"Use hashtags to filter away the stuff you don't want"
How? Oh it's easy! If you find a post you're not interested in, with a hashtag that you're sure won't be used on something you WANT to see, simply:
Click, drag, copy
Click gear, click "filters"
Click “add new filter” or “edit filter”
Scroll to bottom, click “add keyword”
Click text entry field, paste
Scroll to bottom (again), click "save changes"
Click “back to mastodon”
Scroll until you find where you were in your feed, maybe
@jasonp So the question is: do we fix this by (a) changing the mastodon client (and hoping the admin of our favorite node pulls the change) or (b) just give up and write a browser extension?
This is one disadvantage, of course, of the federated, decentralized model; more room to experiment with novel UI, but good ideas take longer to proliferate than with a centralized service.
@jasonp Node I have some experience with, but I'll be straight: I went through a Rails phase, enjoyed it, have no intention of going back. Ruby and me don't get along.
(Although really, me and the Rails *ecosystem* didn't get along, so maybe on a project with the maturity of Mastodon that isn't changing its package manager every four quarters could be worth a dive).
@mtomczak I feel like the right fix is a fork of the default web UI to improve the reading experience. (I looked for a little bit to see if I could understand how the UI code works but honestly could not make a lot of sense of it — not surprising given I have ~zero experience with Node or Rails.)