if necessary/desired, up to the devs.

Additionally it would be great if there was an audible "ping" once you get a new pixel. Then regardless of the timer or how it progresses people would feel freer to do other stuff while checking the canvas.

One literal pixel every thirty seconds is not "active."

You went people to drool when a bell rings.

Encouraging users to obsess or react is plainly an addiction mechanic. In a collaborative MS Paint session. Tweaking the details of it misses what's wrong with it. It's an antifeature. It's a mistake.

Just give people one pixel every thirty seconds. "Active" means they check at least every couple minutes, at their convenience, where they will have up to six. If they step away for an hour they don't get hundreds.

thank you (and everyone else in this thread) for the constructive feedback!

i've added the timers as an issue in the tracker to help with keeping track of everything

i think i got the main points given in this thread, but if theres something you think is missing feel free to reply to this so i can add it πŸ‘

i've also added the weird zooming issue also

On mobile I kept opening the whois pixel by accident when dragging. I often tap and hold to initiate a drag because I'm still looking at the art, but when i drag away and let go, it opens the whois thing. I think if you drag a certain screen-space distance away it should cancel the whois pixel lookup.

The heatmap I found too hard to tell where recent pixels were placed. I think at 100% opacity the "cold" pixels should be dark blue instead of their actual color.

A couple times I placed a dot, realized I actually didn't want it there and ran out of time to undo, which felt bad having to wait 30s. I wish it was a bit longer.

When you try to place a pixel a few milliseconds too early I feel like it should queue it and wait the few milliseconds for you.

I'm not super sure on the canvas having transparency. Most people treated the canvas as white, not transparent. If you wanted a white-on-white drawing, people will just make an outline.

Maybe a concept worth testing: if you place a pixel next to your own pixels, you get a (slightly) reduced cooldown, that way you get an extra boost when completing your art. (At the same time, I think there is beauty in the canvas being as simple as possible:)

I've created issues in the issue tracker to keep track of these for next year :)

thank you for the suggestions!

Happy to participate!

The one thing I wasn't super sure on was the undo timer... was it really 30 seconds πŸ˜…? I thought it was 5-15s, but i didnt really time it. And I'll be honest, I missed it maybe 3 times, so not much.

Besides just increasing the delay, there's 2 other thoughts:

  • A bigger target takes less time to hit (tho making it bigger might bother some, as it obstructs the canvas)
  • Two times I missed were bc I failed to notice my mistake. Maybe some extra visual feedback when you place a pixel could help. For example: when the void made it to my art, I accidentally made a dark gray become black, so it was harder to notice the color change. i was too busy focusing where to place the next pixel

Overall if you feel that the undo time was fine as it was I could easily respect that decision :)

Thanks for making it open source! I’m curious how complex the authentication stuff was. I didn’t place many pixels but it was fun to peek in and see what changed every once in a while! Would definitely be a fan of more in the future, though I don’t have any ideas

First: Ta k you so much to grant and everyone else who made this project possible. I had a lot of fun, i think the problems made it even more sympathic.

One suggestion: maybe after expansion, the final canvas could be a 16:9 Format. This way its easier to find a frame for those who want to print it out. But maybe 2:1 like the actual canvas is fine too.

Im looking forward for next year :)

i'm glad you enjoyed the event, it was really fun to run (even with the issues πŸ˜…)

i've added your suggestion to the issue tracker so i can keep track of it

Have the cooldown time vary incrementally across the canvasβ€”so there’s a β€œhot” end where people can make things quickly (and get overwritten quickly), and a β€œcool” end where designs take longer to draw but are more permanent.

If alts are really discouraged, please take steps to actually prevent them.

I'll be working on some better moderation tooling for next year's canvas (+ any other fediverse event) but with the nature of this, the tooling won't be in the open :/

here's the issue i created for enabling these external moderation tools

if you have any suggestions (execution or specific checks) feel free to shoot me a DM on matrix

I think a proof of work could work but it would be really bad for battery life. If someone had multiple tabs open there computer would start to crawl which would make the experience awful

Hard to do, as then one with a slow PC or average phone would have the same experience as one with a very good PC and 10 alts.\ PoW only is effective for large spam / bot campaigns.

Alpha-blending the color you're about to place means it's only a correct preview when the pixel it's over is already that color. A smaller or even circular cursor of the actual color would remain distinct from the canvas while indicating its effect more clearly.

[Sorry for the double reply]
The "numbers" template style would be considerably more useful if the palette was itself numbered. At least, while using that style.

I've seen a lot of people struggling to find the template. I think that it deserves its own button.

The dark mode is amazing. Seriously, I want it for the next years. I don't think that it needs such a huge button though, when a simple half-black half-white sun icon would do the trick.

On desktop the palette has an awkward shape, as a narrow 32x1 strip that you need to roll back and forth if the window isn't maximised (fairly often, since people were doing other stuff while placing pixels). It would be great if it was a 4x8 somewhere at the right.

A lot of people (incl. myself) were struggling to tell a few colours apart. Mostly dark grey vs. black vs. navy blue and dark chocolate vs. maroon. So it might be sensible to tweak the palette itself for the next years. But overall their hue distribution was really good, in no moment I thought "damn, I need more colours".

I started this, and never got started: https://lemmy.ca/c/musicleague

Part of the problem was that musicleague only works with a spotify login, but it could work with a fediverse login!

MusicLeague: https://musicleague.com/user-guide/

  1. Each league is made up of a certain number of rounds.
  2. Each round has a musical theme, like β€˜covers’ or β€˜I want your sax.'
  3. When the round opens, league players are notified to submit a song that fits the theme.
  4. When everyone has submitted (or the submission deadline arrives), everyone receives a link to the playlist to listen, consider, and then return to Music League to assign points and add comments to reminisce, toast and maybe a gentle roast.
  5. Once the votes are in, everyone will be able to see the results, including who submitted what, how everyone voted, and all the comments.
  6. Points are earned from round to round and accumulate through the entire league until a winner is crowned.

What we can do better:

  • fediverse login instead of spotify
  • submit from any music service, not just spotify
  • multiple playlist options, with a note for when a certain song isn't on a service

This shouldn't be an annual event, but rather a perpetual one

It would be amazing if parts of it could be animated. Maybe multiple layers of canvases (say, 5 frames, shown over a second). Each with their own images, which could be viewed as a flipbook.

Instead of going for a larger canvas, go for more layers.

Just a thought.

Okay wild idea for a smaller canvas :

Have the canvas fade out to white a little every hour.

Eventually old pixels would die and people would either have to maintain or draw new stuff. It would make the timelapse more interesting and more animated by default.

Maybe replace Googles Captcha with an alternative like hCaptcha.

Honestly they are both pretty bad for privacy as the way that they work is a black box. At least it isn't Cloudflare as it constantly thinks I am a bot

I agree. But at least hCaptchas don't block you if you use more aggressive privacy-enhancing plugins and they are fun to solve (and don't require you to find the traffic-light 20 times because your connection is a bit sus.)

And also yes, fuck Cloudflare.

Hi, Voyager dev here, I’d like to see a very small, terse API for clients devs to make a more seamless experience!

The MVP IMO would be a way to automatically log the user in when opening the Canvas, perhaps by

  • well known Canvas user handle for client to automatically DM for OTP
  • client waits for OTP in DMs
  • client adds a query parameter with the user handle and OTP to the URL to open browser, so user is automatically logged in with 0 clicks!

And I could see stuff beyond this. Like an API to know event metadata, docs on how to embed Canvas in app (would be great for engagement)

Anywho simple is best but would be awesome for tighter integration of apps/clients with a documented API!

The chat function was quite cumbersome in my experience (as someone without a matrix account); it was pretty slow to load as well.

Maybe such thing could be integrated into Lemmy itself somewhere in the future?

The matrix homeserver that was being used was in the same VM as the rest of my fediverse services, which all of them got hammered when the event started

Before next years event (or any other event) I am going to be getting a dedicated server for all of my fediverse services to prevent this

I personally think the whois pixel function should also show the exact coordinates of the pixel, to make it easier to find the exact spot for templates.

Unless I missed something, the only way of doing it now was using the coordinates in the bottom left and then working from there.

That’s just a minor gripe anyway, the whole thing was great, thanks for organizing it!

thanks for the suggestion, seemed to have missed that

i'm glad you enjoyed the event!

i've created an issue for this so i can keep track of it :)

I'd be keen to run/test a local version, what do I need in the .env.local as a minimum to get up and running?

there's an issue to write instructions on how to setup the environment

the server requires the authentication server to be fediverse-auth with the current implementation, but there's an issue to add support for other providers

(once the documentation is written i'll be putting it in #canvas-meta:aftermath.gg to keep people in the loop)

Yeah, I figured as much. I put it on the backburner as I was wetting up a selfhosted scratch instance for the girls

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I often got the "you've already placed a pixel of that color there" error, even though I never touched this area. I also couldn't fix my own pixelart easily because of this.

i've created an issue to track this :)

this error was being sent by the server, so somewhere along the chain your computer got desynced from the pixels the server was aware about

Is there a history of the changes stored? I'd love to watch an accelerated animation of the creation process.

I did not find a way to simply "view the entire canvas & download a snapshot," which would be nice.

The event was fun for the first 48 hours - before the expansion. After that it was mostly policing and defending existing art. I would prefer a 48 hour canvas without expansion.

That said, it was fun anyways. Thanks for all your work and thanks to grant for setting everything up and fixing issues on the fly.

i'll keep a note of that, a couple people have also suggested alternatives to canvas expansion

i'm glad you enjoyed the event, it was really fun to run (and fix bugs for) :)

Extra editing features:

  • Colour picker (from canvas)
  • Show symbols/numbers on palette when using that template display style (e.g. label colour 23 so you don't have to count)

You could middle click to color pick in the event

Oh, really? I thought middle-click was for scrolling.

i've created an issue for changing the color picking button to something else

i originally picked middle click because that's what minecraft did lol

scrolling the scroll wheel scrolls the map and clicking down on the wheel over a pixel color picks

You mean holding the scroll-wheel and dragging moves around, yes? (And the scroll-wheel was for zooming.) I think I'd accidentally triggered the colour picker accidentally, since I did find that I often had black when I was expecting something else - now I know why!

Oh huh I didnt even realize you could pan like that, guess one of those has to be removed and moved to something else unless its detected between hold and tap

Could you make each pixel be made up of lots of smaller pixels? Maybe some sort if repeating pattern.

Or scale up the canvas periodically instead of adding blank space, so each old pixel becomes four new pixels.

High-res pile of circles would be pretty sick, actually. Totally different art styles would be possible - and needed. It'd be easy to blob color down but hard to really cover anything.

One another game suggestion: The Turing Test, reversed.

Using LLM API, make people:

  1. Ask one thing and spot a human answering them;
  2. Answer one question and make another human believe they are an LLM.

Only these two rounds (or a text box + checkbox) per a session with a set delay, from a random user or a robot. The goal is counter to the current discourse of noticing LLMs being not humans, but the opposite – people being rewarded for acting like machines and spotting real people in the web poisoned by generative models. I don't know if scores are needed, just complimenting DMs maybe, because mastering tactics to break LLMs destroys the fun.

Besides only English input for the simplicity and a stop-list of words, it needs a balancing system that mixes fake and real inputs to cause no LLM-only hours across all timezones. To make it more interesting, there should be some additional prompts to LLM, like 'answer like an old lady' or 'answer like a nerd' to make LLM seem more humane.

Theming it after spies, zombies, whatever may help.

Overloading middle-click as both scroll and color-select, when right-click goes unused, is a weird choice. Especially when empty pixels don't count as white. Early on, I had no idea why my chosen color changed seemingly at random. Later, I had to mindfully select white from the bottom palette, when every other color was picked from nearby.

right click ended up getting used by a moderation tool, which admittingly wasn't picked well πŸ˜…

there's an issue for changing the color picking button

i originally picked middle click because that's what minecraft did lol

Copying another program is valid design. Only the overloading is an issue.

Agreed so much, this was pretty frustrating for me too!

A really small canvas with a short time sounds cool

Or a canvas that grows with random parts becoming read only

Ye this idea I would like to expand on. Start with a normal size canvas and let it run normally for 24h. After 24h, have a new 1px empty line appear on the bottom every 3 minutes or so while the highest 1px line becomes read only. Keep doing this until the event ends.

This will in turn cause a canvas that keeps expanding downwards but previous creation are "locked in" slowly.

I think it would be good to get some privacy and security people to work on the software. I think bots and duplicate accounts are a big issue but maybe you could try implementing some sort of new tech to solve it.

Overall it was a great experience. I just got annoyed at the Australians

What do privacy people have to do with keeping out bots?

Please don't just mix different concepts together like this.

I would like a shorter timer for small instance. So bigger communities have a longer timer and small a shorter one. But i affraid it wont help at all.

Protected area as in minetest. It would help against grief.

Also for new account with 0 coms, just created during this canva event : restriction, second layer for drawing before approval...something like that ?

I wonder if we could do some sort of competition between instances? At the end we could all vote.

Great idea we can organize that between our instance instead of waiting for the next year. :D

I quickly drafted some rules :

  • the competitive instance chose together a subject
  • the pixel art must be original and not copy-pasted from web. we don't use a template : hosted and template desactivated.each instance will have their private layer. Once the event is over, our draw will be revealed.
  • 2-3 day to draw and send the result
  • 1 week for voting

I love drawing, i'm quite good at it, except perspective :)

i've created an issue for the lower cooldowns for smaller instances

sounds like a neat idea imo :)

and for the second suggestion, i'd like to avoid imposing restrictions on new accounts as Canvas has brought a lot of people to the fediverse and i wouldn't want to hamper their contributions because they just found out about it

The problem is that if they know smaller instance have a lower cooldown, they can

  • create their own server
  • subcribe in a small instance. An alt account dedicated to spamming.

So, the idea of lower cooldown should come with some security.

Suggestions:

  • When getting rid of bots, undo their changes.
  • Assign the pixel timer based also on IP, not just account. That should discourage people who used multiple accounts just to have more pixels.
  • Don't let freshly created accounts to place pixels. They compound with both issues above.

IPs should never be used to moderate, they are shared across too many people. Often multiple neighborhoods will share an IP.

I do not like the idea of using IPs for that either, but since it's only for the timing instead of locking people out of the service, it's less of a concern.

And as db0 said IPs are far from optimal but they're the best thing that "we" [actually the devs] have available. If you have some alternative way to discourage simultaneous multi-accounting, by all means, suggest it here.

Same with people who use VPN per default.

That's the closest thing we have though. The alternative is just people using alts, and at that point might as well not have limits. There can be ways to add exceptions if needed.

there's an issue to add support for undoing pixels with bans, but that would mainly get used in very bad circumstances and wouldn't be the default

as others have mentioned, there's not going to be anything that automatically does actions against IPs, instead opting for a flag that moderations can look into further

i've also mentioned somewhere else in the thread, but i wouldn't want to punish new accounts as, especially this year, it brings new people to the Fediverse and i don't want to hamper the growth of that :) (it also isn't very possible to get a reliable creation date of new accounts because of how the fediverse is designed)

OK! At least the other batch of suggestions was more useful :) Those are fair points.

If you undo the changes done by a bot it could cause chaos. It is better to let users know it needs to be fixed.

Also you could do some sort of proof of work to make it unfeasible to have a bunch of alts.

If you undo the changes dome by a bot it could cause chaos. It is better to let users know it needs to be fixed.

It could cause chaos if done poorly, indeed. But I think that there are ways to minimise this chaos.

One of them would be that reverted pixels are marked as "reverted by the admins", and that appears in an overlay similar to the heatmap.

Also you could do some sort of proof of work to make it unfeasible to have a bunch of alts.

Like in cryptography? I like this idea. Perhaps it could be used when there's a reasonable possibility that two accounts are from the same user; for example same IP, or same username but different instance, etc.

The only problem with proof of work (pow) is that it won't perform the same across devices and will kill battery life. The difficulty of the proof would need to be calculated on page load which could open it up to spoofing a different device.

Not suggesting any big things here... All I propose is to have the options for toggling the canvas overlays (empty canvas, heat, template) directly within the canvas editing screen instead of putting it in the sidebar, kinda like Google Maps. I think the sidebar version would be preferred in mobiles, so you could make this desktop only.

Alternatively, you could allow the user to place pixels on the canvas even while the sidebar is opened, like the way it was for the first 48 hours of the event. Also ensure the right side of the color palette is not hidden by the sidebar.

An extended undo functionality would have been handy sometimes. Like, having an eraser that would revert any pixel I have placed myself (and that is still visible) to what it was before while adding one to my pixel store until that is filled. That way I would be able to move or correct things without having to wait (possibly twice as long) for the counter.

i've added this as an issue so i don't lose it

i suggested two additional changes in the issue as a comment, i'll copy them here for completeness:

  • only allow this to happen if the surrounding area also hasn't been interacted by anyone else (maybe like a 5x5 around the pixel) to be undone by the eraser
  • only works for pixels placed within the last 5 minutes

only allow this to happen if the surrounding area also hasn’t been interacted by anyone else (maybe like a 5x5 around the pixel) to be undone by the eraser

What's the reasoning for this? One of my use cases would have been that I had started to draw something then realised that someone else was drawing next to me, so I'd wish I could have a way to quickly move my thing out of the way. Another one was with a collaboration on a template and in the end trying some adjustments because the template was unsharp. Which was essentially overdrawing other people's pixels just to see how it looks, then perhaps reverting some of those.

Taking the risk to make myself unpopular but here is a wish from the heart.

Discourage/ban all nationalism. Especially flags.

Reasons:
Nation-states and country borders are a fairly recent invention in history. In this time and age, it's quite counter-intuitive to still keep identifying oneself with (or get emotionally attached to) such divisive concepts that have been devised by those who govern. Especially in a game like this where collaboration is encouraged regardless of anyone's location or belief, we should not get counter-productive over flags and the politics associated with them, or get to argue wether flags represent government entities or the people (they are usually owned by the former, just to say).

Further, I find flags (and also logos) are just so utterly uncreative things to draw. To me, it just shows how societies are still immature; false attachment to the divisive and competitive concepts they were raised to believe in, to the benefit of those who profit from divisiveness and competitiveness. Therefore, please consider a ban on all flags and instead encourage "real" artwork (especially original one).

e: For those who still want to display some honorary mention of their ethnicity/people/heritage, there is likely plenty of symbolism available which may suit their case much better than a symbol of nationalism.