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 @[email protected] 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.
No one said you can't. They said they make sense in their own contexts. The interface is different. Plus I don't need my inbox blown up with notifications from a dozen Mastodon users tagging me unnecessarily.
You're not the first to suggest it, but I still haven't seen anyone do more than linking one from the other. This feels as inconsequential as posting a Twitter screenshot on Reddit. Is there a deeper integration possible?
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.
@[email protected] 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.
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.).
@[email protected] 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.
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?
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.
@[email protected] 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.
@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*.
@[email protected]@[email protected] 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, [email protected] is 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...
I have literally zero interest in cross pollination between social media types.
They each have their own interfaces that work best for their communities and content types. You're always missing something trying to access one from another.
If you have zero interest in the fundamental architecture of the fediverse, why are you in this community? You're probably interacting with "cross pollination" way more than you realize.
@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.
+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.
@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.