If you want people's advice about any topic, type your question and tag it with #AskFedi, which is kind of like a bat signal for advice on the Fediverse
If you want a post to be shared, try adding "Boosts appreciated!". Some servers may even have an emoji for this such as
By the way, remember that if you want your post shared publicly you have to give it a Public or Unlisted visibility setting. (More info about post visibility settings here: https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon/)
@feditips I haven’t heard the desperate cry of “Please RT” since I left that other place. I see “boosts appreciated” going a similar way. Currently it’s all, “here’s this cool thing that will be good for you, me, and the community”, a la Twitter 2007. Soon it will be all, “GIVE ME LIKES FOLLOWS BOOSTS AND LOVE ME I’M INSECURE AND NEED YOUR VALIDATION”, a la Twitter 2022.
I see how it might seem like that, but that's not how it's intended at all.
The idea of saying boosts appreciated is if someone has an especially strong reason for something to be shared, they can add this to the post.
It's also intended for people who have written something personal which may or may not seem polite to boost, to reassure people that boosting is indeed ok.
Obviously if someone puts that on all of their posts that's sort of abusing it, but most people don't do that.
@feditips Yet. See above.
All that people can do when passing on traditions is say what they are, explain why they exist, and hope others don't misuse them.
As far as I can tell from the people I follow, they are normally used appropriately.