Hey there, anyone want some help with using Mastodon or the wider Fediverse?
Reply (or send me a DM if you prefer) with your questions and I'll try to get you some answers 🙂
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@FediTips I followed @tag-solarpunk to get posts about solarpunk from a broader collection of servers and to have it act like a user instead of a hashtag so I could put it in lists. At some point, it has stopped giving me anything. I get plenty from the solarpunk tag directly but nothing through the relay. Any idea why it stopped? Maybe I've configured my mastodon instance incorrectly?
This might be a question for the maintainer @astro@c3d2.social ?
@FediTips I’ve never really understood @mobilizon What’s the added value compared to other planners?
@dialektgefahr @FediTips Mobilizon's main purpose is to enable you to find events, activities and groups to join around you.
It means you can follow Mobilizon events/organisers from the Fediverse (through Mastodon etc) and their updates appear in your timeline.
Only the organisers of events need to sign up on Mobilizon, their audience on the Fediverse doesn't need to.
@FediTips @dialektgefahr To be more specific, from Mastodon you can follow a Mobilizon group, and you'll get notified when they post new events and posts.
@FediTips are there instances for non-profits that allow for networking across Europe? And how do I go about posting longer texts - do I have to switch instances or is there another way?
There used to be an NGO-specific instance but as far as I can tell it's no longer operating.
If you want to find good reliable instances I run a site at https://fedi.garden/fedi-gardens-full-server-list/ and the official list is at https://joinmastodon.org/servers (both these sites have requirements for reliability & safety to be listed).
For longer texts, more info at https://fedi.tips/why-do-some-people-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-have-bigger-character-limits/
@FediTips What actually is selected to go in the "Trending" section? What makes a toot trendy? Is it trending in the instance or in the wider Fediverse?
It's trending amongst accounts that the instance is aware of. Different instances will have different trend lists because of this.
It's basically any recent toot getting lots of boosts from accounts that the instance has noticed (mostly its own accounts and accounts that its users have interacted with).
If a toot has been boosted by accounts that the instance has never heard of before, it will ignore those boosts for the purposes of calculating trends.
@FediTips Thanks! Ok so boosts don’t just allow your followers to see a root, but also influence this tab. That’s the "Mastodon algorithm".
Yup, plus the boost also makes your followers' instances notice the post too, which makes it searchable on their instances.
Boosting does lots of things to help spread a post across the Fediverse.
Is there any way to filter posts by language?
Yup, there's more info about it at https://fedi.tips/setting-your-language-preferences-on-mastodon-and-filtering-out-posts-in-other-languages/
@FediTips If there is a feature that is broken, for example the way quote toots don't entirely filter out blocked and muted accounts, what is the best way to raise this as a issue with the developers?
The Mastodon developers have two ways of giving them feedback:
https://community.joinmastodon.org - Their community forum, intended for a general audience
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues - Mastodon's Github issues section, intended for people comfortable with techy things
@FediTips It seems my grumble is shared by others. But there's a big to-do list and I suspect it only gets bigger...
Bear in mind there are no investors or shareholders or VCs or anything like that, they are a tiny indie organisation running on a shoestring budget based entirely on donations and grants.
The developers are having to prioritise what they work on rather than doing everything people request. So, it's a good idea to let them know about bugs (especially serious ones) but they may not be able to deal with them immediately.
@FediTips I cant login to fedi.vieo with my mastodon creds. is that normal?
Totally normal! 🙂
You cannot log in with one server's account on a totally different server. You can interact with accounts on other servers (as you and I are doing right now) but you have to do so from within your own server.
If an account or post (or video) from another server isn't showing up when searching your server, you can force your server to start noticing it by copy-pasting its web address into the search box in your Mastodon app or on your server's website.
Is it possible to switch to another instance using the profile, whilst also transferring the posts and media? Thank you.
You can transfer your Mastodon account to another Mastodon instance. Your posts/media remain in existence on the old instance, but if you follow the instructions in the guide at https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server the old posts will direct people to your new account.
GoToSocial has an experimental transfer system called Slurp which allows posts/media to be transferred fully to the new instance. However, it is still in testing.
@FediTips know of any engine/library/frameworks implementing fedi protocols, to allow quickly standing up a custom federated app?
I'm not sure exactly what you're aiming to build (an instance? a client?) and I'm not a dev either, but there are lots of Fedi-related platforms and tools listed at https://codeberg.org/fediverse/delightful-fediverse-experience
Maybe something there would match what you're looking for?
@FediTips probably an instance. I'm interested in making something much more flexible in functionality, but not sure if it's worth the work to develop vs sticking with mastodon. Thanks for the resource!
Hey, sorry, I just remembered a much better resource for what you're asking for!
ActivityPub.rocks has discussion forums and resources for devs using the ActivityPub protocol at https://activitypub.rocks
It covers any project that is related to the Fediverse.
@FediTips can you search in the browser for posts matching from a specific server? E.g. I want to search aus.social for “software”. The results seemed to be from all instances and I couldn’t find a good way to narrow it down.
As far as I know there's no way to search a particular instance's accounts. The nearest to this would be browsing the instance's Local timeline (aka "Live Feeds").
In case this is any help, there are many other options for narrowing searches listed at https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-search-for-stuff-on-mastodon/
Is there a way to follow a Lemmy community on mastodon and have it only "boost" the initial/main post and the comments just show up as replies on mastodon?
(I hope that makes sense)
Unfortunately I don't support Lemmy. Sorry.
@FediTips
Hi. Why it is on some servers not possible to view posts according a hashtag? e.g. I am not on this server https://sueden.social/tags/tercinema And I get the message “Registriere dich oder melde dich an, um den Hashtag anzuschauen und ihm zu folgen.” In english: I need to join before I could see the content, but I do not want to have an account on all servers like this!
sueden.social