Christian Gebhard 📊
Grey Matterdear #mastodon,
which timeline/feature do you tend to spend the most time on?
p.s. please consider boosting for a more meaningful sample size.
home
local
federated
hashtags
Poll ended at .
Dan the Architect 🎧@greymatter Definitely home. I get the most control over content I’m interested in that way.
Davos ☭ Communist Party USA@hstarshot @greymatter No real perks to using other instances?
kinda, kinda not.
nowadays there are a lot of awesome 3rd party apps that allow you to do things like follow another instances' local timeline.
ultimately, if you're happy where you are, and you follow people you wanna, then you'll eventually build the community you're looking for.
What third party apps can you point me to that might be useful or have good QoL changes?
what's your preferred platform? pc, android, iphone?
@greymatter PC first, and Android second. No iPhone.
well, i like the standard web browser interface then. some instances provide themes. you can look in 'preferences' to see what's available.
Christine Dantz@greymatter Federated and local scroll FAST. My brain doesn't scan THAT quickly 😂
Whiskers 🇦🇺@ChristineDantz @greymatter You can select Slow Mode in your settings 🦥
wasn't aware of slow mode! but, yeah, the experience is definitely going to vary depending on your instance. trying to digest the local feed of a big instance (like mastodon.social) sounds rather impractical, indeed.
Basil@greymatter @ecoscore @ChristineDantz
Yeah exactly, and the flip side to this is on a single user instance like mine, local timeline is just my posts, and federated is basically the same as home.
@ecoscore @greymatter ohhh! Thank you!
@ecoscore @greymatter Oh, I also love that sloth!
Gareth Kitchen@greymatter It won't be a big number, but mines the 'Bubble' timeline. There are more choices on non-Mastodon instances.
not familiar with bubble -- that's a feature of..? certain fediverse, but not mastodon, implementations?
maarten brouwers@greymatter @Truck home, then lists
Julia
Andres Jalinton@greymatter
I spend most of my time on "Home" because I'm in a single user instance. My "local" is only me talking alone and my federated is still pretty much the same as my local + some random toots that usually doesn't match my interests.
I spend most of my time on "Home" because I'm in a single user instance. My "local" is only me talking alone and my federated is still pretty much the same as my local + some random toots that usually doesn't match my interests.
very true, my instance is low volume, so the posts get good visibility, but it's also largely reflected in my local timeline.
if you do want to further populate your federated timeline then you might consider relays. they weren't really a great match for what i was looking for but...
@greymatter
I'm using one relay, but not seeing any difference.
I think it's for the best, I don't like a federated timeline in other languages than Spanish and English.
I'm using one relay, but not seeing any difference.
I think it's for the best, I don't like a federated timeline in other languages than Spanish and English.
Dr Pieter Peach@greymatter trending, for the moment
unique choice but certainly a respectable option on a big instance like mastodon.social!
@greymatter on @ivory the trending posts are across instances
can you further clarify this for me? across what instances?
@greymatter @ivory eg I saw your post on Trending on @ivory despite you being on another instance/server
Laimis@greymatter ah crap, meant to vote home instead of hashtags... local and federated is a never ending source of "OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING", I avoid them as much as possible
(mastodon, why you no let people change their vote!?)
can def see how those timelines on a big instance, a la mstdn.social, would be overwhelming!
tbh, and i would probably catch a lot of shit for this in general, but mastodon is rather politics-centric, tons of dooms scrolling on here.
@greymatter agreed. My block list on here is way bigger than what I had on twitter. But I think I finally got it good enough to even be able to peek at public timelines hehhehe
ahimsa@greymatter Looking at followed hashtags (I don't mean server's list of popular hashtags, just the ones I follow) is a close second.
i dig it, i also tend to be more content-specific with my usage.
Hughster@greymatter 50-50 split between Home and Trending Posts (Explore > Posts on the web interface). A lot of people don't seem to be aware the latter even exists, but for me it's invaluable for finding popular content and users that I might never otherwise have stumbled across.
(As I'm on the biggest server, the Local and Federated feeds are pretty much unusable.)
well said. the dynamics certainly change based on your instance! i do data scraping on rap.social, to make the trending section more reflective of the great masto-sphere, but even that is a lil controversial.
@greymatter I've just had a look at the Trending Posts feed on your instance and I see what you mean–5 items. I'd not looked at the feed on a small instance before and didn't realise it'd be quite so thin, but I suppose it makes sense due to it being based on what people are boosting/sharing on the server.
Looks like your local and federated feeds are at least navigable to compensate for it, though, and it feels a lot more like a community than my server does.
the crazy thing is that my server's trending section is actually more populated than your typical small server, because of said data scraping. none of those tags are actually trending on my server; i pulled in the data to try to provide a fuller experience for my users.
imo, it's a rather difficult balance to provide, between running your own themed server yet feeling connected with the larger sphere.
i don't know how to address, it is basically a side effect of being decentralized, but i've tried.
@greymatter Yeah, I think this is the unfortunate downside of the model that, at least in terms of replicating a single discussion space, the architecture naturally rewards larger, more general-purpose servers as they have more active users bringing in a wider variety of different posts and user data from different places for the servers to "know about".
Pauline von Hellermann@hughster @greymatter ah so “trending” is only what is trending on your own instance, not on mastodon as a whole?
@pvonhellermannn That's right. In fact, servers have no concept of "Mastodon as a whole" (or really "the Fediverse as a whole", because it includes other compatible platforms as well); they're usually only aware of posts and users from other instances that have been "introduced" to them by their users, unless their admins help them along by bringing in content from other instances:
https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/
https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/
esssentially true but it doesn't mean that the posts strictly originate from your local instance. it's more hybrid, looking at what your instance -- and the other instances it is "connected" to -- are interacting with the most.
by default, most small instances will have a rather empty trending report and users can easily feel disconnected.
i tried to close this gap with things like my @topposts bot but, yeah, it's a tricky topic.
@greymatter @hughster @topposts
Thank you both for clarifying. I mainly use the #Ivory app at the moment and the way #Trending is set up there it looked to me as if it were across Mastodon (and yes, most posts not from my instance) but makes sense that there too i can only see what’s trending on my instance
Thank you both for clarifying. I mainly use the #Ivory app at the moment and the way #Trending is set up there it looked to me as if it were across Mastodon (and yes, most posts not from my instance) but makes sense that there too i can only see what’s trending on my instance
Judy Anderson@hughster @greymatter another vote for the #explore tab. Which I wish was more useful. Once a day seems the sweet spot to not get a ton of repeats. Still some but not annoying. Try to use it every 3-4 hours and all you get is repeats. I scroll down looking at the time posted and only read the things more recent than I last looked. The computer should be able to do that for me.
@nosrednayduj @greymatter Agreed—I think as long as you browse it once a day you won't be annoyed too much as stuff older than a day usually drops off anyway while the newer stuff will still be there tomorrow.
My complaint with it is that it's generic, i.e. not personalised to you at all, so you don't, e.g., have the option for the exact same algorithm to show you the popular things people you actually follow posted that you might've missed.
@hughster @greymatter Check out https://github.com/hodgesmr/mastodon_digest for that usage.
Doesn't really work for what I want, but I don't follow so many people that I miss anything from my follows. I just want explore as "stuff people like don't follow are posting that other people think is important". Like, getting viral stuff. Like, I learned about the Tucker Carlson thing from explore. Which is exactly what I wanted.
Nora Reed@greymatter i said home but i spend a lot of time with only my mentions open
MWT@greymatter I tend to look at Local the most. I hadn't expected that, but I guess your Local experience depends what server you're on. Mine is a place-specific server with a couple dozen regulars talking about locally-relevant stuff - doesn't move too fast or too slow.
Also I might need to tweak my Home feed more. I mostly follow a bunch of hashtags and a few friends (most of whom never talk here, alas). Lists are (currently?) limited in that you can't add hashtags to them.
definitely dig that. the situation is similar on my server, where local has value, largely because it's such a small and focused community.
i enjoy my home feed but wish i could filter out boosts. the ratio is a little offputting to me. perhaps a reason to use "lists".
@greymatter You can turn off boosts, at least on the web browser. At the upper right there's an icon that looks like three horizontal lines with buttons.
waifu@greymatter not on mastodon so I'm not voting
what's your platform and how does the presentation differ?
Stone Bear@greymatter I realised within the first 15 minutes that "federated" was making Niagra Falls look like a tiny 1" firehose... I would poke at Local for the first couple weeks, but once my feed got big enough and the way I wanted? No need for the others.
Melissa BearTrix 🏳️⚧️@greymatter I have no idea ... Blush ... But I love Mastodon ... giggles