Edited below.
I imagine many of us are here from reddit, where hashtags weren’t really a thing and in many places mentions were actively discouraged (/r/politics I’m looking at you). However, since everything we post or comment on kbin (and lemmy) has the potential of getting federated on a mastodon server, which leans heavily on hashtags and mentions, should we be promoting the use of hashtags and mentions, in an effort to-- I dunno-- kind of tie everything together a little more neatly?
If the answer is “yeah, we probably should” then I’d also suggest that there be an option added to the settings to auto-populate the hashtags associated with the magazine to every post and another to add them to every top-level comment, very similar to how we have the option to auto-populate mentions for posts and comments.
Does this “Tags” field, when making a new thread/post, actually do anything with respect to this, or is that more for kbin-related stuff?
Oh, and, uh… #hashtags #kbin #fediverse
Feels weird to do that.
Edit: So, I did some brief testing, and have noted the following:
- Hashtags associated with the magazine are auto-populated at the end of the mastodon snippet.
- Hashtags added to the
tags
field are likewise added to the end of the mastodon snippet. - Hashtags in the body text are seen as hashtags, but for reasons that might just be mastodon weirdness, searching for the hashtag doesn’t display the associated post.
- Hashtags in the body but more than ~350 characters into the body (i.e., past the point the snippet cuts it off) do not display.
Edit2: Mostly unrelated, but when I mention the “snippet” above, it seems like it is created by the first ~350 characters of the first paragraph. That is to say, if your first paragraph is 10 characters, then a blank line, then 100 more characters-- the snippet will only be 10 characters long.
So long as there is an option for users to hide them when reading…
Probably also best if they’re added optionally via a separate box, rather than included in the main body. Down the road, it would be cool if that box could be used to find suggestions (so the writer can find any already in use which fit).
They can have a lot of utility for those who like them when used judiciously & sparingly, but too many people seem to have a bit of a tagspam habit.