MaquinaNegra
Megan Marie HartBOOST OR QUOTE THIS!
Trying to find out how many people see a post without hashtags. Thank you!
(edit: Why, you ask? Long thread coming up … 1/7)
(Nobody actually asked why, but I imagine someone must have thought it.) Curiosity is one reason, the other is a recent offline discussion about whether we are hindering a more wide spread adoption of the Fediverse because we dislike advertisements. It’s possible that brands and “influencer”-type people aren’t getting the kick they’re used to from the Fediverse because there are no metrics showing how many people have seen a post. Perhaps it’s different with your own instance – I don’t know!
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Vsevolod Popov@meganmariehart I never use hashtags on Mastodon since I forgot that they were used in Twitter. They are not used in Telegram. In case of Russian mastodon there are 2 bots that boost your posts if they are written in russian. I have no idea how they are boosted if they are written in English and how, let's say, a person would find somebody to follow in Mastodon if he only registered and wants to find something to read and interact with.
David Scott Moyer@Sevapopov @meganmariehart I use hashtags because I and others follow them to find specific content. Some people block things like the name of the president to avoid seeing it. They are my favorite tool.
Wayne Werner@farbel @Sevapopov @meganmariehart you may already be aware, but hashtags are the primary vehicle for searching on Fedi, thus, the primary mechanism for broadcasting topical content.
They also are "the algorithm" - there's nothing finding toots with engagement or funding and putting them in front of your eyes. Hashtags are it... And I honestly think that's a good thing, though I'd like better tools for consuming them.
mirabilos@ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart @Sevapopov hashtags do not broadcast anything though, they serve as a selection filter of your instance’s global feed.
Meaning, someone on your instance has to follow the poster or someone who boosted the post, otherwise your instance will not know it and has no (literally no) way to find it in a search.
Instances tend to also load thread context, and public posts when you click on a profile. So, by joining in on discussions under posts (both your own and others’) you begin to build the reach that is necessary for the hashtags to even begin to work. (They also don’t always work for unlisted posts.)
So, hashtags are much less important on the Fediverse than elsewhere, due to the lack of a central registry.
@mirabilos @ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart Does it mean that if I post something without a hashtag, let's say in English it won't have a huge difference than if I post it with the hashtag? Or if I post with hashtag people who follow it will find it so there will be more engagement with the post? If hashtags are only like filters here, it means that this is the same like in Telegram where they are used to categorize posts in a channel and it doesn't make huge sense in using them then.
@Sevapopov @mirabilos @ketmorco @meganmariehart If you post something with the hashtag #science it is always boosted by the science bot. same with #news and a few others. If you search for a hashtag, you will find a whole lot of posts and people. If you follow one, posts featuring it will land in your feed. I gues what they are saying is that it won't be absolutely everything, but it is still a good tool.
@Sevapopov @ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart only if the bot (or someone on its instance) follows you, otherwise it cannot even know of the existence of the post. (See other reply, I need to zzz again, too much allergy for longer discussion)
@mirabilos @Sevapopov @ketmorco @meganmariehart This sounds like an argument for being in a larger instance so you are more widely connected.
@meganmariehart @ketmorco @farbel @Sevapopov only if you rely on only hashtags.
I’m on a solo instance (plus a few bots I run who do not follow anyone), and it works just fine. Took a few months initially to set up my feed, then I begun unfollowing, setting people to not display boosts, etc. to cultivate it, while adding new persons who look interesting all the time.
@mirabilos @meganmariehart @ketmorco @Sevapopov I don't rely on them, but I think they make my experience richer. To each their own.
@farbel @meganmariehart @ketmorco @Sevapopov they do that on solo instances for filtering purposes (e.g. to get rid of all these word games with coloured blocks being the post), otherwise you’d need at least a small multiuser instance, but not one of the extra-huge ones.
@mirabilos @Sevapopov @ketmorco @meganmariehart I notice that neither bot picked up my hashtags in the response. Is that becdause it was a response and not a post, or because everything is tied to the OP?
@farbel @Sevapopov @ketmorco @meganmariehart your post was set to unlisted, not public (as is proper for a reply), some bots only do public posts, and search by hashtag will only pick up public posts (as opposed to these bots who follow you). Some bots also explicitly exclude replies.
@mirabilos @ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart Thank you for your explanations! It was interesting to know how things work for English Mastodon. In case of russian instance where I am, there are 2 bots who repost what is posted in russian or with cyrilic letters usage. So what I found for myself is following people that this bot boosts and and following people who are boosted by my followings. That is how I find English users, I follow what people boost. Maybe there are also other ways to explore new accounts, I saw there were tabs to look server's posts in mobile apps. Not sure how about FastSM.
@Sevapopov @farbel @ketmorco @meganmariehart it works like that for all of the Fediverse ;)
Those bots you write likely are hooked directly on the server to be able to get and boost all the posts.
@ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart @Sevapopov see my other reply, sry too much allergy, need to sleep
Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦@mirabilos @ketmorco @farbel @meganmariehart @Sevapopov I guess this is why choice of instance matters. Problem is: intersectional interests. I'm on a Canadian instance. It's great for news - terrible for my profession, which is more global than local. But hunting for the right server for people with my professional interest feels daunting.
@farbel @ketmorco @deborahh @Sevapopov @meganmariehart somewhat. As I said, I run my solo instance and am doing just fine, connecting a lot with people from polymaths.social but also other instances, and my interests would be split across at least three major ones…
@Sevapopov @farbel @deborahh @meganmariehart @ketmorco so I guess you just pick one. (Or run your own.)
Patrick O'Beirne@Sevapopov @meganmariehart
AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.
AFAIK people can opt out of allowing full-text search of their posts. If so, you can only find people talking about opera if they use a hashtag #opera.
@PatrickOBeirne @meganmariehart Thank you for all your explanations! It is great that hashtags are used in Mastodon as much as they were in Twitter, I already forgot how it was since I didn't use Twitter for ages and in Telegram hashtags are used to categorize things. One person that is new to Mastodon asked me what I can recommend to do if they don't know who to follow on new account, what to start with. I actually don't remember what I did since it was 6 years ago and when I returned 2 weeks ago I already had some accounts I follow. They use native Mastodon app, I don't know what they could do if they used FastSM. Maybe there are some recommendations or something like that for those that don't have any followings? Like list of posts or whatever?
@Sevapopov @meganmariehart
Follow @FediTips
I just use the web interface. In my settings I entered various search terms I was interested in so I see them in my feed. Use US and British spelling eg #humor #humour
Iron Bug@Sevapopov @meganmariehart @PatrickOBeirne no, you can't find people that go to opera and like opera by tag "opera". you will probably find fans of some proprietary browser instead. this is an example of totally litter tag.and among that litter you barely can find information about real opera theaters and so on.
@meganmariehart I have just checked your profile. sometimes random posts reach my server and I don't even read profiles.
opera singer - this is great. I have many friends in our local opera theater. I'm not a professional singer, I'm a progrsmmer, but have a "big voice" with over 3 octaves in range (low contralto as original fach and up to the 3rd octave). it took over 10 years of taking lessons from local opera soloists to build up and learn to control such a vocal. and I still work on it, trying to reach the perfect sound. and, of course, I'm a big fan of _the real_ opera (not the browser).
I had seen some composers over here, but their accounts are not much active. though, I have a couple of friends here that write about contemporary classical music (Shoenberg-like things, etc).
this is good that people of arts come to Fediverse. the most of our local musicians use FB or something like that. I wish the tag #opera could mean the operatic context. not the browser.
opera singer - this is great. I have many friends in our local opera theater. I'm not a professional singer, I'm a progrsmmer, but have a "big voice" with over 3 octaves in range (low contralto as original fach and up to the 3rd octave). it took over 10 years of taking lessons from local opera soloists to build up and learn to control such a vocal. and I still work on it, trying to reach the perfect sound. and, of course, I'm a big fan of _the real_ opera (not the browser).
I had seen some composers over here, but their accounts are not much active. though, I have a couple of friends here that write about contemporary classical music (Shoenberg-like things, etc).
this is good that people of arts come to Fediverse. the most of our local musicians use FB or something like that. I wish the tag #opera could mean the operatic context. not the browser.
@iron_bug We never stop learning! Just today I had a coaching with a bass, he is helping me to shape my low notes. I want more colors to chose from, there’s some low stuff coming my way.
As for #/opera, that could be worse, I tried a google search for Aida … the first 2 pages are all about a cruise ship! 🚢 I’m in Germany, you might get different results, idk. Where are you based, if you don’t mind telling? Maybe we have common friends, the opera world is small!
@meganmariehart this is barely, I reside in Yekaterinburg, Russia. yeah, not the best place to live nowadays. but I was born in this city and lived here for almot all my life.
my teacher was Olga Vutiras (uralopera.com/people/olga-vuti…), she is a coloratura in our theater - The Ural Opera Ballet Theater.
the theater had tours over Europe in summer time every year. but now everything went bad, as you can see and musicians also suffer from this events that happen. anyway, all bad things come to an end some day and I hope for the best, that our theater wtill tour again one fine day.
my teacher was Olga Vutiras (uralopera.com/people/olga-vuti…), she is a coloratura in our theater - The Ural Opera Ballet Theater.
the theater had tours over Europe in summer time every year. but now everything went bad, as you can see and musicians also suffer from this events that happen. anyway, all bad things come to an end some day and I hope for the best, that our theater wtill tour again one fine day.
@iron_bug You’re right, I don't think I personally know anyone currently in Yekaterinburg. I looked at the ensemble. But our recent Aida had an Amneris from Moscow, Ramfis from Georgia, Sacerdotessa from Armenia, Amonasro from Greece, Messaggero from Mexico, Faraone from South Korea, Radamès and myself from the US, and the director from Israel. I bet we’re no more than three degrees of separation away from each other because of opera, especially with the Yekaterinburg Opera touring!
@meganmariehart wow! what a geographical variety.
over here we usually have local singers performing. sometimes guest soloists come to play in some spectacle. usually from other Russian cities. and very rarely foreign singers.
the specifics of our theaters that they have very many shows performed simultaneously. as far as I know many theaters in USA give only one opera for some long period. and in our theater every two days they have a different opera. they switch between like 5-6 spectacles during some time and between opera shows they have ballet. and ballet is also different every time. so they have only one day off - Monday. all the over days they give a performance. this is a very busy schedule for musicians, singers and dancers.
over here we usually have local singers performing. sometimes guest soloists come to play in some spectacle. usually from other Russian cities. and very rarely foreign singers.
the specifics of our theaters that they have very many shows performed simultaneously. as far as I know many theaters in USA give only one opera for some long period. and in our theater every two days they have a different opera. they switch between like 5-6 spectacles during some time and between opera shows they have ballet. and ballet is also different every time. so they have only one day off - Monday. all the over days they give a performance. this is a very busy schedule for musicians, singers and dancers.
@meganmariehart the first years I took lessons from Natalya Motolygina-Ryavkina, she was a soprano for Omsk Musical Theater, then for Ural Opera Ballet. now she's not performing and works in some business, also teaching vocal, as far as I know.
GeePawHill@meganmariehart Swear to god, hashtags mostly just annoy me. I follow people. They boost people. I pick and choose from their boosteds.
MetalBrawler@GeePawHill @meganmariehart I follow a couple of tags. It's convenient if you're interested in the topic, not the person.
iwein@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.
@iwein @meganmariehart @metalbrawler Yes. I play Oxygen Not Included, and I post threads about my play. I do add the tag, # oxygennotincluded, so my followers can filter it.
Hanneke@iwein @GeePawHill @meganmariehart @metalbrawler I kind of wish for hashtags that aren't searchable, but usable for this purpose (I guess plain words would do, but that feels a little less directed). I do not *want* my posts to be findable by some hashtag, but this is a good use of them.
@h5e interesting use case yeah.
Maybe this works with content warning already, and we could theoretically simply use another tag symbol (if it's not recognized as a hashtag, it meets your desires)
For example &fediFunctions is very filterable to avoid post like this and it's not recognized as a hashtag. We do need to change habits for it, and that's hard.
And it can easily annoy or inconvenience people as well. Not sure what a screen reader does here, but I'm pretty sure it's not great.
UnitedWeStand🇪🇺🌻🫂@GeePawHill @meganmariehart
But for some IT IS easy to follow certain Hashtags they are interested in.
But for some IT IS easy to follow certain Hashtags they are interested in.
@johkra @GeePawHill @meganmariehart won’t help unless they (or at least someone else on the instance) also follows the people. And by doing the latter, tou already see so much more. Then go into discussions to see more interesting people.
Petra van Cronenburg@GeePawHill I discovered the most interesting people by subscribing to hashtags. I would never have found specialists for lichens by boosts of people only. It's great if you are interested in more nerdy issues.
Amateur Human@meganmariehart I saw this and I don't follow you
everton137
Goodlucksil@meganmariehart Very first post on my "trending" feed, so quite popular, E guess.
@Goodlucksil Isn’t that wild? I did NOT expect that. But that’s perfect for my purpose. I’ve edited the post to explain why I made this request. Thank you!
leberschnitzel@meganmariehart godspeed
@meganmariehart If you don't add hashtags, you miss the audience that follows a particular hashtag. Those people are potential new subscribers.
@metalbrawler I wanted to test the potential reach of a post without hashtags, basically just for the sake of discussion. My home theater has a Mastodon account since 2022 but never posted anything! Perhaps I can convince them to get active if I can show them a posts potential, and maybe other theaters and artists will join. Fingers crossed!🤞
Thank you!
Thank you!
Marc Eisele@meganmariehart @metalbrawler The purpose of hashtags is to tag posts on a specific topic so that someone can find them—outside of the timeline, of course. I use both, depending on what I want to see.
David Mitchell 
It’s harder to abuse hashtags here, because if you spam hashtags people care about they will just block you without a second thought… but that makes the right hashtags super valuable because you can quickly engage with your specific community.
George Saich
🟥 Eveline Sulman 🇳🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦@meganmariehart saw you. I mostly forget to use hashtags. I follow a few.
AvacadoAvengerI saw it and gave it a star. Reach is hard to quantify.
@AvacadoAvenger I figured as much. I'm just trying to gauge the size of the ballpark. Thank you!
Pat@meganmariehart @AvacadoAvenger nor is it easy to qualify. Does the reader read the entire post, or just the first few words? Do they give it some thought, or dismiss it as irrelevant/uninteresting? Is the reader mindlessly scrolling, partially or fully engaged?
MegatronicThronBanks