Support groups

[cphuntington97]

support groups using bangtags

[Gargron]

I made a decision not to implement groups. They offer little benefit over a cost of added complexity, and the bangtag syntax personally irks me too.

[Gargron]

I made a decision not to implement groups. They offer little benefit over a cost of added complexity, and the bangtag syntax personally irks me too.

[joshp23]

This is the main reason that I'm not using Mastadon. Groups are a wonderful feature of GNU Social, and I would love to see them implemented on Mastadon.

However, while that certainly does keep me from enjoying Mastadon, the root of the matter is that...

1. This is an opinion (subjective) based exclusion of an established feature that many, myself included, find far more valuable than is implied above, and not at all visually irksome. "My personal, subjective opinion is better than yours because I hold it," is not a good reason to exclude an established feature set.
   • Also, it is entirely possible to avoid groups if you so choose when they are implemented.
2. Treating subjective opinions as objective truths (ie, "It is my opinion that this provides little value, it is therefore a fact that this is so,") is just bad directional thinking.

This, being an old and closed issue, likely doesn't get the attention that it deserves, but I know that I am not the only one that holds this view.

At any rate, It would be great to see groups in Mastadon, please reconsider.

[joshp23]

This is the main reason that I'm not using Mastadon. Groups are a wonderful feature of GNU Social, and I would love to see them implemented on Mastadon.

However, while that certainly does keep me from enjoying Mastadon, the root of the matter is that...

1. This is an opinion (subjective) based exclusion of an established feature that many, myself included, find far more valuable than is implied above, and not at all visually irksome. "My personal, subjective opinion is better than yours because I hold it," is not a good reason to exclude an established feature set.
   • Also, it is entirely possible to avoid groups if you so choose when they are implemented.
2. Treating subjective opinions as objective truths (ie, "It is my opinion that this provides little value, it is therefore a fact that this is so,") is just bad directional thinking.

This, being an old and closed issue, likely doesn't get the attention that it deserves, but I know that I am not the only one that holds this view.

At any rate, It would be great to see groups in Mastadon, please reconsider.

[Gargron]

Reopening, but not high priority.

[Gargron]

Reopening, but not high priority.

[schiessle]

Coming from GNU Social I also miss groups a lot. It is a easy way to exchange messages about a specific topic without the need to follow all the people (and also get all the unrelated messages).

But after thinking about it for a while I wonder why there is this arbitrary distinction between groups and hash tags? Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

[schiessle]

Coming from GNU Social I also miss groups a lot. It is a easy way to exchange messages about a specific topic without the need to follow all the people (and also get all the unrelated messages).

But after thinking about it for a while I wonder why there is this arbitrary distinction between groups and hash tags? Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

[Cassolotl]

Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

I agree! And @schiessle, that's #1096, if that helps at all.

[Cassolotl]

Maybe it would be better to simply add the possibility to follow hash tags, similar to Diaspora. It achieves the same but makes it probably easier to use and understand for new users.

I agree! And @schiessle, that's #1096, if that helps at all.

[joshp23]

I think that either option (following hashtags or creating groups) is a good idea. However, groups has a potential edge in viewership/participant restriction.

[joshp23]

I think that either option (following hashtags or creating groups) is a good idea. However, groups has a potential edge in viewership/participant restriction.

[fsnk]

I would very much like groups.

I think they would help users find other people who share their interests, especially since Mastodon by design limits discoverability by not allowing full text search, and other social media platforms have been training users off hashtagging. (Twitter no longer requires a post contain the actual hashtag in order to appear in the hashtag search results.)

[fsnk]

I would very much like groups.

I think they would help users find other people who share their interests, especially since Mastodon by design limits discoverability by not allowing full text search, and other social media platforms have been training users off hashtagging. (Twitter no longer requires a post contain the actual hashtag in order to appear in the hashtag search results.)

[schiessle]

I heard rumors that groups might come in one of the next releases. 😉
It would be good to learn from the mistakes of status.net aka GNU Social which are in my opinion:

• on GNU Social there can't be a group "foo" and a user "foo". Would be great if the namespace would be decoupled so that it is possible to have users and groups with the same name.

• GNU Social has group aliases. So you can have for example a group for all FOSS enthusiasts and let them address the group as !FreeSoftware !OpenSource !FOSS or !FLOSS. I think this is great and useful in many areas. But on GNU Social this aliases are only available on the server which hosts the group, all other servers only know the main group name. If we have group aliases it would be great if they would federate as well.

[schiessle]

I heard rumors that groups might come in one of the next releases. 😉
It would be good to learn from the mistakes of status.net aka GNU Social which are in my opinion:

• on GNU Social there can't be a group "foo" and a user "foo". Would be great if the namespace would be decoupled so that it is possible to have users and groups with the same name.

• GNU Social has group aliases. So you can have for example a group for all FOSS enthusiasts and let them address the group as !FreeSoftware !OpenSource !FOSS or !FLOSS. I think this is great and useful in many areas. But on GNU Social this aliases are only available on the server which hosts the group, all other servers only know the main group name. If we have group aliases it would be great if they would federate as well.

[deutrino]

There is a fair amount of discussion on the merit of !groups on #1096 in case anybody missed the link to that issue upthread.

[deutrino]

There is a fair amount of discussion on the merit of !groups on #1096 in case anybody missed the link to that issue upthread.

[Cassolotl]

I note that option to follow hashtags 1096 Ability to subscribe or follow tags #945 has a lot more thumbs-ups than this one, despite this issue being much older. I'm wondering if there is a plan to implement both? I know that !groups is on the roadmap for the near future, and I'm concerned that that's instead of the ability to follow hashtags?

Edit: It was pointed out that #1096 is a duplicate, but I think my point still holds! #1096 has 35 👍 and #945 has 13.

[Cassolotl]

I note that option to follow hashtags 1096 Ability to subscribe or follow tags #945 has a lot more thumbs-ups than this one, despite this issue being much older. I'm wondering if there is a plan to implement both? I know that !groups is on the roadmap for the near future, and I'm concerned that that's instead of the ability to follow hashtags?

Edit: It was pointed out that #1096 is a duplicate, but I think my point still holds! #1096 has 35 👍 and #945 has 13.

[deutrino]

Is #945 an implementation of #1096?

Also, there's the wrinkle of groups, as implemented in gnusocial, making sure the messages sent to the !group will federate to all subscribers. Following hashtags doesn't do that.

[deutrino]

Is #945 an implementation of #1096?

Also, there's the wrinkle of groups, as implemented in gnusocial, making sure the messages sent to the !group will federate to all subscribers. Following hashtags doesn't do that.

[Cassolotl]

Oh yes, you're right, I already suggested #1096 be closed as a duplicate of #945, oops. :S

groups, as implemented in gnusocial, making sure the messages sent to the !group will federate to all subscribers.

Good point!

[Cassolotl]

Oh yes, you're right, I already suggested #1096 be closed as a duplicate of #945, oops. :S

groups, as implemented in gnusocial, making sure the messages sent to the !group will federate to all subscribers.

Good point!

[nightpool]

@Cassolotl can you talk a little bit more about what you think the difference between the two requests are? I can think of a few, but the two issues seem to have a lot of overlap, so i'm interested in hearing which parts you think are important.

[nightpool]

@Cassolotl can you talk a little bit more about what you think the difference between the two requests are? I can think of a few, but the two issues seem to have a lot of overlap, so i'm interested in hearing which parts you think are important.

[Cassolotl]

Sure! :)

So, when I used !groups on GNU Social, my main feeling was that they were pretty confusing. It required someone to set it up, and there could be three groups with the same name on three different instances all with different rules about who can join. If an admin made a group where members (followers and posters) had to be approved, and then the admin became inactive, the group just became stagnant forever.

So it seemed to me like following a hashtag might be better, because there were no leaders and anyone could keep joining in without having to wait for permission.

So it's a pros and cons situation. Someone could spam a bunch of people following a hashtag, whereas in a !group the admin/group leader could stop that happening by removing a spammer from the group and revoking posting rights.

Also deutrino pointed out that if you're part of a !group on any instance then messages from the !group get to you even if you're not following anyone who posts to the group, whereas with a hashtag search you might never see a post in that hashtag if you don't follow or share an instance with anyone who uses it.

So I guess I would like to be able to follow hashtags regardless, because there are some hashtags I always want to have pinned columns of, and pinned columns can get unwieldy and require a lot of scrolling so I'd rather all the toots were just rolled into my home feed. I don't think that !groups are a good solution to that for me, because I would rather risk spam and avoid the complications of group administration.

Overall they're kinda the same - having posts about a particular topic in your Home feed regardless of whether you're following the people involved. But they seem to each be useful in different ways, so I don't want one to replace the other. I welcome more thoughts/ideas/discussion/comments if anyone has them!

[Cassolotl]

Sure! :)

So, when I used !groups on GNU Social, my main feeling was that they were pretty confusing. It required someone to set it up, and there could be three groups with the same name on three different instances all with different rules about who can join. If an admin made a group where members (followers and posters) had to be approved, and then the admin became inactive, the group just became stagnant forever.

So it seemed to me like following a hashtag might be better, because there were no leaders and anyone could keep joining in without having to wait for permission.

So it's a pros and cons situation. Someone could spam a bunch of people following a hashtag, whereas in a !group the admin/group leader could stop that happening by removing a spammer from the group and revoking posting rights.

Also deutrino pointed out that if you're part of a !group on any instance then messages from the !group get to you even if you're not following anyone who posts to the group, whereas with a hashtag search you might never see a post in that hashtag if you don't follow or share an instance with anyone who uses it.

So I guess I would like to be able to follow hashtags regardless, because there are some hashtags I always want to have pinned columns of, and pinned columns can get unwieldy and require a lot of scrolling so I'd rather all the toots were just rolled into my home feed. I don't think that !groups are a good solution to that for me, because I would rather risk spam and avoid the complications of group administration.

Overall they're kinda the same - having posts about a particular topic in your Home feed regardless of whether you're following the people involved. But they seem to each be useful in different ways, so I don't want one to replace the other. I welcome more thoughts/ideas/discussion/comments if anyone has them!

[joshp23]

Groups federate. That's the main difference that I see. Secondly, groups can be made private.

[joshp23]

Groups federate. That's the main difference that I see. Secondly, groups can be made private.

[nightpool]

@Cassolotl the main problem is that it's very, very hard to try and solve the problem of having hashtags federate out for discoverability. The main reason I see to implement groups is that it allows people who are on brand new instances or don't have any followers to find people who want to see their posts! and with hashtags, there are a lot of thorny problems of "well, who is following this hashtag, how can we know that they're following it on a tech level, and how do we get posts to them". Groups solve these problems, but they come with their own downsides. Following hashtags is useful, but the main reason to go with groups is to help new user discoverability, and right now implementing that for hashtags would be very hard.

ideally we would have both. But i think of the two, i think groups are more useful for us right now.

[nightpool]

@Cassolotl the main problem is that it's very, very hard to try and solve the problem of having hashtags federate out for discoverability. The main reason I see to implement groups is that it allows people who are on brand new instances or don't have any followers to find people who want to see their posts! and with hashtags, there are a lot of thorny problems of "well, who is following this hashtag, how can we know that they're following it on a tech level, and how do we get posts to them". Groups solve these problems, but they come with their own downsides. Following hashtags is useful, but the main reason to go with groups is to help new user discoverability, and right now implementing that for hashtags would be very hard.

ideally we would have both. But i think of the two, i think groups are more useful for us right now.

[Cassolotl]

Since they are different and have different purposes, I do hope we can have both. I'm not denying that groups are good for various reasons, obviously there are plenty of people into the idea and Gargron is apparently more up for it now. But clearly there are also plenty of people who'd like to be able to follow hashtags too, so I'm just hoping that adding groups won't mean that following hashtags becomes a forgotten feature request.

Edit:

The main reason I see to implement groups is that it allows people who are on brand new instances or don't have any followers to find people who want to see their posts!

A lot of these people will be brand new users, and I definitely agree that them having some groups to follow would be excellent for helping them get settled in. Mastodon has so far been much more new-user-friendly than GNU Social, so I imagine folks will have an easier time finding and joining groups on Mastodon than I did on GNU Social? I do look forward to finding out how it all turns out.

But yes, follow hashtags. I don't want it to be forgotten.

[Cassolotl]

Since they are different and have different purposes, I do hope we can have both. I'm not denying that groups are good for various reasons, obviously there are plenty of people into the idea and Gargron is apparently more up for it now. But clearly there are also plenty of people who'd like to be able to follow hashtags too, so I'm just hoping that adding groups won't mean that following hashtags becomes a forgotten feature request.

Edit:

The main reason I see to implement groups is that it allows people who are on brand new instances or don't have any followers to find people who want to see their posts!

A lot of these people will be brand new users, and I definitely agree that them having some groups to follow would be excellent for helping them get settled in. Mastodon has so far been much more new-user-friendly than GNU Social, so I imagine folks will have an easier time finding and joining groups on Mastodon than I did on GNU Social? I do look forward to finding out how it all turns out.

But yes, follow hashtags. I don't want it to be forgotten.

[LEW21]

Groups are the killer feature of Facebook, and are probably necessary if we want people to migrate from Facebook to Mastodon massively.

I've invited people from a Polish IT group ("Jak będzie w Maszynie Turinga") on Facebook to Mastodon, and used hashtag "#turingi" to "recreate" the group on Mastodon. Unfortunately, people on other instances don't see all the posts there, and that's a major roadblock. Additionaly, if this migration would succeed, we would probably have a problem with spam - as the Facebook group is moderated, and useless posts are getting removed - which we can't do with a hashtag.

[LEW21]

Groups are the killer feature of Facebook, and are probably necessary if we want people to migrate from Facebook to Mastodon massively.

I've invited people from a Polish IT group ("Jak będzie w Maszynie Turinga") on Facebook to Mastodon, and used hashtag "#turingi" to "recreate" the group on Mastodon. Unfortunately, people on other instances don't see all the posts there, and that's a major roadblock. Additionaly, if this migration would succeed, we would probably have a problem with spam - as the Facebook group is moderated, and useless posts are getting removed - which we can't do with a hashtag.

[hcs0]

I would like to see this feature. I recently tried out GNUSocial and I love the Groups feature (I have one just for travel) and would love to have something like this available in Mastodon too.

[hcs0]

I would like to see this feature. I recently tried out GNUSocial and I love the Groups feature (I have one just for travel) and would love to have something like this available in Mastodon too.

[semente]

The global and local public timelines are now flooded by a huge amount of new young Brazilians and they share a common interest (they are part of a fandom community leaving Twitter after some rules changed there making some of them loosing their Twitter accounts).

As Portuguese speaker I noticed that what these new users most enjoy in Mastodon are the public timelines - or the ability to interact with an audience outside their followers circle. Looks like they are the majority of active users on Mastodon now hahaha and because of that they made the Federated Timeline like their chat channel (and many believe it is "their channel": they often complain about "gringos" and other people they don't share the same interest like being intruders).

Based on that I think the ability to follow different public timelines makes more sense now.

Some thoughts and opinions:

I don't like how "groups" are implemented in GNU Social. The use of !bangtag syntax to post make the post dirtier, and it compete with hashtags. Also I don't think "group" is an accurate name for what I have in mind (and forgive me if I'm missing the point of this Issue). "channel" or "public timeline" may fits better.

In my opinion, private groups and communities are already possible with separated instances.

And the ability of following hashtags may be interesting, the existing UI ability to pinning hashtags, for those that do not want mess with your personal timeline, helps. I believe that once people are able to follow hashtags they will start using it more effectively instead creating many nonsense tags or using different hashtags for a same subject.

[semente]

The global and local public timelines are now flooded by a huge amount of new young Brazilians and they share a common interest (they are part of a fandom community leaving Twitter after some rules changed there making some of them loosing their Twitter accounts).

As Portuguese speaker I noticed that what these new users most enjoy in Mastodon are the public timelines - or the ability to interact with an audience outside their followers circle. Looks like they are the majority of active users on Mastodon now hahaha and because of that they made the Federated Timeline like their chat channel (and many believe it is "their channel": they often complain about "gringos" and other people they don't share the same interest like being intruders).

Based on that I think the ability to follow different public timelines makes more sense now.

Some thoughts and opinions:

I don't like how "groups" are implemented in GNU Social. The use of !bangtag syntax to post make the post dirtier, and it compete with hashtags. Also I don't think "group" is an accurate name for what I have in mind (and forgive me if I'm missing the point of this Issue). "channel" or "public timeline" may fits better.

In my opinion, private groups and communities are already possible with separated instances.

And the ability of following hashtags may be interesting, the existing UI ability to pinning hashtags, for those that do not want mess with your personal timeline, helps. I believe that once people are able to follow hashtags they will start using it more effectively instead creating many nonsense tags or using different hashtags for a same subject.