For a long time, users have been able to submit microblog-style posts to link-aggregator subs (a.k.a. subcommunity, community, magazine, etc.). Some platforms such as mbin require you to select one for your post. Previously, I've thought this sub selection as a special hashtag for the post. However, I've recently been reminded that posts actually show up in communities as full-on threads. So what do you (or the threadi gods) consider to be proper etiquette in selecting a proper sub to make your microblog post to? There's always !random, but that feels kinda worthless...

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[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 1 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

One good option is to look for relevant groups in a.gup.pe - such as !technology@a.gup.pe. These groups are geared towards Microblog content, and give good reach on sites like Mastodon.

You can add pretty much anything before a.gup.pe, but some groups have many followers on Mastodon and some have none.

Lemmy and Mbin treat Microblog content very differently. Mbin is more similar to Mastodon in this regard, Lemmy tries to force-fit everything into the thread format. It's not very intuitive for new users - sorry about that! :)

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

Heads up the project behind a.gup.pe is very much stagnated, and while it does still work, I wouldn't encourage people use it because it has federation issues with non-Mastodon software, and the fact that it could potentially go down anytime taking the groups with it, to be clear it's a risk with any service but since guppe hasn't gotten much attention for a while it's more of a risk since they might not be maintaining the site.

I don't deny that it's a cool service but it probably won't last. I'd recommend people use alternatives to host groups on Mastodon, like communites on Lemmy or mbin. Ultimately though they are the same thing activitypub wise, it's just a handle that is a group entity, rather than a user. Different services just interpret the data differently, Lemmy and mbin show a forum, Mastodon just shows boosts of user's posts (yes it is posts, not toots, toots is an outdated term).

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 1 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

I wasn't aware of this - good to know.

What's great about using it (while it lasts) is that it boosts content to a lot of instances across the fediverse, so you don't need to be incredibly well connected in order to have reach. Otherwise, if you post microblog posts from Mbin, you risk yelling into a very tiny void.

It'll be interesting to see how native group support in Mastodon is going to play out.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What’s great about using it (while it lasts) is that it boosts content to a lot of instances across the fediverse, so you don’t need to be incredibly well connected in order to have reach. Otherwise, if you post microblog posts from Mbin, you risk yelling into a very tiny void.

Yeah that is an unfortunate side effect, I don't think guppe is fully immune to it though, its current communties have a lot of subscribers so content gets boosted very far, but if one created a new community it likely wouldn't get very far since for federation to work you need one subscriber per server or it doesn't show up. It's what services like Lemmy-federate aim to solve on Lemmy and mbin, it still takes effort to grow your communities/groups but it's easier if they're available on the most servers possible.

It'll be interesting to see how native group support in Mastodon is going to play out.

Yeah, I'm very excited for that feature. Hoping it comes out soon. Could help bridging the gap between Mastodon and Lemmy if Groups/Communities could also be hosted on Mastodon. That assumes Groups will work well or be compatible with Lemmy, I hope they do and they probably will in the end but I imagine there will be a rough in-between period where something doesn't work quite right and throws it off.

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what to make of compatibility between Mastodon groups and Lemmy communities. On the one hand, it would obviously be a good thing if the technology would talk as much as possible. On the other, the microblog format does not look so good in Lemmy unless the author is knowingly making and effort to create a thread rather than a post, starting with a title and all that.

Compatibility between the two by default could end up flooding both services with content that looks out of place, and lowering the user experience rather than improving it. It would also subject one service to the technical constraints/decisions of the other.

I think it might make more sense to keep them somehow separate, and leave it to the different fediverse software to implement it however it would like. The priority of the Mastodon developers, in my opinion, should be to create something that works as well as possible in their ecosystem.

Then again, I could absolutely be wrong.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah that is true, though in my experience from posting things from mastodon it's not as bad as one might think. While you generally should include a title sentence separate from the rest of the post if you don't it'll just use the first sentence you write as the title. The biggest problem with Microblog content in Lemmy is the community mention, since if that is in the same area as the title it'll look messed up. I think if enough people become aware of that it would help since they could just put the mention towards the bottom. Maybe even with group support mentioning the group will become not a thing anymore and will be replaced with native functionality to post to a group.

Even though some content will likely look out of place I don't think it'll cause much of an issue since it'll only intermingle in groups, content outside of groups will still be the same Mastodon content, and Lemmy communities will likely enforce proper posting etiquette for Mastodon users even if they don't do it in groups. For that reason I don't really see it becoming a serious problem.

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