(continued)

2. If you have friends in other servers and simply wish to chit chat with them - mostly, not the local users.

This can be done without clutter, if you select 'Unlisted' , the open padlock icon too.

Insert their @ usernames, and they WILL get notified and respond to you, all without cluttering Public timelines.

People who Follow you WILL see Unlisted messages -- they are NOT Private !! 😮

3. Need Privacy?

Use the Direct Message privacy level, and it's like an email - from you to the people included in the message ONLY.

Will not show in any followers feeds, or on your personal profile!

(continues!)

(continued)

4. About messages that are kind of private, but you don't want them in your Profile Toots List?

You can get that result, some privacy and NOT showing in your profile to a default or anonymous user - - by using the * Followers Only * (closed, locked padlock icon!).

- Your Followers will see the message in their Home feeds.

- They WILL get a notification if their usernames are included.

- They WILL ALSO be able to see those messages later, if visiting your profile.

(continues)

Thank you for being a valued user at QOTO.

At this Moment, I am simply a very active user, although I have been nominated for a Staff Moderator position in our December election as announced here.

The opinion expressed here are my own, and might differ from the instance administration.

But I think we NEED some clarification as explained above, or we risk losing valuable members who come here for what QOTO is UNIQUE for.

The S T E M community, science, Engineering, Tech and Math interested people.

Your comments are welcome, thank you for your attention and considering these suggestions.

You can reply either here or via Direct Message to me if you prefer.

Enjoy your stay, friends. Let's make this place better and nicer everyday.

RG signing out. 😉

(post concluded)

@design_RG I have to somewhat disagree, and I think this stems from a difference in how you use the platform.

Myself and many people here use QOTO as our only social media outlet, intentionally so. As such we want to express the full range of ideas that comes with that. The intention was never, and is not, to fill the local feed with STEM oriented content, but rather to feel the feed with content from STEM professionals and those interested in STEM, these are very different things.

It is more about the caliber of the people we interact with, and the way in which they reason about the world (less drama, more appeal to fact) than it is about the subject matter.

I suspect you take a very unusual approach (and one I dont wish to take myself and I dont recommend for others). That is, you create multiple accounts across multiple instances and see each one as satisfying a theme or need. Thats fine of course and if thats how you wish to use the platform by all means, do it.

But I dont think that should really be the approach. I have always said that QOTO is a general instance for STEM professionals, and not a STEM instance for general people. I think it makes way more sense for most of us to call one place home and minimize the noise we see from other sources.

But more importantly I think people should pick instances based on two things, the quality of the people on the instance, and the rules for moderation on that instance. Topics are not for instances, they are for hashtags, thats how I see it.

@freemo Thank you for your response and thoughts. I will reflect on them, but have to say up front that the series of posts above came from my own personal reflection, as explained, and we are now opening a dialogue on the suggestions I made as well as the problem I personally feel we are starting to have.

The suggestions I made, of using post privacy controls to minimize clutter in the feeds are based on my reading of a good Mastodon guide, written in the earlier days of the then-new platform.

When Gargron was proposing and building it, with others assisting and suggesting things.

That guide, written by a journalist (I would have to dig in my History for an URL) was good -- she listed those as good etiquette, and I think they are good for the instances if used.

We are getting a large volume of generic posting, which is sometimes line noise and detracts from more interesting content.

In the Local timeline, I do not have anyone (well, two, extreme cases) silenced so their posting in this pattern doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the system.

In the federated timeline, I will use silencing and blocking even at the instance level, as per my personal decision on what is valuable to me.

What do you think of the suggested use of Privacy controls, as per posts above?

I don't think they are too imposing on people. It's like controlling one's voice when speaking in a mobile phone in a public place.

(continues, on to discussing using multiple instances)

@freemo (continued, in regards to usign multiple instances)

You are correct in mentioning that I do have multiple accounts, in different instances. These do serve my purposes, but let's clarify that I see and list QOTO as my main instance - even to the point of including my full handle here in my less used Twitter account.

So QOTO is a place where I set my home, where I post quite publicly, help users, banter, etc.

I do have interests that I feel would be better pursued in a less public manner, one of the reasons for my other instance presence.

1. We had a discussion thread that has stalled, regarding foreign language use here at Qoto. One of the solutions to that problem is to find a smaller community where the language is used, which I have done.

2. The Local timeline here is sometimes slow, and I do like to participate in Local timelines - seeing and responding to posts of people we know more closely than those who pass in the Home or federated feeds.

3. Politics, I intend to keep discussions at a minimum here, to avoid conflicts and wearing long arguments. I just joined an active community which aligns with my personal views, and will be more open in the subject there.

There's no point for me to argue with the Universe, all the troll troops that wander around in places like twitter.

4. Security and advanced networking are also personal interests of mine, and i have an account at a place more specialized in these subjects.

Don't think I would have the contact I have with people in these other instances if I limited myself to a single one.

Clarifying --- this is all my personal choice, and a do NOT reccomend this to a beginner user.

It's mostly for someone with varied interests, a lot of free time to employ and who enjoys the Intellectual stimulation, which pretty much describes this cool cat. 😜 😺