At its heart, a desire path is the failure for designer to correctly anticipate, or facilitate, the needs and desires of their users. Such paths reflect emergent practices or patterns, some constructive, some challenging the integrity of a system.

Mastodon Tootstorms are an example of a positive creative accomodation. Mostly.

On other services, the lack of an ability to otherwise dismiss content frequently creates an overload of the spam or abuse reporting mechanism. G+ comes to mind.

6/

@RefurioAnachro Circles ... done right.

I'd prefer to have "audiences" and "sources" specified, somehow.

It's complicated.

> better than [... g+] circles

@dredmorbius, how so? Circles are sets. They can represent everything! But since such a feature would hopefully come as an api, let me say I'd happily implement any missing operations or other conveniences myself.

@RefurioAnachro G+ circles aren't specified as /audience/ or /sources/. They play both roles. Without regard to content. And blind the source or target to how they are classified by the Circling user.

If I can specify:

1. Standardised topics
2. By sending or receipt
3. Sources of interest
4. Audiences for distribution

Then I can filter my /incoming stream/ to topics of interest, from specified authors. Say, "personal posts" from "friends".

And I can filter my /outgoing/ stream similarly.

@RefurioAnachro This solves the specific problem of, say, following Linus Torvalds, if:

1. You're a member of his family.
2. You're interested in scuba diving.
3. You're interested in Linux.
4. You're interested in Portland, OR, regional matters

With standardised topics, you could include, or exclude, his public personal posts. Or he could limit personal posts to some non-public distribution, whilst Linux and Scuba would be. Regional filters might include Portland or Oregon. Etc.