Why do communities start with an exclamation mark instead of a hashtag? : lemmy

[+] Cheez 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A hashtag fits more for communities than an exclamation mark.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

hashtags are for hashtags

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What kind of purpose does a hashtag have on Lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

For one, it makes the post searchable on Mastodon

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I think it has more to do with the federated nature of the platform. If you are ingesting content from Mastodon for example, # is a hashtag in a post, and you can tag someone with their username with the @ symbol.

Edit: you can tag people here with @ too - such as @knova@[email protected]

So that leaves a new symbol for community linking

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I'm on kbin, and to sub to a community on a lemmy instance, I have to replace the ! with a @, because that's the actual underlying name, it seems. It's a bit confusing.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A hashtag for community seems much better than an exclamation mark.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You already said that

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

But you didn't say why Lemmy does not use hashtags for communities.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I explained that hashtags use the pound symbol already, and usernames use the @ symbol. Communities needed their own symbol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Okay, but how does a hashtag work? Can you give an example of a hashtagged word where Lemmy uses a hashtag?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

#hashtags don’t automatically work on Lemmy, but if I cross post this comment to another federated service (mastodon etc.) the hashtags should work there. #lemmy @knova@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Okay, we have:

# for tagging something
@ for usernames
! for communities

But does a question mark have any purpose here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Not that I’m aware.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

probably because a hashtag is already a thing that means something else in other apps. making hashtag mean a community here would give it 2 meaning depending on the app and that's not user friendly cause people will make mistakes if they move between apps.

therefore a new character was chosen for communities to avoid such confusion

[–] Steve 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why does this matter? I'm not aware of any meaning # has, outside of sheet music.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It can be used to denote pounds. Such as an item weighs 10#. There is a reason a lot of stuff did and still tells you to hit the pound sign on automated phone call menus.

[–] Steve 1 points 2 years ago

Interesting. I've know of it as the pound symbol, but have never actually seen it used as such. I never put the two together.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

It's called an octothorpe you heathens

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I assume because its like that on matrix, just kind of a symbol of the fediverse maybe to differentiate it

[+] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

My guess is to leave open the possibility of adding HashTag support within the app. YouTube hash HashTags that allow you to jump between channels... I could see something like that working.