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Comment by LexiMax

17 hours ago

Complaining about names seems like a surefire way to induce endless bikeshedding conversations that go nowhere. It's also often cited as a too-convenient excuse for why a service fails that doesn't really account for the market realities or whatever systemic failures were at play.

The truth is that 15 years ago, "tweet" was seen as a joke by those who weren't extremely online. It didn't stop Twitter from becoming a desirable place to socialize, at least for a time. If the internet made "tweet" happen, people can get used to any weird nomenclature.

The problem I have with names like BirdyChat is they're not easy to remember and even less easy to explain to someone whose first language isn't English. Like yeah, we know it's "Chat" and "Bird" combined and all but to a lot of people it's just "Bdytsch something". Compare that to Twitter which is relatively easy to pronounce and remember.

Forgejo is even worse in that regard. I live in Europe, speak 5 languages, and still have to think to remember the proper pronunciation every time.

It's much harder to get people on board with yet another messenger app when they forget the name 5 minutes later.