I know I'm a broken record on this, but I so wish Mastodon had a simple mechanism similar to quote-retweeting.
For me a lot of the fun of Twitter is using someone else's thought as a jumping point for starting a conversation with mutuals/followers.
Direct-replying is great if you want to join a conversation in someone else's community, but that's not always what I want to do.
I remember Twitter when quote retweets were manual, and I felt like I had to really force myself to scan headlines for something to talk about and then bring that to Twitter if I wanted a presence there.
I did it, bc I wanted to use Twitter for my organizing, but it was so unfun.
What really got me to the point of *enjoying* Twitter was the back-and-forth that quote-retweets allowed.
It lets you very easily reply in a way that ropes your own community into the conversation without cutting off the OP or appearing to plagiarize them.
So now I have "post to mastodon" on my weekday daily to do list, but it still feels like a chore.
Part of it is that I haven't built a ton of community here yet.
But part of it is also that I think the lack of this functionality makes that community-building process less intuitive and more difficult.
And I know I'm going to get a lot of "love it or leave it" comments, this stuff always does.
But I say it *because* I want Mastodon to succeed. I really want this to be The Next Place after Twitter.
We so desperately need a popular public digital forum that isn't corporate-run or hate-riddled.
"We so desperately need a popular public digital forum that isn't corporate-run or hate-riddled."
It's here, it's right here.
"It lets you very easily reply in a way that ropes your own community into the conversation without cutting off the OP or appearing to plagiarize them."
Pretty sure I've just done that twice.
I don't think you're deliberately obscuring the pionts made, but you've missed them so completely the difference is hard to tell.
And the commonplace of kind of "well actually" is still the reason I find it hard to use and recommend Mastodon.
Gwen's stats, and My stats.
We've been here *within hours* of the same amount of time, and follow roughly the same amount of people.
I've got a full time job, at which I'm not posting here. Gwen's a writer and an activist with 33X the followers.
I literally struggle to keep up with my home feed. This place is what you make of it.
What is it that I'm not seeing?
@zota
I've read every post in this thread, AFAIK.
My summary:
Gwen says:
"....I wanted a presence there.
I did it, bc I wanted to use Twitter for my organizing, but it was so unfun."
"It lets you very easily reply in a way that ropes your own community...."
" .... but it still feels like a chore."
"Part of it is that I haven't built a ton of community here yet."
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding, Gwen wants the work to be fun and really low effort even after *not* putting in much effort to engage a sizable number of followers. Honestly 4.4 posts per day will get you nowhere even if you've got quote toots *and* 8.7k followers.
@nlarson830 yes, you've completely misunderstood.
But if you feel that averaging 100 posts a day is the way to use this tool, it's probably best that I disengage now.
Fair enough.
Gwen Snyder is uncivil
Nick 'The Viking'
Jason Brown