I wanted to tag SDF today. A #sdf came up, but it seems to refer to something(s) different. I also saw a #sdfdotorg.

Is there a tag that’s sort of “standard” to refer to SDF? Standard in the sense that it’s typically used by SDF members [Edit:] Mastodon users interested in SDF.

    • stravanasuOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thank you! What you wrote confused me at first, I thought that using @something created a post that was only visible to user something – like a direct message. Now I’ve re-read the help pages, and I see that there’s a second “@” at the bottom of the post field, to make the post only visible to something; otherwise (globe icon) is public.

      May I ask: in this latter case, what does @something achieve then? is it a sort of “user mention”, so the user is notified to have been mentioned in a public post? Will other users interested in something see it then?

      [Edit: I realize that my question was phrased in a completely misleading way. Corrected now.]

      Cheers!

      • wxboss@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        No worries. The Fediverse is a complicated beast 🙂. My understanding is that the @ symbol is a way of directly responding to that person and can also be used by others who see the post to actually identify that person. So say you have 20 followers - when you create a post all of your followers would see it and the person you contacted with the @ symbol.

        But if you’re wanting to mention that person or bring more attention to them for a wider audience, then you would need to use # with words that are closely associated with said person.

        For example, you could create a post to mention SDF as so: “If you’re interested in #retrotech and #Unix like systems, then I would recommend checking out @SDF.”

        In this example, you would want to use relevant hashtags to reach a wider audience, and you’d want to tag the correct person with the @ symbol so people could connect with them.

        At least, that’s how I would go about it. Hope this helps.