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jonny (good kind)

Hey any journalists on here plz turn your public post indexing on, because most of you haven't and thats why people looking for public information cant find you.

Go to settings > public profile > privacy and reach, select "include public posts in search results"

Not all the fedi wants to be a public space, and thats fine, but some parts should be right now.

57 comments
Marcel Waldvogel

Also, consider allowing #TootFinder to make your public posts globally searchable. I think it is a good thing to do, if you want to make information available to the public.

tootfinder.ch/

It's painless:
1️⃣ Include one of the keywords "searchable", " tootfinder", or "tfr" in your profile to express consent
2️⃣ Tell TootFinder to start indexing here: tootfinder.ch/join.php

(Just remove the keyword if you want to opt out again.)

@jonny

Also, consider allowing #TootFinder to make your public posts globally searchable. I think it is a good thing to do, if you want to make information available to the public.

tootfinder.ch/

It's painless:
1️⃣ Include one of the keywords "searchable", " tootfinder", or "tfr" in your profile to express consent
2️⃣ Tell TootFinder to start indexing here: tootfinder.ch/join.php

Natasha Nox 🇺🇦🇵🇸

@marcel @jonny Hope this becomes unnecessary in the future, after all the new indexing option should make the search very much usable already. Or is tootfinder somehow special? 🤔

Marcel Waldvogel

@Natanox @jonny Built-in #Mastodon #search is intra-site ("local"), #TootFinder is inter-site ("global", kind of like #Google for the #Fediverse , not just for your instance).

I.e., you don't need to remeber the user/instance where you read the post from…

Matt

@marcel @Natanox @jonny Assuming you read it while browsing Mastodon, you don't need to remember it using the built-in search either. As long as your post reaches the other instance (which it will on any moderately sized one), it can be found through anyone searching it.

It's true that you won't reach the small instances most likely however, but I suspect people on small instances know how to find things they want.

Marcel Waldvogel

@mattswift @Natanox @jonny
docs-p.joinmastodon.org/admin/ reads:
"Mastodon’s full-text search allows logged in users to find results from their own statuses, their mentions, their favourites, and their bookmarks."

So, it's not everything I read, I need to have interacted with it (or vice versa). But indeed, a lot is now covered with the built-in search (which wasn't the case when #Tootfinder started).

Maybe @buercher can explain more differences?

@mattswift @Natanox @jonny
docs-p.joinmastodon.org/admin/ reads:
"Mastodon’s full-text search allows logged in users to find results from their own statuses, their mentions, their favourites, and their bookmarks."

So, it's not everything I read, I need to have interacted with it (or vice versa). But indeed, a lot is now covered with the built-in search (which wasn't the case when #Tootfinder started).

Matt

@marcel @Natanox @jonny @buercher this is old documentation from before 4.2.0.

With the latest Mastodon releases, instances can work a proper full text search if they install a search engine such as ElasticSearch.

They should probably update that.

Edit: Please see github.com/mastodon/mastodon/r

Matt

@HeNeArXn @marcel @Natanox @jonny @buercher ah woops, I admit I have not looked at the docs for a while so I just assumed that was the page

Marcel Waldvogel

@mattswift @HeNeArXn @Natanox @jonny @buercher docs-p was ranked higher in my search results than docs 🤷.

Going with the current docs and the "public statuses from account that opted into appearing in search results" bullet point: Is this for all accounts, or just local accounts? If the former: How is the "search opt-in" flag communicated to other instances? As part of the profile information?

Matthias Bürcher

@marcel @mattswift @HeNeArXn @Natanox @jonny Do you have the flag in your instance? I cannot check for me because my instance is still 4.1, but I expect the property to be exposed on the API via the profile.

Annika Backstrom

@marcel @mattswift It applies to any account (local or remote), and yes, it's part of the profile. Also, profiles that have opted-in to search are polled more frequently for updates, in case the user has opted back out of search (indicating the remote server should remove that account from its search index)

Simon Müller :sparkles_trans:

@marcel the current full-text search adds anyone to your index. If your instance knows of a person, and that person is opted in, it'll index. No matter whether they're local or not.

Matthias Bürcher

@marcel @mattswift @Natanox @jonny Tootfinder indexes all original public posts from whoever opted in. No replies however. As for the search syntax, I do not know what Mastodon uses. Tootfinder is limited to 90 days. I don't know how long Mastodon goes back and how the instances will cope with the volume.

LinuxUserGD

@marcel @jonny Does Tootfinder also work for Truth Social profiles?

Marcel Waldvogel

@HugeGameArtGD @jonny I would guess anything supporting the basic #Fediverse #ActivityPub protocol, independent of whom it federates with. Is that correct, @buercher ?

Fedi.Tips 🎄

@jonny

Also remember to click "save changes" at the bottom of the screen after you've made your selection.

MJ Ray

@feditips @jonny the settings on moshidon has no public profile section. Is this limited to some clients?

Fedi.Tips 🎄

@mjr @jonny

Log in through your server's website to do this.

I think your server isn't running the latest version of Mastodon though, so it may not have this feature yet.

MJ Ray

@feditips @jonny this is a reason why people say mastodon is too complicated. If I wanted to log in to a website, I wouldn't have installed an app. Then add on servers not upgrading as an extra layer of awkward. 🙁

Fedi.Tips 🎄

@mjr @jonny

I understand the frustration, but think this is a case of a "least worst" solution?

Being on a centralised social network is simpler because you have no options. If the person running the network does something bad (as we can see now with Musk on Twitter) then you just have to accept it.

The range of options on here means it does get more complicated sometimes, but it also keeps you safe from Musk-type scenarios because you can switch servers or apps if something bad happens.

MJ Ray

@feditips @jonny probably, but still frustrating. Is there a list of servers that pledge to stay up to date? A list of apps that will expose all settings?

Fedi.Tips 🎄

@mjr @jonny

Your server is only one version behind the current one so I'd imagine it will update soon. Maybe your server admin @admin can help?

(The full text search feature is brand new, so it's only available on the latest version.)

For apps it's up to each developer. On Moshidon perhaps @moshidon might have news on adding this setting to the app?

Lucas @Moshidon 🇺🇦

@feditips @mjr @jonny @admin It's already available in the current nightly version, and will be available in the next stable release.

Thank you for liking #Moshidon!

MJ Ray

@feditips @jonny @admin @moshidon sure, that helps me (thanks all you lovely people) but are there no general sources for this info yet, for users less expert than you and less mouthy than me?

Fedi.Tips 🎄

@mjr

I have a website at fedi.tips which is full of guides for beginners.

For this particular issue, there's a guide at fedi.tips/how-do-i-opt-into-or

Voltaire

@jonny is this setting incorporated into onboarding yet? Most people aren’t going to go into their settings and poke around, so the discoverability of this is basically zero

Matt

@2du @jonny This is my stance too, it should be opt-out, or opt-either, where it asks what you want when you sign up and you must pick an option to use Mastodon.

I suspect most people probably expect their posts to be automatically viewable (it is everywhere else!), and those that definitely don't want them to be know where to look.

Voltaire

@mattswift @jonny very good points. While I appreciate the concern for privacy.. this is social media. Posting to the internet isn’t private

Matt

@2du @jonny True, but social media platforms can work as insular/private communities too, so the choice is very important, which Mastodon thankfully provides.

It just needs better sane defaults that are based around how people use and expect social media to work, while the others can fine tune how they want things.

Paul Kuyper

@mattswift @2du @jonny my understanding is that Mastodon does not provide an actual private setting. Instead, things can be set to be much more difficult to find (like setting a message to “mentioned people only”but that is to prevent noise for others. It does not creat me a true private message.

DELETED

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Jean François Kennedy

@jonny I wonder if this would make sense to be enabled by default? Or at least have a better discoverability.

smarter than a waffle

@jonny done. thank you. easy peasy news squeezey.

Barry Goldman

@jonny @futurebird i can't keep track of all the settings, social media sites, lists hastags how to port ppl i follow... i'm tired. i should just find a city instead of social media

David

Bad setting design is rampant. I'd say it's one of the costs of open source development, but profit seeking development has bad setting design because of negligence and greed.

David

Someone on here told me that if any of it is searchable then all of it is even if some people don't want their posts searchable. Imo, mastodon isn't the place for secret communication, but here we are.

Beeks

@jonny sorry, if you want to get the attention of journalists you'll have to go over to Twitter where they're still mostly all at.

CubeOfCheese

@jonny I think that indexing should probably have a setting at the instance level, that way instances can have it default on. For example a journalism instance could have it on by default for new sign ups. People could still toggle it off and on individually, but if you make it a default on for some instances, I think we'd see a lot more usage

Herr Irrtum!

@jonny@neuromatch.social
I assume you talk about Mastodon... Therefore it would have been nice to mention this.
The Fediverse is a wide open space and Mastodon is just a part of it. A way to access it.

Anyway:In
#Misskey go to Settings –> privacy and make sure, "Reject crawler indexing" is set to "off". There you go!

Baloo Uriza

@jonny That said, please also get used to public exposure features as being an opt-in experience outside of the commercial web. This works to your advantage, letting people opt-in reduces the clutter of results when searching, *improving* search.

Brandon Starr

@jonny Thanks for the info! I'm not a journalist but didn't realize that was not on by default. Going to my podcast accounts and updating those, too!

🌻 Defederate Threads 🌻

@jonny Good advice.

Unfortunately, discoverability w #Mastodon servers is so bad that you can click on a users busy profile and it may appear empty "for reasons". This happens a lot.

And there's nothing to suggest new people to follow based on existing activity and follows.

This paradigm hasn't even figured out a decent way to provide URL links to content. I still end up on other M. websites (where I don't reside) when I click on links to toots. How does a news website even cope with that, when they consider adding "share on fedi" icons to their own pages?

@jonny Good advice.

Unfortunately, discoverability w #Mastodon servers is so bad that you can click on a users busy profile and it may appear empty "for reasons". This happens a lot.

And there's nothing to suggest new people to follow based on existing activity and follows.

This paradigm hasn't even figured out a decent way to provide URL links to content. I still end up on other M. websites (where I don't reside) when I click on links to toots. How does a news website even cope with that, when they...

jonny (good kind)

@tasket yeah it does suck that there are more than one website huh.

etym dub

@tasket

re. new people to follow, there is this:

followgraph.vercel.app/

(apologies if you already know that, I add it as much for others reading this thread as yourself :) )

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