Brian KrohneJul 29, 2023
I've been pondering the posts by @kissane and @siderea about 'not finding your people' #OnHere and am wondering if sentiments toward fediverse-wide #FullTextSearch have shifted at all. I know this has been implemented several times, and then been graciously shut down by developers who listened to community feedback.
#Mastodon #Fulltext #Search
From US - want opt-out fulltext search
37.3%
From US - DO NOT want opt-out fulltext search
13.6%
From Europe - want opt-out fulltext search
33.1%
From Europe - DO NOT want opt-out fulltext search
16.1%
Poll ended at .
Show threadVyr Cossont 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Jul 29, 2023
@siderea @kissane @krohne what the hell's wrong with opt-*in* full-text search
Show threadBrian KrohneJul 29, 2023
I think opt-in search is great. I have signed up for @buercher's #TootFinder, but few people have. What if something like that was the default search in the UI, and people were encouraged opt-in when they signed up?
Show threadVyr Cossont 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Jul 29, 2023

@krohne enshrining some third-party rando in the signup flow is not the way to do this.

the way to do this is to have a standard way to explicitly mark posts as searchable, the same way that Mastodon and several other Fedi servers already have a `discoverable` flag that explicitly marks accounts as searchable. that way, *any* search engine has a way of knowing what people have volunteered for.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/23808 unfortunately, the effort to patch this into Mastodon has stalled out.

Add setting to explicitly consent to full-text search indexing of public posts by ClearlyClaire · Pull Request #23808 · mastodon/mastodon

NOTE: This PR does not implement the search functionality itself, just a framework to express explicit consent for posts to be indexed Mastodon has historically refused to provide full-text search ...

GitHub
Show threadBrian KrohneJul 29, 2023
A per-toot search opt is really interesting. I think that could work well with setting your search preferences during the on-boarding process (e.g. by default my toots should be [ ] Searchable [ ] Not Searchable)
Show threadErin KissaneJul 29, 2023
@krohne This is 100% my preferred implementation fwiw. Set an account default and have per-post controls. Onboarding needs a really nice visual wizardy walkthrough as well, god help us.
Show threadKudra 
@kissane @krohne the onboarding for #FireFish is so much better - really much more user friendly.
Aug 25, 2023 at 10:29pmWeb