I've been spending some time lately on a private XMPP Server with a group of friends, most of whom have their own diverse podcasts. One of the members was lamenting that they often got annoyed at hashtags or, more precisely, how people used hashtags. She explained that a group she runs often has issues with people arguing over missed posts on social media due to misuse of hashtags. As a result, she is regularly deluged with complaints, all of which was not ultimately her fault. In response, I said that the problem is that there is always an individual (Originally, I used a stronger word than that) who wants to control a 'thing' by effectively doing their own thing. What I mean by that is, for example, hashtag COVID should have been enough for everybody, but then someone hijacked that with hashtag COVID19, but then another individual hijacked the hijacked thread and used hashtag COVID_19. As another example, I explained how I was asked to design and implement a company-wide email signature template for everyone, including the Directors, a few years ago. A few months later, I discovered three staff members had edited their templates to use fonts they preferred and styles they preferred. So much for corporate identity? I'm all for individualism; hell, I've been involved with FOSS for coming up to 25 years, and that's all about "Freedom of Choice", but I have to say that there are numerous occasions where life would be much simpler if people didn't have a choice.
Part of the problem is that, in fact, a lot of people don't understand hashtags, they think they do, but they don't. To have any value in searching for or following the content, strict adherence to a designated hashtag is needed. They're like a folder or a shoebox. Everything you put in hashtag crypto, for example, will be in the crypto shoebox, so it follows if you tag your post hashtag cryptocurrency, they will be in their own shoebox and not the hashtag crypto shoebox. Now what a lot of people do is the "Hedging their bets" style of tagging, so they'll put thirty-seven hashtags on their post in an attempt to cover all the bases. Think of it as the "Sling enough mud at the wall; Eventually, some of it will stick" mentality when in fact, as we've seen, there's no need if they use the right tag instead of trying to wrestle the thread away from the original author by supplementing their own hashtag version.
My actual name is Pete
Find out Here why I have the username dick_turpin.
Find me on Social Media
 |
https://mastodon.org.uk/@dick_turpin |
 |
https://castlecannon.house/profile/srednivashtar |
|
https://twitter.com/dick_turpin |
 |
https://www.facebook.com/peter.cannon3 |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
License explained: Examples
Create your license: Choose
Podcaster. FOSS, Linux & Creative Commons Advocate.
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
So you're against choice?
They can be a pain. I use them on Hive, but some are just to get tokens. I don't know how much people use them to find content. Maybe we need better tools to manage them. Some dapps will suggest tags to use. For my whisky community some will prefer to use whiskey.
On things like Twitter #Hive could be ambiguous as it's such a generic word, but someone would have to decree what else we should use.
While I winced at "someone would have to decree....." I'd be happy to abide by the witnesses offering say "A list of acceptable Hashtags" the trouble is, I guarantee there will be elements which will do exactly what I'm talking about in this post. 🤣
Well the community manages to agree on some things, but with hashtags there is always potential for abuse.
I know. It's so difficult to reconcile my fervent belief in Freedom with the knowledge that large swathes of the global population shouldn't be allowed to touch anything. 😉
Congratulations @dickturpin! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 74000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP