Realization: I don't want to follow "people", I want to follow "topics".
I follow "people" because they say interesting things on topics that interest.
But they also go on and on about things I don't care about and would happily skip.
I'm also missing out on a bunch of good posts because I haven't found and followed these people yet.
It should be possible to create topics, allow users to follow and post to topic.
Like Reddit, but decentralized and federated.
@alain Yeah hashtags are great for some things, but they are too ephemeral.
I'm thinking more of a community with an identity and a bunch of people within that who get to know each-other while discussing a common interest.
@teleclimber I was thinking about this exactly yesterday evening, I would like to have a social network around hashtags or topics and not around people, and to be sure people would choose the right hashtags anyone could vote to add some hashtag on some posts but also there would be one reference for each article at max m, the rest being quotes, answers or repost
@teleclimber Diaspora* do this.
@kingu_platypus_gidora isn't diaspora more analogous to FB? Of course FB has "groups" which serves that purpose.
@teleclimber Diaspora* is to Facebook what Mastodon is to Twitter.
There is no group like FB but you can follow hashtags instead of people.
@teleclimber - I think that's why there's hashtags.
PITA that you can't open new columns and have multiple columns open showing all instances you're following. But it is what it is.
Or create shortcuts that you can slap on your browser to open the topic you want, but it's all encapsulated here.
Google+ has Collections, which is sort of what you want. Reddit has its sub-reddits.
Here, we have hashtags. Search a hashtag and [topic] should show up in your r/h stream/column.
I'm with you on that. Slack uses threads or channels and then people will self-police to stay on topic. Switching threads is great because you have an idea of what kind of content you can expect in a thread. Hashtags are an imperfect implementation of threading. Look at trending hashtags on birdsite - misused and unenforcable. I'm interested in how to combine threads with the broadcast style of Mastodon in a decentralized context.
@stephenb Yes, that's a big problem with hashtags: it's a total free-for-all.
I was indeed thinking of something where there is some degree of moderation to maximize the value of the discussions (on-topic, no duplicates, no personal attacks, etc...)
Right now the places where this exists (HN, reddit) each have their own logins and centralized models. Would love to see that model changed.
@teleclimber @stephenb Yes! Ability to follow topics would be lovely.
@teleclimber As far as I can tell it should be possible within OStatus spec. It's just not implemented in M.
In OStatus you subscribe to feeds. A person can have a few, including topical ones. Like tag feeds in blogs back in the days.
@pointlessone Interesting. Can multiple users post to the same feed?
Meaning: many contributors -> one feed -> many subscribers
@teleclimber Don't hold me up to it but I don't see why not. Each entry in the feed has an author attached. There's no restriction that it has to be the same author for all entries.
@teleclimber I don't think this will be implemented in M soon (or ever) but maybe other OSatus implementation that can federate with M.
@pointlessone Right. Ideally the beauty of federation is that it may be possible to create something new and different from Mastodon with a different purpose, and yet allow users to participate from the comfort of their Mastodon account.
@teleclimber Feels like GnuSocial groups/Friendica Forums are needed to me :D @maloki
@lanodan_tmp @maloki Yep! Should be possible, right?
@teleclimber @lanodan_tmp the devs have been discussing how to implement it.
I don't have a timeline for it right now though. :)
@lanodan_tmp @teleclimber I recommend checking the github (search check Issues)
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon
@maloki @lanodan_tmp That's good news! thanks.
@teleclimber Federating hashtags is basically that!
@teleclimber Following topics is sort of what hashtags try to solve, but you can't "follow" hashtags on mastodon as far as I could tell.
It's still possible to make a favorite of a given hashtag in your browser though, but that's not as good as it being part of the app. 😐
Maybe a pull request to #mastodon could add that though!