Here is a poll about expected behaviours on Mastodon:
Should original toots that begin with a @ (mention) be treated similar to an original toot (regardless of @) (current behaviour) or similar to a reply to another toot (e.g. not shown to your followers who do not also follow the person you're @'ing) (Twitter behaviour)
@MightyPork @Gargron does it remove from home timelines tho?
@charlag @MightyPork it does not. unlisted does nothing re: followers
@Gargron @MightyPork then yeah, I think that everything that starts with @ is a mention and everything which does not is not is what Twitter people were used to. Not necessary all others.
@charlag @Gargron @MightyPork if there is confusion due to multiple controls, you could implement the logic as a front end thing where a starting @ visibly toggles the privacy controls. And removing the @ un-toggles them. Perhaps with the ability to manually override.
@gargron either way, would be cool to have the other choice as an optional checkmark.
@Gargron
for clarification:
If the @ is somewhere within the toot, it will then still be handelt as any other toot that doesn't have a @?
@paulfree14 only if it's the very first thing. even a prepended dot would cancel special treatment
@Gargron Twitter thing seems more reasonable. I don't really care about seeing interactions with people I don't follow 😷
Here is my case for changing current behaviour:
People on Twitter usually prepend their @ with a dot to sic their followers on someone. Current behaviour is like that but like if the dot was invisible.
Also it's annoying to get interactions on a toot from people who don't follow the person I'm @'ing, even if my toot is not DM-worthy and I wouldn't mind replies from those who follow both of us
Here's my case for keeping the current behaviour:
We're not Twitter.
New Users don't know that this is expected behaviour on either platforms (I've seen this a lot on Twitter).
The .@ will be noisy
There's no prevalent problem with @s in the locals/federated timelines.
We should take our time to make an adjustment like this as intuitive as possible, for all users to improve overall UX.
Cont.
@maloki I don't think that people will dot the .@ a lot because that's usually not what people want
@Gargron Yes, but you're still proposing to add it a feature. Which I find really strange.
And you went out for public discourse before actually responding to any of my concerns about it.
@maloki That was @cassolotl, I followed suit
@cassolotl no no no. It isn't bad. I don't mind it. But there's a difference, between @Gargron avoiding replying to my concerns and you whom I've had a conversation with about it already, does it.
@maloki @Gargron I mean, I would have done the poll whether we talked about it or not, I get curious and like to ask for a general feeling on things before I make a solid decision about what I think, you know? It can be nice to gather data and think about things and read some feedback before responding. :)
cont.
I fully understand the concerns raised, and I do want to see them addressed, but I want us to take our time with it, and make a good implementation instead of just changing something that has a fairly big impact on especially new users.
I know that seeing mentions as starting a conversation can be viewed or misinterpreted as a reply, I understand why this is an issue.
I just don't think this is the right way to address it.
@Gargron
I'm pretty sure the current Twitter @ behavior is from when there wasn't threading with actual replies.
Twitter added all their features over time and (usually) have not deprecated the way things used to work.
@Gargron I think the more the merrier - that way you’re exposed to someone new who you may therefore want to follow
I am now worried the answers in the poll are worded unclearly 😩
Thankfully it's not a binding referendum
Voted for 'More asbestos, more asbestos.'
*holds poll*
*disagrees with the results*
well umm uhh the questions werent clear enough!! and um uhh its not binding!!!
@zeezeemoomoo Yeah but I linked to someone else's poll, I didn't get to write the options myself :P
@gargron yeah but the point is you say this after not before
@zeezeemoomoo Yeah I did not plan this ahead. I just boosted a poll that @cassolotl inofficially made, and then added as much context as I could to it, but the results ARE inconclusive (55:45 currently) in contrast to the text replies I'm getting to the toot, which seem majorly in favour of changing current behaviour
@Gargron @zeezeemoomoo If I hadn't seen the context I'd have voted differently, IMO skepticism is fair
@Gargron @zeezeemoomoo I am wondering how (and whether) we should adjust for people just being like "I don't like change that I don't fully understand".
@cassolotl @zeezeemoomoo Add that as an option to every poll and ignore those answers?
@Gargron @zeezeemoomoo Haha, I like it! :P
@zeezeemoomoo @Gargron
"Mentions mean Mentions"
@Gargron I'm actually really not entirely sure which one would result in which behaviour.
Adding another preference will make preferences more complex. Leaving the choice to clients will confuse people who use multiple ones, meaning anyone with a phone and a computer.
Twitter's behaviour changed multiple times as well over time and I'm still not sure which is the “better” one, as in suitable for a default.
Also, Mastodon offers more behaviour options on top.
Giving examples…
😉 yep, little bit confusing @Gargron // this helped me to get it https://mashable.com/2016/05/24/twitter-mentions-explained/#oawy3uz9SZq9
@Gargron often helps to make things clearer. Give each scenario a title, then vote on the titles in conclusion.
Protagonists: Alice, Bob, You
You follow: (Alice|Alice and Bob|Bob|neither of them)
→ 4 possible outcomes with following neither being very easy. :-)
This is what happens
Alice: Toot
Bob: @Alice Re: toot
This is what you see when following (see above) in each scenario:
Title 1:
Alice: Toot
---
Title 2:
Alice: Toot
Bob: @Alice Re: toot
Title 3:
---
---
Complex…
@Gargron I can only speak for myself of course, but I always found the Twitter behavior super confusing and unintuitive, so I far prefer Mastodon's current behavior. If I follow somebody it's because I wanted to see everything they're posting in public, not just their "top-level" posts.
@Gargron I do not want the behavior to change because I’m afraid it means I will miss out toots from people I follow.
When I start a public toot with @ it means I want to publicly address to someone, I do not want my toot to go unlisted.
I want to see the toots from people I follow even if it starts with @.
Sometimes the @ account is a robot anyway (media, politics, big organisation cross posting from twitter…) so I know they most likely won’t read it, it’s mostly for my followers.
@gargron
I did the current behavior intentionally because it was an issue many on the local timeline were following... could have been more subtle and dm'd the individual I originally @'d and asked them to update the local, but didn't think of that in the moment...
@Gargron the "Twitter way" is wrong and confusing IMHO
@gargron so if I follow you, but not the recipient, and I reply, you find that annoying?
@Gargron Super interesting poll actually. ☺️
Voted, but really what I'd prefer is if the @ used as the first word would be swapped for a special "1st message in thread" emoji variant @ to indicate:
- 1st message
- Not a response
Then just leave where it goes as a user configurable setting. Everyone gets what they want, and all the messages are once again accurately self-describing.
@Gargron The proposed behavior sounds very non-obvious, with potentially poor discoverability.
I would never assume stuff would behave differently based on where an @ was (prior to reading this). Even if there was some feedback that pops up when you type an @, that's still a lot of explanation to give to people right there.
@Gargron The second one, plus a popup message that reads "ugh, really?" if your post begins with a ".@"
Okay, shut it down. I'm not going ahead with this change since it's pretty much 50:50 and there's valid reasons to oppose it.
@Gargron now you've got a 55 - 45 ^^
@Gargron Thank you for handling this the way you did.
@Gargron I think it makes sense to treat them contextually like if I hit the reply button it's nested as a reply and if it's an @ it is a regular toot with an @ on it
@Gargron I vote for "similar to an original toot", because I often see people on Twitter whol forget the dot when they want to make a tweet appear in their followers' timeline
@Gargron
Keep as is afaic
@Gargron if I initiate a conversation, I do not ever want it to be visible like a regular toot. Current functionality stops me from initiating convos.
@Gargron Didn't Twitter change that behavior within the last year?
So originally Twitter treated tweets starting with a @ as a reply, but currently they treat it as a normal original tweet.
So it seems to me that your asking if Mastodon should change it's behavior from what Twitter does currently to what Twitter did previously.
That would (IMHO) be messy – and I like being able to write in Subject-Verb-Object order without having to artificially change the content just because 'subject' is a user name.
@Gargron Having read the thread up to this point, it's sounding like not an easy problem…
I'd propose keeping current behaviour, but display a little reminder under the privacy menu, whenever someone adds @ to the start of their message and it's not set to direct.
That might also aid discovery of the DM feature, I've seen some people confused about where it is. Kill two birds with one stone.
@LeeteqXV We opted for this. And yes the poll wasn't actually ours. It was just to get a feel for the climate.
@Gargron why is everyone on here so complicated and confusing even this toot you said is confusing i don't understand it... :T please dum it down for me X.X
@Gargron it seems a bit redundant when we already have a unlisted toggle but i dunno