Starter packs are coming to Mastodon
Starter packs are coming to Mastodon
@wendinoakland@beige.party @dangillmor We're working on them.
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...dumb question but what's a starter pack? will there be booster packs?
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On Bluesky a user can group a bunch of other users together under some topic and then offer the pack to others to help them get started with who to follow. You can auto-follow everyone in the pack. But afaik you cant choose whether to be included in a pack.
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So... user-curated default subs. Probably less relevant on lemmy because communities aren't as fine-grained as following individual users but I don't think we even have instance-wide default subs, just the all feed.
A "people who joined your communities also joined these communities" mechanic would also be a good idea I think. Run dimensionality reduction over the data once a fortnight and just give people the results, that is, tell them which bubble they're in.
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You can choose to be removed from a pack, but it requires blocking the account that created the pack.
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Yeah i suggeated this a while ago on here for both lemmy and mastodon. Creating user or community groups would be big for new user onboarding.
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TYVM!
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AfaIk, you will be following some accounts in your field of interest by default, so that your timeline isn't empty at the start.
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Thanks!
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Maybe they could also fix the "suggested accounts" feature so that the top recommendation for me isn't an account that posted once 2 years ago.
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I hope they coordinate on this.
We have Mastodon Migration's "Follow Packs": https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/mastodon-follow-pack-directory-nov-20-2024/
Dansup is working on "starter kits" for the fediverse: https://github.com/pixelfed/apska
Now Gagron's team is working on a similar thing.
Stefan Bohucek is imperimenting with a separate version too. We'll end up with multiple implementations of this.
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The 'Follow Packs' are just a web directory. That's totally different.
I have no idea what dansup is working on there, but it seems destined to be another plate he's not going to focus on keeping spinning.
Gargon's team is probably going to end up building something that's off spec and idiosyncratic to Mastodon, basically guaranteeing that there are totally unrelated implementations across the fediverse.
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Mmm. Will users be able to opt out of being selected for inclusion in a starter pack? I see some issues happening over on BS about this.
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On Bluesky, if you block the creator of the pack, it removes you from it. I would be surprised if the folks creating this on Mastodon didn't do the same.
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Hell Yeah
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What Mastodon and any fediware need is a form to choose your instance :
- random general instance btw a mixed of a few middle size instance rotation every now and the
- fully random instance
- a instance rofly matching our liking through a short questionary. Five minutes max to make an account using a unified interface.
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How do starter packs help Mastodon become a better platform?
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They help with discovery for users making it easy to find curated lists of people to follow.
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My reading or the exchange is that Eugen only confirmed they’re working on “updates that would improve onboarding on Mastodon”; not “Starter Packs” specifically.
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I personally prefer hashtags over this. And given how liberally some admins block and defederate other instances I will stick with hashtags in the near future.
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Hashtag is only usable for small contained community. Some instance already too big that hashtag is not work.
Especially multi language instance. Some word or phrase on hashtag can have multiple meaning depending on the language.
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Well hashtags clearly don't work quite as well for discovery, which is why there is demand for starter packs. But what happens if other backends don't implement it? Then people on the other instances, that is not mastodon, doesn't have a way to opt out.
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