(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)

@design_RG I think a good solution would be if we had either filtered local feeds by topic, or a federated-only way to post.

The big issue with unlisting general posts is that it means it wont go to the federated feed so it wont be seen by the majority of the fediverse. It is this reason that i keep most of my posts public, not so much for the local feed but also to get it int he federated feed.

I also have to say, for me, I like the general posts in local. I consider the people here, all of them, as close friends. I like to hear when they feel down, or up, or what they are up to today

We ultimately make our own etiquette, I think its good to consider the journalists suggestions (I think i read the same article as you a while back), but I simply dont agree with them. But thats my opinion, what matters is the opinion of the community.

I can see the merit of your point of view, but I'm not sure "topic" is the best way to determine what is or is not appropriate for the local feed.

I will say this, i do think its fair to self-moderate what you put into the local feed, I just dont think that should be topic based. For example if you find yourself posting automated messages that announce what music your listening to, that should absolutely be unlisted (And is required to be unlisted as a rule), but im not sure by-topic is appropriate restriction.

@freemo Regarding using 'Unlisted' privacy setting, as explained in my suggestions (initial posts in this thread):

A. It was suggested as the Privacy level for the Second and following posts in a series of toots.

They will not clutter local, home or federated lines.

The content is not hidden, and can be discovered as usual; via finding the first, Public message; or visiting the user's profile.

I think there is a need for better undestanding of the Privacy settings - as they allow not only for Privacy control, but also for a degree of etiquette as described.

B. for a conversation strictly in a foreign language, I would prefere not to limit a user's communication, but suggest they could do it perfectly fine with an Unlisted series of posts. Maybe leaving the door open for anyone curious to see what it is happening, by having it Public for the first post.

Unlisted posts could reduce our problem with many small posts, foreign langage ones which are hard for moderation.

C. I am not advocating people should hide all their posts or even most of it, just that a chain of fast posted dialogue in default Public privacy mode does clutter the feeds, local and elsewhere.

@design_RG If you respond to your own initial post with a follow up, even as public, it wont show up in the local feed anyway. Making it unlisted as far as I know has no effect effectively as replies dont even federate into the federated feed.

I think in the casse of foreign languages there is a very valid case to be considered

I do agree though that people should try not to blast away the local feed too rapidly. Though i dont think thast has ever really been a problem for us has it?

@design_RG My only objection to whatyou stated was the bit about people reducing their general posting.. I do agree rapid succession may be rude, I just dont want to discourage people from making off-topic posts in any sense or to start thinking of QOTO as an on-topic space, thats all.

@freemo I do see a problem with small short posts and clutter, and it was my motivation to start this now extensive thread. Which anyone interested can peruse in full if they wish. 😉

Yeah, the Noise level has increased, imo.

I hope a gentle suggestion, with an explanation and how things could improve could help that.

I did mention at some point above having two local users muted on my personal account; and that was for behaviour that I consider annoying and unnaceptable.

I would prefer to keep silencing at zero level for out local instance.

While I would like to keep the complete blocking (as in Non-federation) of a large one which i see no value at, and prefer no interactions or followers observing my personal account here.

This is a politically motivated decision, and comes from my view of that system and their problematic past.

@design_RG Perhaps if you DM me the people you silence i might have a better idea?

@freemo Oh, you know who they are. The one who came to argue with you non stop about relativity equations. And another person, which I liked, but has MH issues and weird posting sometimes.

Both drove me off.

@design_RG I amanged to drive the first guy away at least.. that was part of the intent by that point... what is MH?

@freemo Sorry I missed the MH question until now, when I am reviewing this thread and copying my stream of posts to a Discourse Forum thread.

MH is Mental Health.

@freemo And I have just located that Good Guide from 2017!!!

Yesy for browser history and my remmembering it was on a Github page.

https://hackernoon.com/what-i-wish-i-knew-before-joining-mastodon-7a17e7f12a2b

** Great Read. NOT for beginners, but a well done and detailed guide. **

I will be posting all of the content of my thoughts and points above in a Blog post sometime soon as well.

@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. 😜 😺

@design_RG well im not sure why being part of a on-topic instance gets you any more exposure to the community there. Several of the masto apps allow you to view the timelines of remote instances not just your own local one. As such you can view that timeline and interact just as if you were local to that instance.

I generally find interacting with people across instances is just as welcome as the local instance and dont find it to be a barrier.

I do understand your desire to seperate out your personas so you can say something in one instance with some degree of anonymity, and I can see why that would be appealing to some people, but I dont think it is the default for many of us, nor should it be unless you have a need for it.

I myself take a very different view, I dont try to get along with people or avoid touchy topics. I am trying to build a community of people who are mature and respectful so we can disagree on difficult and emotional topics and still get along and be friends, thats always been my goal. So that is a bit contrary to the need to keep topics aligned with ones own views to avoid conflict, in fact I want a space where we have many different views.

I think it may be just my nature. I despite at my core echo chambers, and would hate being in an environment that shares my political views or any other set of views. I want an environment where people disagree with me, actively, and we have impassioned debates where everyone still respects the other in the end.

I dont want to avoid the toxicity of twitter and other platforms, I want to cure it.

@freemo
I agree with you. Alternative views only help us to grow and learn more. The problem of Twitter is hate. I want mastodon to be a place where different opinions exist but people respect each other's opinion.

@design_RG

@freemo @design_RG

This was a very dense topic. I managed to read most of it, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out the core of the discussion,

I don't think we should invite users to not list posts. We could invite them to not public posts at a 3 seconds rate, but that's it.

Also, about STEM, I'm totally with freemo. I study in a scientific field, I am in a lab most of the week, but when I write here I don't feel like always talking about it.
I just like to know that the people in the instance are somewhat similar to me, as an approach to things, the sense of humor, the sensibility in general. That doesn't mean the ideas, the opinions, the alignment at all, but the approach we can use to talk about it. It's like the coffee machine outside of the lab.

Also I think that posts about etiquette should be shorter, I have a hard time going through all this messages =D

@arteteco @freemo @design_RG

"I just like to know that the people in the instance are somewhat similar to me, as an approach to things, the sense of humor, the sensibility in general. That doesn't mean the ideas, the opinions, the alignment at all, but the approach we can use to talk about it. It's like the coffee machine outside of the lab."

Perfectly summed up there!