Phil Reese @phillipjreese@mastodon.technology

With the help of others, the previous thread had evolved in a real Mastodon Instructions site.

It's still under construction, but you can still see it here:
https://rame.altervista.org/mastostart

Therefore bad accounts don't last long on Mastodon.

Also for that it's extremely important that you sign up on an Instance where you can easily interact with admins that can communicate in your native language, shares your culture and political views and are capable to understand subtle things that are quite impenetrable for somebody that doesn't know how things works where you live.

Also, if you pich the last post of a sub-thread (in this picture the post 7c) you will see all the previous posts in chronological order, but excluding all the other sub-threads

Now, pay attention: if you pick the thread by selecting the post nr.2 you will also see all the following posts in chronological order, but you will not see the previous ramification (the sub-thread containing the posts 2a and 3a)

MOVING TROUGH RAMIFICATIONS

If you want to read a thread that is highly ramificated, the most important concept to understand is that the order of the different posts will be rearranged depending on which post you select.

Lets make some examples. If you want to read the previous thread and you select the first toot, all the following posts will be rearranged in chronological order (see picture)

THREADS AND RAMIFICATIONS

A thread can evolve in a sort of 'tree' because people will reply and counter-reply on different posts. On the following picture you see a thread that, from a single post, evolves in four different branches:

Twitter users are quite used to it but if you arrived here from different platforms (i.e. Facebook) that can be a little bit confusing 😄

THE POST'S PRIVACY

When you post a message (toot) you can choose between 4 types of posting:

PUBLIC - Your post is public, appears on public timelines and everybody can see it

NOT LISTED - Your post is still public but doesn't appear on timelines. People can read it only if they are cited in it or if they go to your profile and scroll your posts

FOLLOWERS ONLY - Your post is still half-public because only your followers will see it. At their eyes it appears as a regular public post

DIRECT - Your post is private and viewable only by the people cited inside the post.

Anyway remember that Mastodon is designed to spread discussions and not for privacy: your Instance admins are capable to read all your messages, included the direct ones.

For encrypted messaging there are other platforms like https://matrix.org

>>> the Instances:

mstdn.social
mas.to
inditoot.com

(I am not suggesting you that these are better than others, but simply reporting what some new users said)

STEP 2: Export your posts, followers and silenced users list and import them in the new account as explained here: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/​

If you need help on this, please contact admins and users of the Instances that you signed up. Please note that if obe of the two instances is using an old version of Mastodon software, this process can work only partially.

MOVING TO A DIFFERENT INSTANCE

In the last days many new users expecially from India, arrived on Mastodon by signing up casually on Instances that are very different from what they need (for example Instances that promote veganism are now flooded by pictures of Tikka Masala Chicken 😅). Therefore it can be a goog idea to move to a different Instance.

If your account is already big, with many posts and followers that you want to keep dont worry: you can move 'em on the new Instance.

STEP 1: Find a new Instance that fits your needs. https://instances.social/​ is the right place to do it. Also, many people signs up on mastodon.social that is ok but, in my opinion, by lacking a true 'local' identity may not be the best place when you want to discuss indian-specific topics. AFAIK most of the new users are signing up on >>>

BLOCKING AND SILENCING

If the admins of Instance1 BLOCK Instance2, the users of Instance1 cannot interact the users of Instance2

If the admins of Instance1 SILENCE Instance2, the users of Instance1 can still privately follow and interact the users of Instance2, but those interactions (like boosts) will not be seen by the other users of Instance1

To be more clear: BLOCKING is used for instances that permits horrible things and behaviours and SILENCING is used for instances that your Instance tolerate but doesn't appreciate so much.

The same things are appliable to users.

Also you, as simple user, can decide to block or silence (for your eyes only) other users and entire Instances.

#instructions #help

If you want to suggest to somebody to read a certain thread on Mastodon you can boost it or interact directly in the thread and call the account of the person that you want to join the discussion (Ok, @Zid1o88 ?😉)

Mastodon decided to not implement the 'retweet and comment' function because is mostly used for harrassment and also because it leads to talking AROUND a thread without taking part of it.

Posting the link of a toot is also ok but remember that this will work correctly only from desktop. On smartphones, unfortunately, clicking on.the link will bring you outside the App to the browser.

Also, always remember to write the COMPLETE account address of users.

@name wil work for peoole on your same Instance, but if you want to interact with people based on other instances the format is @name@instance

Being Mastodon an open source software every Instance administrator can modify it to meet the needs of the people on that Instance.

For example: as some of you have notices, my posts can be longer than the standard 500 digits. That's because recently the community on my Instance, decided to add more digits to meet the fact that we engage often complex arguments that needs longer explainations.

Another italian instance called Cisti that's very centered about reducing competition and #gamification on social modified the software so that their profiles don't show anymore the real number of their followers. If a user of Cisti has 3000 followers, his public counter will say that they are 42.

(Why 42? You'll guess 😉)

Here on Mastodon you will not receive notifications like '40 people liked the post you boosted' or 'john is tweeting about this' or 'laura and mike are now following hannah'

Nobody here will say to you what you 'must' read or who you 'must' follow.

Here nobody cares so much about the 'success' of a post.

You are advised abou how many people will 'star' or boost your post and that's it

To know how many times a certain post was boosted or 'starred' you must click on it. But there is no emphasis on it and in fact nobody really cares.

What's important, here, is to interact in real discourses and... who cares about 'points' received from peoole that don't interact.

Thus being on a Mastodon Instance you can still mantain some relation with your previous Twitter account.

There are services like https://ifttt.com or https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/ than can connect your Twitter account with your Mastodon account.

With this services you can:

1) publish your tweets on Mastodon
2) publish your toots on Twitter

I strongly suggest to use only the second option, but that's my personal opinion.

Another thing you can do to help Twutter users to come to Mastodon is to use your complete Mastodon account address (name@instance) as your Twitter name

Mastodon is not Twitter
BUT THIS ALONE WILL NOT HELP...
...if you are still tangled in a Twitter-mindset!!

Are you still searching for the Trending Topics that will impose to everyone what is the thing about whom you "must" talk today?

Are you searching for "people to follow" instead of "people to interact with"?

Are you still planning time wasting things like hashtag wars instead of doing something real?

Are you searching for emotional and social gratifications by the number of retweets you received?

Are you still judging a post by the number of likes that received?

Are you still writing '"cool lines posts" for obtaining likes insted of writing interesting posts that stimulates discussion and interaction?

If so, pkease pay attention: there is still much Twitter INSIDE YOU.

(It takes some time to heal 😉)