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The only way a post can be searched for on here is through hashtags.
The hashtag search will only work if there is an exact letter-for-letter match.
If someone publishes a post with the hashtag #Watercolour, that post will NOT appear in searches for #Watercolor or #Watercolours or #Watercolors
That's why some people use hashtags that are multiple variations on a topic, because it's the only way to give a post a realistic chance of discovery on an exact-hashtag-only search system.
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This brings up the issue of screen readers, as long lists of repetitive hashtags make life difficult for blind people who rely on screen readers to read posts out loud.
This issue can be reduced by putting all the hashtags in a list at the end of the post, with a "Hashtag list" warning before the list.
However, this still isn't perfect, and the current system of tagging has many other issues too.
I've tried to suggest a possible solution here:
➡️ https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/24445
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p.s. Please don't harass artists who have hashtag lists on the end of their posts. Many are low income people dependent on selling art, and need to use multiple variant tags simply to be seen at all.
It isn't spamming, it's just the consequence of an exact-tag-only search system.
This isn't Twitter, there is no general text search by which they might be otherwise discovered.
FediTips has moved!
p.p.s. Lower or upper case does NOT matter for discovery, #WaterColour and #Watercolour are treated exactly the same by the search system. You do NOT need to do variations for case!
However, if a tag contains multiple words you should mark the first letter of each word with upper case letters such as #DogsOfMastodon as this allows screen readers to read each word out aloud.
Sabrina Web :privacypride: 📎
@feditips yes, this is something that I can understand. What I don't like is when people use totally unrelated random hashtags, just for visibility, like in another social network who used to have a bird as its logo. But I don't harass them. I block them, period.
yoshimitsu
@feditips Solution: give people the option to do fuzzy searches.
But the devs would have to be good at what they do to implement a setting; clearly they're scared of them.
David Mitchell :CApride:
@BalooUriza @websick @feditips
I’m not really a dog person, but my sense is that #DogsOfMastodon is a specific community of tooters with a history who share a loosely defined, unofficial, but still meaningful, set of rules and aesthetic values.
Dogs Dog are much more general.
websick
@BalooUriza @feditips I feel like DogsOfMastodon has a slightly different meaning. To me, it usually indicates someone is just sending pictures of their dog, while Dogs would just indicate that the post is related to dogs at all. I'm probably just being needlessly semantic, though.
Baloo Uriza
@feditips DogsOfMastodon would also be a good example of a bad tag when Dogs would be better. Adding the rest is just needlessly convoluted and obfuscating.
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