An interesting item, first, how can I tell when a post to me is a private message, and second, is there a way to pull a private message out of its sequence and turn it public? In general, I try to avoid private messages unless it's for very specific technical issues, or things that just should not be public. I just found myself in a thread that was private but I wanted it to be public. However, maybe the guy is right to keep it private for his own sake.
I'll get the hang of this one day, lol.
@smxi As far as I know, Mastodon's web UI (and, I assume, all others) use the same privacy level of the post you're replying to by default, so you shouldn't need to worry about that.
@josemanuel but how do I know the post/message is private? I realize this is a dumb question, but this has hit me a few times now and it took me a while to realize it wasn't public. The only indication was the alert that popped up when I tried using a hashtag. That's actually the only reason I realized it was private. Generally private chats are only useful when talking to people I know or collaborate with, so I want to avoid this in future. Am I being blind or dense, lol? probably so.
@josemanuel the more but not less private rule is useful once I realize it's private, since I can say, if you want to continue, we will talk in public or not at all, and just stop it there. But I'm trying to avoid the start of it in the first place.
@josemanuel Found it:
"An “@” symbol below the message will designate it as a post between users mentioned, whereas an earth icon indicates a post is in public view."
too subtle for my taste, I'll have to learn how to spot that right away.
@smxi That's not a very good explanation (there are four privacy levels, not just two, and some applications have even more granularity), but if it works for you, great.
@josemanuel my concern is simple, I do not want to accidentally fall into private chats like I did today. the icons for this are too subtle for my taste, but I'm starting to focus on them to train my brain to register they have meaning. The other levels are fine, it's the private one I want to avoid unless it's being correctly applied for a real communication that should not be public.
Presentation in past made icons more visible, today's fashion seems to be to make them tiny and faint.
@josemanuel the background color is too faint to be noticeable, that sometimes comes because the designers use macs, which have different color settings, hint is what looks great and bright and sharp on mac looks pale and washed out on anything else. That might be what's going on here, as a web dev this issue was a real problem for me re designs. But the earth icon is the key one so fine, it's just very pale and monochrome.
@josemanuel that wasn't my explanation, should have added the link, that's from an intro to mastodon for new users. It was good enough to point to the right direction though.
@josemanuel I have to check more, but on another instance if I reply to a private message the reply box offers 3 levels, public, followers, and private. Didn't actually test though since don't want to bug the guy.
I'm going to consider this solution as "less than ideal", it's too subtle, I prefer the dedicated pm, or at least, a very very obvious pm color/highlight where you simply can't confuse them.
But now I see why I missed it, this is very subtle, and requires awareness when replying.
@smxi Well, every post has these metadata info at its bottom with the timestamp and the number of reposts and favs. Also there's an icon with the privacy level. You can check that.
Another good indicator is that the RT button is disabled if the post is followers-only or a DM.
Finally, a DM has a slightly different background color.
All the above is true for Mastodon's web UI. It may not be the same for apps, of course.
But, as I said, the UI will usually adjust the privacy setting automatically when you reply. You shouldn't need to worry about it.
@josemanuel ok, now to learn how to spot post is private. That's a simple clean rule though, thanks. Always a learning curve on these systems, but #mastodon is pretty well done overall imo.