I've been creeping around looking at a lot of people's accounts (I'm doing a survey) Noticed that people with very few followers have one thing in common: they have not boosted the posts of other people often if at all.
(When I see posts like this encouraging boosting I always think "well that person just wants boosts, whatever") That's not it. On twitter it was important to only boost exceptional content -- boost here to invite more people to join in talking about something. #mastodonhowto
@futurebird I've seen few people really concerned with their boosts.
Personally, I wish my exposure was better... but I've just been talking and trying to find my people. If it happens, awesome. If not... c'est la vie.
I'm curious if you've seen a lot of the same people boosting each other over and over. Something I have noticed.
You should boost your own replies if you want anyone beyond whoever is tagged in them to see them. That is, if they can stand on their own, and aren't just something like "oh wow!" or something obscure and technical.
Replies can be much more hidden here. Combine that with some of the bugs on thread display and IDK how well conversations will function if people don't do that.
@futurebird
Interesting that you consider replies more hidden. IME they're WAY more "public", since everything is a variant of "...and your followers, too". I live on my home feed and I get ~1,000 toots/day, replies and boosts and all.
@cobie
Re the cringey self-promo of self-boosting: there's a bunch of that on Twitter, too (repeated tweets) that always got on my nerves, but given how fast posts get lost on the river of time.... understandable. "Show me once/unit time" would help, there.
"Show me once/unit time" would help, there.
This turns out to be a kind of hard programming problem because it means tracking what every user has and has not seen (tiktok can do it)
I suspect it would be computationally expensive? Because it makes posts into a kind of notification, which can be viewed ... then not shown again. Can it be done it a lightweight way?
What about suppressing re-boosts of the same post from the same server in a short time when they occur?
The best part of Twitter was the unbiased algorithm and the worst part of Twitter was when Twitter management bent and biased the algorithm.
Mastodon needs an unbiased algorithm. Who do I like or boost more than others? Which topics do I like or boost more than others? That's what I want to see when I'm here.
Having every interesting post appear and disappear during the 99% of the day I'm not watching my timeline is not working well.
@mgb5000 @futurebird @tarheel @cobie One way you could construct that kind of unbiased algorithm is by following specific hashtags pertinent to your interests, while hiding boosts on your home timeline.
The former will pull in more content you want from sources you don’t necessarily follow while the latter makes room for it by thinning out the sheer volume of stuff in your timeline.
@enron @futurebird @tarheel @cobie
The top trending tag is currently #waterfallwednesday. 🤷
Very few posts use hashtags. See e.g. this entire thread. So relying on hashtags would miss a lot.
Hashtags and lists are something that us tech literate people can try but I don't think they really solve the problem for us and certainly not for people who just want to use the service to share ideas and who wouldn't know the difference between SQL and FORTRAN.
@counsellingkaren @enron @futurebird @tarheel @cobie
Maybe you overlooked my "I realize FLOSS is a do-ocracy so I'm not complaining.?
Maybe you forgot to include hashtags in your post saying that this site uses hashtags?
What do hashtags have to do with clout?
@counsellingkaren What does using a hash tag in a reply have to do with clout?
I use it so that I can find conversations to reference latter.
myrmepropagandist
Alex
pocket full of hawthornes 💦
John Lusk
Tacoma Mike
Enron Hubbard
karen