One of the most disturbing arguments I've seen against having a quote boost #qt feature:

Unlike a reply, quote tweets allow people to discus *what other people have said* Not reply to that person but make what they have said a topic of discussion.

People examining the discourse of others is troubling? (even if they can opt out, no, this shouldn't happen the argument goes, between even "consenting adults" *that's* how wicked it is)

It's... fascinating.

@futurebird The idea that you should have to talk to someone rather than about their post of public importance is so batshit and contrary to the way the real world works.

Imagine if students were assigned to @ authors over and over rather than writing about their books. 🤦

@futurebird I think their hidden assumption is that there should not be things of public importance here.

That everything here should be "politics free" interpersonal spaces for hobbies and feel-good stuff and everyone should ignore that the person they're engaging with about their hobbies is a nazi as long as they don't bring it up. 😠

@dalias

I get that feeling too. Especially from one user who accused me of "dogpiling" him when I'd replied with a question and literally one other person had also replied. (and I didn't even boost his post, because while it had some pretty clear racist subtex, I wasn't certain if that was what was going on, and I wanted to ask some questions and try to understand)

But, just because the response involved the topic of race it was a "dogpile" to him.

I wasn't even being critical of the guy!

@futurebird @dalias on the dogpiling stuff…

It was pointed out yesterday something I’ve noticed before: I can’t see context & other replies a lot of the time, unless I go to the ā€œoriginal link.ā€ Someone was saying it makes a ā€œreply guy cultureā€ bc we can’t tell a question has been answered 6 times already. I could definitely see this resulting in accidental/coincidental dog piles that are visible only to the person receiving it, when they’ve said something that deserves response.

@maco "Someone was saying it makes a ā€œreply guy cultureā€ bc we can’t tell a question has been answered 6 times already."

Dear god, you might be right about this. I do feel like I'm answering the same thing over and over and over here.

And, you know I just try to assume good faith and be patient. But this is worth thinking about further, along with the idea of threading.

@futurebird @maco
This has probably been addressed before (100x) but it seems that threading needs to get figured out then QT. I’ve finally mostly figured out how to read threads and follow offshoots, but I still make mistakes and repeat a question or response even when I’m trying to be responsible. Not sure whether I’m the best test case, but if I’m not even sure I’m following the thread correctly, QT could get messy even with the best intentions
@KatMA @futurebird @maco
If you have tips on reading threads I for one would love to hear them.

@futurebird @maco @FeralRobots
Yeah, as I tried to think of some, I realized I may not be that good at it.

Let’s see. I try to *not* reply to the first post if there’s an extended convo going on bc…confusing. Pay attention to who is being tagged on post so I know what branch I’m in before replying or…confusing. Follow as many branches as I can so I try not to repeat something said elsewhere, but that gets…confusing

So basically I kinda suck at it?

@KatMA @futurebird @maco
Is it that you [we] suck, or that it's hard to follow?

(Before this discussion it hadn't occurred to me that there was a federation-related reason for it being hard: Not every server has the same conversation at any given time!)

@futurebird @FeralRobots @maco
I’ve only been on a Fediverse server for 6 weeks so I start with the assumption that it’s me. Starting to think that threads are just hard to follow in general
Thank you for the shift in perspective!