meta, on boosting, for new fedis
@jonny Don't forget hashtags. People write something beautiful and have important conversations and threads... and then there's no #.
Does my head in.
And replies are good too. An active conversation brings people in.
I really should look up how to make a group...
@Homebrewandhacking @jonny I’ve seen groups and tried to look them up but I’m not sure I understand them. How do they work and what’s the idea? Are they a base-#Mastodon feature?
@Homebrewandhacking @maegul oh! hark! https://a.gup.pe/
Make a group by tagging a @newgroup and then people can follow that handle. every time you mention it that post will be boosted to the group
@jonny @Homebrewandhacking @newgroup Right! Thanks! So it's not base-#Mastodon or ActivityPub but a server/app some people (you too @jonny ?) have made on top of AP. Very nice! Hope someone's server doesn't get overrun!
Maybe there should be a "whatisagroup" group to get onboard people??
Otherwise, they seem pretty popular ... almost like topic threading is useful! I was thinking some feature like this would nice, partly inspired by some of your thoughts on tools for academic discussion.
@jonny @Homebrewandhacking @newgroup Hmmm, as someone smarter than me responded when I explained groups to them ... "so it's like following a hashtag?"
So I'd guess their development predates the relatively new hashtag following...?
Is there actually any functional difference from current hashtags?
@maegul @Homebrewandhacking yes- following a hashtag means that all posts that your server receives that have that hashtag are added to your feed. Someone using a hashtag that no one on your server follows will not be added to your feed.
The guppe group boosts everything that mentions it. if you are following the group, then all posts that mention to bot will be added to your feed even if no one on your instance follows the person who posted it.
@jonny @Homebrewandhacking Ahh thanks! Didn’t think about the instance visibility factor.
Across smaller and more niche instances, some of which I imagine (?) are more inclined to leverage hashtags and groups and similar mechanisms to connect across the network, cutting through instance visibility to get actual subscription like behaviour is probably quite valuable. Cool!
@maegul @Homebrewandhacking yeah totally. it basically becomes the most important factor for discovery and communication for smaller instances - whether or not you can actually see anything. that's why some use relays basically to grab all posts from larger servers, and I'm working on stuff to do more proactive exploration beyond the pub/sub model like grabbing extra replies to posts, sharing local timelines, etc.
@jonny @maegul @Homebrewandhacking
Thanks for all these explanations. I didn’t realize hashtags were also limited to whether the post is “visible” by your server - but that makes sense and explains why some of them seem relatively unpopulated!
@elduvelle @jonny @maegul @Homebrewandhacking I didn't know that either! Now I'm much less surprised I don't seem to get that much input from following hashtags (still trying to find my peers but there does not seem to be a #epidemiology or #publichealth list of academics on Mastodon).
@marie_ahoi @elduvelle @jonny @maegul Hmm @ epidemiology@a.gup.pe
@ publichealth@a.gup.pe both exist.
@Homebrewandhacking @elduvelle @jonny @maegul Ooh that's great, thank you for sharing! I only checked the academics on Mastodon lists and could not find any. But missed the groups. Thank you! 
(Unfortunately, only a small number of followers, but a good start!)
@marie_ahoi @Homebrewandhacking @elduvelle @maegul yes! for finding ppl it can be hard to know where to start. it's v normal to ask for boosts for visibility (and reciprocally to boost ppl asking for visibility), and I think casting a wide net by following everyone in sight and pruning later is a good idea too - those ppl will boost posts related to the topic and you can follow those ppl, and so on. make lists as u go!
searching on other instances also underrated. search for hashtags, find ppl you don't follow, follow them, then bring their postsn+boosts to your instance, etc.
definitely takes a little bit of a different approach but it can be done! and hearing the parts where it can't are just as useful for figuring out how it needs to be improved
@jonny @marie_ahoi @elduvelle @maegul
Searching other instances... hmm.
I would need to do that from a desktop I think.
@marie_ahoi @elduvelle @jonny @maegul Jonny was kind enough to show me how the groups thing works and since I have a new tool I will be using it to bang on things until I understand it better.
There is no real search functionality or bringing people together on Mastodon and as you know, all the important stuff is done via cooperation.