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The only way a post can be searched for on here is through hashtags.
The hashtag search will only work if there is an exact letter-for-letter match.
If someone publishes a post with the hashtag #Watercolour, that post will NOT appear in searches for #Watercolor or #Watercolours or #Watercolors
That's why some people use hashtags that are multiple variations on a topic, because it's the only way to give a post a realistic chance of discovery on an exact-hashtag-only search system.
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The main controversy is accessibility barriers, as long lists of repetitive hashtags make life difficult for blind people who rely on screen readers to read posts out loud.
This issue can be reduced by putting all the hashtags in a list at the end of the post, with a "Hashtag list" warning before the list.
However, this still isn't perfect, and the current system of tagging has many other issues too.
I've tried to suggest a possible solution here:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/24445
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p.s. Please don't harass artists who have relevant hashtag lists on the end of their posts. Many are low income people dependent on selling art, and need to use multiple variant tags simply to be seen at all.
Including relevant tags at the end of a post is not spamming, it's just the consequence of an exact-tag-only search system.
This isn't Twitter, there is no general search. The actual content of posts is invisible to people searching, so people have to use tags to make up for this.
p.p.s. Lower or upper case does NOT matter for discovery, #WaterColour and #Watercolour are treated exactly the same by the search system. You do NOT need to do variations for case!
However, if a tag contains multiple words you should mark the first letter of each word with upper case letters such as #DogsOfMastodon as this allows screen readers to read each word out aloud.
jin jiyan azadî @feditips
Love that proposal. I also think that CWs should be toggleable based on tags as well, and maybe even on pictures?
@feditips I think posts with photos would be much more readable if the hashtags appeared below the photo. May not be practical to change the formatting at this point, I understand.
@feditips I think this is a good idea - thank you.
@feditips and it's important to use capital letters for blind people who use readers. #AltText is better than #alttext #disabled #disability
@DomandoAlLobo @feditips CamelText hashtags
@feditips Please don’t harass anyone for anything at all! If you don’t like someone’s posts, either tolerate them (if you can), engage in constructive dialogue (if at all possible), block (if none of the above are possible or effective) and/or report them (if you have good reason to do so).
@kjuh @feditips There is also the mute function. I've used this on people in mastodon.scot who toot entirely in Japanese script, and others whose toots are mildly annoying, but toot so often that it raises thr annoyance level. Yes - I could be more tolerant - but muting someone, rather than having a pop at them - is the more mature thing to do.
@feditips
If synonymous hashtags proposal were to come to life, we would probably forget about such inconvenience and it would type out almost everything in pascal case automatically, as well as goodbye to hindrance of covering all other variations of the words (plurals, identical entities).
@feditips what's super annoying though is that Mastodon makes you type in the whole tag if you want to use camel or Pascal case, and it will suggest auto-fill tags that are all lower case. I wonder if there's an easy fix for that (probably, because every tag will probably have multiple people casing it the same way, so the software might be able to tell what the individual words are)
I think this depends on how the tag is most commonly used. I've seen many that default to all lowercase, but one tag I've been using personally that doesn't have a lot of other people posting on ...so basically all the uses have been camel case, it gives me the proper camel case in the auto-fill.... so simplest solution seems to be getting more people to use camel case properly in tags.
@feditips Does Mastodon understand alternative spellings, e.g. colour vs. color, favourite vs. favorite, neighbour vs. neighbor?
@feditips
The reason to capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag? Look what happens to Pen Island when you don't:
#penisland
@feditips yes, this is something that I can understand. What I don't like is when people use totally unrelated random hashtags, just for visibility, like in another social network who used to have a bird as its logo. But I don't harass them. I block them, period.
Remember, folks: this is an intentional design decision. Building #Mastodon with hashtag support but no full-text search gives you the choice about whether YOUR toots will be searchable, and how.
@mighty_orbot I'm not sure I understand. How do I have control over whether my posts are searchable if there's no search engine? /gen
At present I have to guess what hashtag to search for, and it's really annoying..... Surely something can be done about this.
@sbrl @mighty_orbot Exactly. Individual users of Mastodon should have control over whether or not their posts are searchable for full text search. Mastodon needs full text search. Most journalists will never stay on a social media site without a robust search function.
@feditips Lemme trim that down a bit:
Please don't harass artists. :)
@feditips
I have sympathy for the situation of an artist in need of reaching a wide audience. If someone posts an image of a painting, say, and they add a handful of hashtags that are all relevant and non-redundant, I can't imagine many will complain.
Walls of almost identical hashtags just to be picked up by those too lazy to use variants of their keyword? That strikes me as bad taste. Nobody should be harrassed, but an unfollow or block seem the natural response. Does the artist want that?
@the_roamer @feditips Question: what makes it bad taste, exactly? How are you inconvenienced by multiple variants of a hashtag?
I go to Mastodon to have conversations. The core of the post must be the content, ie the text or the attached image.
I am happy if an artist shows their work and also mentions it is for sale. I am also happy if the artist adds hashtags to become findable by others, indeed they should. Indeed we all should. We should enable each other to find each other.
A good hashtag is an invitation to read and engage. But a wall of almost identical hashtag variants is the opposite.
@feditips As an artist new to Mastodon this is a helpful tip indeed!
@feditips Thank you for sharing that. I was unaware of people complaining about this type of post.
@feditips massive facepalm that people are harassing artists over that, seeing as it feels like pretty good etiquette overall.
@feditips hashtags are preferred at the end because otherwise the screen reader " I did hashtag monochrome hashtag street hashtag photography in hashtag [city] "
Selling or not, unless you're #MastodonFamous you are, as you say, invisible without them
@feditips
This looks like a great option for now but I can't help but think that allowing everything in posts to be searchable as an option would be a better approach. That would do away with hashtags altogether.
Some Mastodon instances have implemented a custom full text search feature like https://universeodon.com from https://github.com/VyrCossont/mastodon/pull/8 I've been using it lately and makes finding things that much easier.
I'm hoping to see adoption of a way to fulltext search being an instance option, opt-in and opt-out depending on the instance settings implemented by default soon.
For anyone curious this is being discussed in this GitHub thread: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/21627
#searching #mastodon #search #fulltextsearch #features #suggestions #mastodonsearch #mastodonsearching #hashtags #fediverse #feditips
@cragsand @feditips Thanks for this information. I just created a new account on the universeodon instance to test out the full-text search capability. It works great! And each user gets to decide whether they want their posts to be searchable. Why is this controversial? Individual users should have the power to control their own posts.
(Another benefit with this instance: The ability to write longer posts!)
@feditips Boosting here and upvoting on GitHub because this would solve so many problems.
@feditips this was my first thought. Have tags as separate metadata outside of the post area. Keep hashtags for backwards compatibility. Allow combined searching of both.
@feditips One or two hashtags inlined in a wordy post is just fine. It’s only worth putting them at the end if they get too dense.
@feditips even outside of accessibility concerns, I think doing this would help onboard new users into using tagging, making posts more discoverable overall.