Edited below. I imagine many of us are here from reddit, where hashtags weren't really a thing and in many places mentions were actively discouraged (/r/politics I'm looking at you). However, since everything we post or comment on kbin (and lemmy) has the potential of getting federated on a mastodon server, which leans heavily on hashtags and mentions, should we be promoting the use of hashtags and mentions, in an effort to-- I dunno-- kind of tie everything together a little more neatly?
If the answer is "yeah, we probably should" then I'd also suggest that there be an option added to the settings to auto-populate the hashtags associated with the magazine to every post and another to add them to every top-level comment, very similar to how we have the option to auto-populate mentions for posts and comments.
Does this "Tags" field, when making a new thread/post, actually do anything with respect to this, or is that more for kbin-related stuff?
Edit: So, I did some brief testing, and have noted the following:
Hashtags associated with the magazine are auto-populated at the end of the mastodon snippet.
Hashtags added to the tags field are likewise added to the end of the mastodon snippet.
Hashtags in the body text are seen as hashtags, but for reasons that might just be mastodon weirdness, searching for the hashtag doesn't display the associated post.
Hashtags in the body but more than ~350 characters into the body (i.e., past the point the snippet cuts it off) do not display.
Edit2: Mostly unrelated, but when I mention the "snippet" above, it seems like it is created by the first ~350 characters of the first paragraph. That is to say, if your first paragraph is 10 characters, then a blank line, then 100 more characters-- the snippet will only be 10 characters long.
yeah I think it would be good to do more. hashtags are clunky and an eyesore, and I would love to see better support of them that mitigates this. But currently they are the main way to signal discoverability on the fediverse. And posts on kbin are (usually) made with the intention that the public can interact with them.
One thing I would like to see is an extra field when you submit your post where you can add in some hashtags. These can be rendered as Tags in activitypub, which do exactly the same thing as hashtags, except that they are not visible in the main body of the text. The ActivityPub wordpress plugin also does this. I add tags to my posts on wordpress, and when you search for that hashtag, my wordpress blog post shows up, even though you'll not find the hashtag anywhere in the body of the text.
Awesome! This approach seems quite functional and elegant. I don't want to see hashtags, but having them exist invisibly (unless you click on something to show the hashtags for a post) would be great.
One thing I would like to see is an extra field when you submit your post where you can add in some hashtags [...] except that they are not visible in the main body of the text [...] search for that hashtag
@[email protected]@effingjoe Like here I am replying to my #Kbin account with my #Mastodon account. The replies and threads appear as posts and replies on mastodon, and magazines can be followed like people.
I get that and from my testing, hashtags inside a post-body aren't effective, so you're safe there-- however, that being said, it is the main mechanism for discovering content on mastodon, which means it is somewhat necessary on that platform-- not just a way to "game" some attention.
I assume this is through Mastodon? I think you could've if you subscribed to the kbin meta magazine, but of course hashtags make things more visible for other platforms. On kbin you wouldn't search too much through hashtags, but I think they also help with search indexing. My only issue with them is that they can often get abused quickly through hashtag spam, especially of particular viral topics, which might not even be related to whatever someone is posting.
I think you could've if you subscribed to the kbin meta magazine
I don't think that's how it works. Looking at the magazine from mastodon, I don't see any posts nor boosts. It's just empty. I doubt following the magazine from mastodon helps at all with discovering content on it.
When you create a new thread (in Kbin), you can apply tags to it before posting.
Are these tags doing the same thing as hashtags, or are they more like the ones in Reddit?
The hashtags in the comments link to the same page as the one of the thread, so I would think they share the same function for the rest of the fediverse.
No idea about Reddit though. Sounds like a redesign thing which I didn't use anyway.
It's a keyword search. On Twitter, it was used to help people more easily find specific topics of discussion, and on mastodon, there is no plain text search-- you can find people, or hashtags-- so if you want your post to be discoverable outside people that already follow you, you need to use hashtags.
So how do you know what the hashtag people use is? Like how do you know it's # with totk, tearsofthekingdom, ZeldaTotk, TotKcontraption, TotKvehicle, TotKvehicles, TotK_vehicle or something else? Or what new hashtags are there?
I've been managing magazines and have tags enabled. However, the microblogs section does not reliably populate posts. I find it pretty weird because if I search for posts with the tag, I can find plenty. Anyone have any ideas why this is happening and how I can fix it?
It looks like my post shows up on mastodon as a link to this post with the first 350 or so characters shown, as well as (only) the first two hashtags. (#fediverse is not shown on the post on Mastodon).
I think federation is still a bit janky, but I'm over here because KBin integrates better with Mastodon. I think we absolutely should use hashtags.
Mentions I'm still working out. It does make sense if we're responding to posts from MAstodon, and it's automatically populated now so I guess @ernest wants to encourage it?
@effingjoe I use them in my posts. I read somewhere that it makes it easier to find on Mastodon. However, if I look at at the overall activity on my posts, engagement seems to come primarily from the "threadiverse" (various kbin, lemmy, shtjustworks, ect. instances) I see some activity from Mastodon, just not as must as the other federated instances.
I think I'm going to start using them, myself, either way. I'm more concerned about using the mentions in comments. I'm not sure it's considerate to notify every person in a comment chain just because I respond to the last person in the chain-- but I am willing to be convinced that this wouldn't be considered spam and is actually desireable.
The autopopulate would have to be optional for the magazine, though.
I have started using hashtags so we get microblogs in @worldwithoutus
While it's a start, I realized many of the hashtags are too broad for a news sub - someone posting news from, say, Thailand, is not likely to use the hashtag #Asia. So I was thinking about adding country specific tags.
That will be a lot of hashtags, and if it prepopulates submissions it will make the magazine un-useable.
What happens with magazines that don't have tags set, like kbinMeta? It seems that kbin people can select a magazine when they make a new post but (I don't have a Mastodon account) do people from Mastodon have some way to make their post show up in kbinMeta's microblog section or follow kbinMeta's thread/microblog contents?
The hashtags for the magazine control what shows up in the microblog section of the magazine. So I guess without that no one can make their content show in the microblog?
Yeah, but if I understand how Mastodon functions, you can only search for hashtags.. so people that don't follow you and weren't looking at the federated "all" view when you posted will never be likely to find your post. I am pretty sure Mastodon leans a lot on the use of hashtags to function. I know that I only follow a few people but I follow several hashtags. I don't know if this is a normal use, though.