Notices by Fedi.Tips 🎄 (feditips@mstdn.social), page 14

@SmartmanApps

I don't know of any, sorry.

@SmartmanApps

It's not really a thing as far as I know?

The "sign in with Mastodon" on Pixelfed basically just copies over some of your settings, but still creates a new Pixelfed account.

@annamariaeriksson @pfefferle

Was also going to suggest the support forum at:

https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/activitypub/

...but I see you've already posted there! 😁

@annamariaeriksson

Hmm, I'm not sure how to help, think this is definitely a question for @pfefferle !

@loneconspirator

By the way, an alternative approach if you just want non-interactive feeds to subscribe to accounts via RSS. Any Mastodon account has an RSS feed which is its normal account profile URL with .rss added to the end.

PeerTube has an RSS subscription option if you click the arrow on an account's "subscribe" button.

Pixelfed supports newsfeeds (but I think they use atom?).

GoToSocial includes RSS support but each user has to manually opt in to activate their feed.

@loneconspirator

Ah okay! If all you want to do is *show* the old posts, you can open the original page, and there's a link on blank profiles to do this which prompts people to click on it.

But if people can see old posts they may want to interact with them, and wonder why they can't, so that ends up confusing too.

Ideal would be some way to get at least some unpinned posts automatically backfilled the way pinned posts already are.

@loneconspirator

I'm not sure, I'm not a developer, but there has been a lot of discussion of what to do on the backfilling thread at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/34

@Corb_The_Lesser

The developers are aware this is a hindrance, it's just a question of what to do about it.

I've explored some of the possible solutions in the article, such as backfilling where the server automatically fetches some recent posts for profiles you follow (or possibly look at?).

Backfilling is by far the most requested feature on Mastodon's github site, but there are some complications to deal with which are explored in a long thread which I've linked to from the article.

@yourautisticlife

"If you want to do more with that server, then, yes, you may need to have an account there."

Yeah, that's all I meant by "it's more difficult to interact with".

When I've told new people about original pages, they've seen buttons and icons there and often tried to interact with it because they think Mastodon is all one site. Then they get puzzled why they keep being asked to log in again and again on different servers' websites.

@deilann @Npars01

Yeah, that's the "original page" feature which is mentioned in the article 👍

@Corb_The_Lesser

I've tried to explain the situation and why this happens in the article. TL:DR: There are good reasons why this happens, because the current alternatives are worse.

This isn't a deliberate choice by the designers, this is a consequence of building a social network that cannot be taken over by people like Musk.

There are features that mitigate this problem though, such as pinning posts, and other features on the way.

@Jord_Skole

Hopefully one upcoming feature on the Mastodon roadmap ("Explicit controls to fetch more data from origin server") should solve a lot of problems. I'm guessing it will let people update a profile by clicking a button on it, in a similar process to original pages but without having to open a separate website.

@yourautisticlife

I've moved the original pages section higher up the page so people see it immediately after the description of the problem.

Is that better?

@nefoun_qu_jw

" I don't think hundreds or thousands of pinned posts are appropriate use of pin function"

You can only pin 5 posts per account?

The main advantage is it prevents the profile ever being blank to anyone. Blankness is much scarier than a profile with at least some posts?

p.s. As mentioned in the article, there's a very easy way to prevent your own profile *ever* looking blank to anyone!

Pin posts on your profile, and these will always show up no matter what server other people are on. You can pin up to 5 posts on a profile. Here's how to do it:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-pin-my-posts-on-my-mastodon-profile/

@yourautisticlife

If you read the article I recommend opening original pages.

I also recommend people pin posts on their profiles, as these are always visible and prevent the profile ever looking blank.

@violetmadder

Yeah, hopefully the article makes things clearer.

Also, as mentioned in the article, people can prevent their profiles ever looking blank if they pin posts, so I try to encourage this too:

https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-pin-my-posts-on-my-mastodon-profile/

@futurebird

It can be important for large accounts to pay attention to criticism (as long as it's not actual abuse/prejudice).

Just had a discussion the other day with someone who was pissed off at me. When we chatted a bit further, it turned out the settings I had on my website were preventing their accessibility features working on their browser.

So, if I'd filtered them out based on their initial post, I'd have missed out on really important info and totally valid criticism.

@sollat

Yes, indeed. There is a section about this in the article 👍

@Jord_Skole

You see all the comments your server has noticed.

I've tried to go through why this happens in the article linked to in the original post, and at https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/

The alternative to this system would be centralisation, but centralised services tend to end up being sold to Musk etc, invade privacy etc etc.

The idea of this place is to provide community-owned alternatves that can't be sold, don't trap you on one server, and don't invade privacy.