Hashtags do not replace groups.
No one moderates them. They’re easy to hijack and spam. And there’s simply no permanence to them.
Which is why, if you actually want to discuss something, it’s better to tag a group. For example, if you want to be part of an actual PC gaming community on the Fediverse, it’s better to tag @pcgaming@lemmy.ca than #pcgaming.
This needs to be common knowledge because people new to the Fediverse do not know about groups. Hell, I’d say people who have had Mastodon accounts for years still don’t know. And that’s a shame.
@fediverse@lemmy.world
Also hashtags don’t help federation at all, groups/communities will “boost” the post so it federates to all the followers
I really hope there’s better handling of Mastodon user comments on Lemmy, because all the comments tagging other users are an absolute mess. Are Mastodon users doing this on purpose or is their client tagging the users automatically?
If this were to become more common I’d probably just think about find out a way to block Mastodon users so I don’t see their comments.
In Mastodon you need to mention the person you reply to or they won’t get mentioned. Clients usually set them automatically.
The tricky part is, the group-supporting fediverse software and the microblogging software need to improve how they interact for this to be as good as it could be.
Right now Mastodon barely supports group users/actors/accounts, however they’re called, translating stuff from Lemmy’s format in a rather clunky way. Meanwhile Lemmy also has to roughly translate Mastodon’s format to its own, working pretty well all things considering, but leaving clear artifacts (subject line/first line repeating, community mention remaining shown, etc.).
sharkey seems to have good lemmy support
@ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world With time, that stuff will be ironed out. Group support is in Mastodon’s road map. Now Mastodon develops very slowly, so take that with a grain of salt. But the point is that groups are coming to Mastodon… eventually.
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org I think mastodon should implement a post-to-community type thing like mbin has for microblog posts. It (and all other fedi. platforms, really) also needs like a tutorial or smth to show how to actually use the federation features of the platform.
@unknown1234_5@kbin.earth @pcgaming@lemmy.ca @fediverse@lemmy.world Already on the road map.
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org sick
@pcgaming@lemmy.ca @fediverse@lemmy.world
I’m all for it as long as people know that posting on something like mastodon and tagging a lemmy community will then make a post in that community. Could make for great discussions, but could also lead to a lot of posts/spam in the communities.
@BenDoubleU@lemmy.radio But again, a big reason I recommend groups over hashtags is because you can remove spam from a group, whereas with a hashtag, you cannot.
So… will that increase spam? Not if moderators actually do their jobs.
As an instance owner and moderator: that’s a horrible way to look at things. Just throwing the onus onto someone else is irresponsible.
I’m an instance owner too (see atomicpoet.org and akkomane.social). Speaking as an instance owner, it’s our fundamental job to moderate.
It’s not “throwing the onus onto someone else.” The onus has always been on us.@atomicpoet @BenDoubleU I feel it’s worth pointing out in this context that from the perspective of a Masto server, this thread features several accounts with no avi, bio, follows or followers. I assume they’re the Lemmy accounts?
As a Twitter vet I’ve developed an aversion to engaging *at all* with newly-created accounts lacking properly fleshed-out profiles!
But it’s still cool there’s these options. Perhaps the integration will improve?
Having a Mastodon account means creating new habits. One of them is to check the originating server of an account. This is because that account may not be using Mastodon.
@ApostateEnglishman But you’re not a Twitter user anymore, so maybe it’s time to let that go. You’re part of something much bigger than Twitter-style micro-blogging. Lemmy users will usually have profiles (bios) – although not typically as extensive as Mastodon users – but following users or being followed doesn’t make any sense on Lemmy. The primary unit is the community (group) not the user.
@breakfastmtn Thanks. So far I’ve tried Friendica, Misskey and Hubzilla, as well as three different Mastodon servers. So I do understand that Masto is not the whole fedi.
It’s just that so far as I was concerned, “Lemmy” is a dead rock star who had a penchant for Nazi memorabilia.
I’d never heard of it as a fedi service until Chris’ post, yesterday! 🤷♂️
@ApostateEnglishman You should check it out. Lemmy’s great! Interoperability is terrific but I think the way information and discussion are displayed in Lemmy* is superior for deeper dives and being “in” a discussion. Not at all a knock on Mastodon, which is perfect for what it is. They’re just trying to be different things that have different strengths 😀
- PieFed and mbin too, the other “threadiverse” projects
@atomicpoet @fediverse TBH I think a lot of people (including me) have a very sketchy idea of how the different bits of the Fediverse link together… I’m still a bit vague about how my #Mastodon and #Pixelfed accounts could work better together.
There’s a lot of *assumed knowledge* about the #Fediverse … and people don’t want to ask ‘stupid’ questions because they don’t want to ‘look stupid’. There needs to be easily accessible and explicit step by step instructions *to get people started*.
Where could I find a group about #ux or #humancentredesign for example? Or #photography ?
@Coolmccool@mastodon.au @fediverse@lemmy.world The best way to explain #Pixelfed is that it’s an Instagram-like front-end for the Fediverse. But practically speaking, it’s Mastodon if pictures were a requirement on Mastodon. You interact with a Pixelfed account from Mastodon in much the same way you interact with another Mastodon account, or how you’re interacting with my Akkoma account right now. It really is just like email.
Regarding group topics, the best way to find them is to do a search on a place like lemmy.world or lemmy.ca. For example,
uiux@programming.devis one. And you can find the URL here:The best way to find groups is actually https://lemmyverse.net/communities . All individual servers are missing other communities due to de-feds or lack of federation. While I can’t say numerically how comprehensive Lemmyverse is, it’s a lot better than any instance I’ve tried.
@atomicpoet @fediverse @Coolmccool I think you’re missing the point - it’s not “what is PF/Masto/whatever”, it’s “how do they relate to each other, exactly, in a way I can understand & benefit from?” I’ve been in fedi for a few years & have, in fact, been asking the stupid questions, but I still don’t quite understand either…
@jwcph @fediverse @Coolmccool The best way to understand the Fediverse is not as a collection of servers but instead as actors that implement activities.
You are an actor. A Lemmy community is an actor. A bot is an actor. An app is an actor.
All these things do certain activities. One activity is to like a post. Another activity is to repost.
And all these apps like Mastodon are just presenting these actors/activities in a certain format.
Hope that explains things.
@atomicpoet @fediverse @Coolmccool It doesn’t, not even close. It’s way too abstract, even for me - I absoutely guarantee you, nobody looking for an alternative to keeping up with friends on Insta or Facebook will be able to connect what you just said to that need / desire, let alone make a decision based on it.
@jwcph @fediverse @Coolmccool No, those concepts aren’t for everyday users. It’s for developers. For the same reason a homeowner doesn’t need to know the ins and out of architecture, an everyday user does not need to know about the architecture of the Fediverse.
Nevertheless, it’s how ActivityPub works—and I will go more in depth in a future thread for those who want to know.
@atomicpoet @fediverse @Coolmccool That’s what I mean - I think you’re missing the point. I don’t think anyone is expecting every developer to also be able to explain the usefulness of the fediverse to casual users, but some of us do feel, I think, that there’s a lack of fundamental recognition that developer explanations are beside the point as far as most regular people are concerned, which can cause the unwelcoming impression for non-devs that we hear people talk about fairly regularly.
@jwcph@helvede.net @fediverse@lemmy.world @Coolmccool@mastodon.au To be blunt, “it’s like email” is probably good enough for 95% of casual users in terms of an explanation for how the Fediverse works.
It’s all just email. Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Lemmy are really all just email.
But the moment you ask, “Well, actually, how does it all work? How is it possible to use Lemmy with Mastodon?”
The answer is: actors.
And maybe that is abstract, but I assure you that’s the practical reason you’re able to do it. Once you understand that the Fediverse is made up of actors/activities, a whole new world of possibilities opens up—even for regular users. It’s why you’re participating on Lemmy right now, even though it still looks like “Mastodon” to you.
Now I’m sorry that you may perceive this as “beside the point,” but people ask how it works and I’m telling you. However, if this is too abstract, remember: it’s all “email”.
How does it show up in Lemmy if someone on Mastodon tags a Lemmy instance? Just curious.
it’s a new post in the community
So if there’s 50,000 users in a conversation and they all keep “tagging” the community instead of a hashtag, then that community would have thousands of new posts?
Yes
Yikes
Why yikes? The scenario you described is literally the same as 50,000 users signing up to Lemmy to post in a Lemmy Community.
In that scenario there would be one post with everyone commenting on it. What I think we’re saying here is that it would create a new post every time a mastodon user would “join t conversation” by tagging the community.
Oh right. No, it doesn’t work that way in my experience. I’ve seen Mastodon users post to Lemmy Communities by @ mentioning them, and Mastodon users replying to posts. It often looks weird because replies have an @ mention (or multiple, in the case of replies to replies), but everything shows up in Lemmy how you’d want it to.
I’m assuming replies to the post would be replies in Lemmy?
@atomicpoet @fediverse Wait… is *that* how it works to follow a lemmy … whatever the equivalent is of a subreddit … group? anyway, you just follow @groupname@instancename? How did I not understand this before?
@LibertyForward1 @fediverse Not only can you follow, you can post to a Lemmy community from Mastodon by mentioning the Lemmy community. In fact, you just mentioned a Lemmy community, so your using Lemmy right now—but from you’re perspective, it looks like Mastodon.
@atomicpoet @fediverse trippy
Hello from Lemmy, I can see you. Can you see me?
New lemmy’s instance here. Hello.
I come on your topic to test. Might as well enjoy of your topic.
This is what I see from Lemmy.world
@atomicpoet @fediverse
Tag spammers get muted.@m3t00 @fediverse Give me more context and what you specifically mean.
@atomicpoet @fediverse
Go to their account profile and mute them. Block w/e@m3t00@mstdn.party @fediverse@lemmy.world Are you talking about hashtags or groups?
+1, I absolutely loathe the twitter model of discussion because it’s a huge mess of out of order replies and random spam. Individual discussion posts with tree threaded comments are way, way, way more effective at keeping discussion relevant and directed. Also +1 re: moderation, social media functions best with effective, vigorous, moderation and the twitter model just sucks there.
@atomicpoet
Also it whould be neat to somehow see from the handle itself if it’s a group or not. It’s the case with the classic å.gup.pe, but I can’t derive that from lemmy.ca without having to look it up.I also find it father difficult to find groups, because the default ActivityPub-Search doesn’t work that way and groups are just special users.
That’s why I like a.gup.pe, it sounds a bit like Gruppe in german. Which doesn’t help internationally, something like gro.up oder a subdomain including group whould be helpful and make the seqrch for groups easier, because then it’s part of the name.@alsternerd @atomicpoet @fediverse @crossgolf_rebel would be nice if the !group@domain.com reference becomes an ActivityPub standard
@mapto @atomicpoet @fediverse @crossgolf_rebel This could help a lot, yes. :D
@alsternerd@social.alster.space @mapto@masto.bg @atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org @fediverse@lemmy.world
I think this is also more of a comprehension problem in the Fediverse or the mastodons that are closing themselves off
If you always think a little outside the box, then #lemmy is already a term.
That’s what happens when you shorten communication about the Fediverse to ‘mastodon only’, it excludes so much that would help@crossgolf_rebel @atomicpoet @fediverse @mapto For me Lemmy is just Reddit build on top of activitypub and just feels like that, while using it with Thunder on Android or even the webinterface given.
@alsternerd@social.alster.space It’s also a question of how you use and deploy it yourself
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org @fediverse@lemmy.world @mapto@masto.bg
@atomicpoet I had found this in the beginning, used it for a few days and unfollowed everything in frustration. At least in Mastodon it is way, way too spammy as you get every single reply. I don’t really get why you would want this, hashtags make more sense for the microblogging idea to me and once I knew you could follow them instead things got a lot better for me here.
