*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

It is Nice to have a Forum as part of our QOTO instance group of services. Each service has its own focus, and Discourse is a nice way to keep conversations visible for longer times.

* QOTO's Discourse Forum is at https://discourse.qoto.org/

Our posts in Mastodon are still here, but buried under many more we add to our profiles daily, while here a discussion has a more visible "Home".

* We can refer to threads we post here, helping new users, and ourselves at the same time. No more "I did write something about that...", or similar. :wink:

* We have emojis, text formatting with Bold and Italic, Images, attachments and more.

* To get started or to refresh your skills, learn some new ones and make your posts prettier - How about Reading the Friendly Manual?

* RTFM has always been a recommendation in tech and science circles. :wink:

The developers team at Discourse created a New User Guide.

It's located at : https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-new-user-guide/96331

Today another mastodon user created a Blog post about the new enhanced clipboard in Windows 10.

Marco's article is all text, and explains the workings of it.

https://marcozehe.de/2019/12/08/how-to-use-the-extended-clipboard-in-windows-10/

LIGHTHOUSE WITH ROTATING LIGHTS

In the 1870s, the Japanese government built lighthouses with rotating lights. Some of these Meiji era lighthouses are still in use today.

Eight lighthouses were first brought into service in the 1870s with the same mechanical light rotating system. This apparatus was designed and manufactured in Scotland; and then the equipment was shipped to Japan. The Japanese government hired Richard Henry Brunton to oversee this technology transfer process.-- see Richard Brunton (1991). "Building Japan: 1868-1876," pp. 24-25. https://books.google.com/books?id=q6GOdFknNDYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

The heavy glass lens mechanism is only part of the optical instrument assembly in Japanese lighthouses built using European designs.

The heart of the lighthouse is the light rotation apparatus which moves the lens. In the earliest Western-style lighthouses, the bulk of the lens and rotation gear is supported in a mercury bath. Mercury was used because of its low rotation friction. -- see Japan Coast Guard, Maritime Safety Department, "Past and Present of the Aids to Navigation of Japan," p. 6 (PDF p. 7 of 12) https://www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/e/image/41_the%20aids%20to%20navigation%20of%20japan.pdf

In the mechanical drawing below, the mercury bath is shown below in blue.

The Kashinozaki Lighthouse in Wakayama Prefecture is one of the eight sites where the "modern" mercury bath pedestal support mechanism was installed by Brunton. -- see Wikipedia "Kashinozaki Lighthouse" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashinozaki_Lighthouse; and see Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), "Mechanical Engineering Heritage No. 83." https://www.jsme.or.jp/kikaiisan/heritage_083_en.html

QUESTION: The fact that the Japanese lighthouse apparatus was modeled on equipment used in Scotland begs a few questions -- for example, where were similar mercury bath pedestal support mechanisms in use in Scotland in the 1870s? Are there sites where this 19th century technology is still in use in the United Kingdom?

QOTO = Question Others to Teach Ourselves?

** Editor note: ** I am just testing out @chikara's post with a suggestion of a possible new layout. His OP is here: https://qoto.org/@chikara/103273481915673401

I think that having a Content Warning to wrap the text will give it better exposure - if a catchy CW Description text is used, maybe people will click and expose it. The images selected for a post are ALSO important in attracting readership.

We are basically on the business of Publishing here, and fending for attention from users who have a never ending scroll on their Feeds.

Hope you consider this and don't mind it, Chikara. Also, this suggestion is a method I use and would recommend to Anyone wanting feedback, readers and interaction.

** Thank you for your detailed posts! @design_RG...

"Companies like Facebook and Twitter are poorly policing automated bots and other methods for manipulating social media...

For €300, the researchers bought over 3,500 comments, 25,000 likes, 20,000 views and 5,000 followers...

After four weeks, about 80% of the fake clicks remained. And virtually all of the accounts remained active three weeks after researchers reported them"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/technology/fake-social-media-manipulation.html

Re-Toot with Comment is Possible.

Nolan's thoughts are interesting.

About Media articles frequently quote, mentioning and including snapshots of random twitter posts.

OP at https://toot.cafe/@nolan/103270233532909125

* Resized from OP at https://twitter.com/23057/status/1201854145101062146

#travel #slowly enjoy the journey.

In response by a post by Dr. DeJahang, posting it on the Local feed directly as it is of general interest.

"Hi Moderators/experts, Admin team at QOTO we have all at more button and only edit is missing" by @drdej555

Yes, and that's by design. The developers of Mastodon created it so; in that sense it is similar to Twitter. No editing there either.

Here we do have a quick work around, if you notice a glitch or typo soon after sending in a post.

you can click the Dots menu at the post's bottom right edge, and select Delete / Redraft from there.

This will delete the post (which is already sent out to other instances, but will be recall/deleted there too), and better yet -- it copies the FULL current post content to the Toot Editor window.

You can make any changes desired and Toot it again.

Any replies, favourites or boosts received by the post will be orphaned, lost -- so this is best done very quickly after posting, not later or a day after.

Another possibility is to use a different platform which is also Federated - I am thinking of Friendica, where I have a test account, and which is more like Facebook in looks and functionality..Friendica allows :

* post editing, anytime you want.
* text formatting.
* sorting feeds by time, or by personal mentions, etc.

It does allow following mastodon accounts, replying and fully interacting with them.

I made a thread of my testing and observations about Friendica here : https://qoto.org/@design_RG/103178433671988813

Main Friendica site: https://friendi.ca/

me at Friendica : @rgx@nerdica.net

I have just made a new Discourse Forum post here at Qoto.org, reproducing the full text of the "New Users Suggestions and Guidelines" as prepared by Rheal, the administrator at Mastodon.art.

The page is located here: https://discourse.qoto.org/t/suggestions-and-guidelines-for-new-users-written-by-mastodon-art-administrator/119

And I hope it will be used to all of our new users here at QOTO, as well as anyone interested.

Thank you to @Curator for the nice work and for running what seems a happy and prosperous instance! 🌇

Rheal's Original post is : https://mastodon.art/@Curator/102567092349817529

In that same thread, I came across a post by a user, saying they have made a Guide for Mastodon new users in Spanish.

Rare to have resources in languages other than English, so this is a useful resource too.

Written and published by sisyphus, @numen@weirder.earth

https://weirder.earth/@numen/102554696593029111

#mastotips #espanol #spanish #newusers #helpwanted

A post I just found, by the administrator of the Mastodon.art instance - @Curator

Keeping a pointer here to help, I am thinking of collecting these in a Discourse Forum post here at QOTO, with attribution and credit to the author.

Reason? Easier to read, in one page, than a sequence of toots.

There are some good suggestions from their users below. 👍

https://mastodon.art/@Curator/102567092349817529