Request: Toot topics/categories

[SpencerDub]

The Collections feature over on Google+ allows users to categorize their posts by topic and set the privacy level of certain topics. Other users can subscribe to those individual topics. It's an innovative approach to sharing that I wish was more common in social networks.

I think this would be neat to incorporate into Mastodon. Say Alice often posts about cats, dogs, fish, and national politics, but I only follow her for her cat content. She could put her cat toots in a Cats category, and I could subscribe to Alice#Cats without getting any of her other stuff. On the other hand, if I just wanted to see everything Alice posted, I could follow her as normal. For a really cool twist, I could even selectively mute some (but not all) of Alice's categories.

I'm new to Mastodon, but I've already noticed that the community tends to dislike political content that's not CW'd. This would provide users more control over their feeds without relying on CW conventions: I throw my political toots into a Politics category, and my followers who aren't interested can simply mute it or subscribe to other categories.

I expect this would be a big change, but I really think it'd add some unique and valuable functionality. What's more, it would be a feature quite unlike anything on Twitter, which would help Mastodon continue to set itself apart.

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• [x] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[sandhawke]

I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, and wanting it intensely. I'm finding Mastodon nearly unusable without it -- I have lots of things I want to post about, but I'd be seriously oversharing if I did.

[akuckartz]

:+1:

[MirceaKitsune]

I'm inclined to think that adding a special categories feature would overly complicate the system. Nobody wants to have to remember to click a button on each post and select a category from a drop-down list: It would quickly become an annoyance and many will often forget to use it.

This system should definitely rely on tags. I'm more in favor of #7988 for this purpose: Be able to follow some users only for posts containing given tags rather than everything.

Beyond that I'm up for an interface feature to either group or colorize posts based on category.

[trwnh]

I think there's still value in having separate post collections because hashtags are searchable, while plain text is not. Also, hashtags use up the character count, while adding a post to a collection would be metadata.

[MirceaKitsune]

But Mastodon has a high character limit, and hashtags can often be embedded in sentences rather than added separately at the bottom. The main issue is that fewer users may want to keep track of a categories field for every post they make, as most want to write something then just click 'Toot' without worrying about other things. Also it may be hard for some to decide by which criteria to categorize their posts... eventually they end up with something similar to tags.

Perhaps groups might be an alternate idea? Also Mastodon has a system that allows users to make their own lists... maybe that can also be upgraded to better include this functionality?

[Freeplayg]

I would love to see something like this be added! There's just some things that I only follow one person for. For example: if I only want to see someone's art in my timeline, I would just follow the art category they've created.

When clicking the follow button, there should be a 'Follow All Categories' checkbox checked by default, then people can select other categories if they want to.

There should also be a 'General' category by default, which would be the default category selected when writing a post (Changeable in settings maybe?).

Plus, this would make up for the lack of broken algorithms found on other platforms

[russgithubvirtualbiz]

There should be a global master list of tags to search from. This list should be a graph database. like "Entertainment-music-events"; music-performer-events; music-composer-works; Or Natural Resources,: renewable, river, location A location can have lots of rivers. A river can be in many locations. Anything can be a tag and it can point to or be reference by any other tag.
Any user should be able to add a tag (vertice) or make edges (point to or reference a tag) A method to cull the database by user votes or use would be nice. Tags in the database can have the same name but different context. It is the context of the tag that is important (its place in the graph) I guess we can have two different types of tags. Those with context and the kind we have now that are stand alone. If a tag has many edges the user can highlight the more relevant path or paths. The top levels of the most used paths would be good paths to follow, search, browse. I think browsing contextual tags for subjects or users would be very educational and fun.

[MagsMagnoli]

This would be a game-changer I have wildly different interests that create the need for separate acconts under the current social model. Two logins, two sets of followers, etc It would be amazing to have one account that outlines the major topics of discussion and allows users to freely follow or unfollow independently This would greatly improve discoverability across interests as well

[loxK]

The main issue is that fewer users may want to keep track of a categories field for every post they make, as most want to write something then just click 'Toot' without worrying about other things.

Such toots would just be uncategorized as they are now. Categories wouldn't have to be mandatory.

[allo-]

I'm copying over my ideas regarding this, now that the other issue is closed as duplicate (and this one seems to be matching the ideas).

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Pitch

Currently, toots can be filtered by hashtags, which also make them more visible, and using hashtags is entirely optional.

Mastodon should add categories, which can and possibly must be selected (including an "other" or "general" category). Examples for these categories would be:

• Art
• Photography
• Politics
• Conversation
• Projects
• Activism
• Comics
• (...)
• Other

By encouraging users to actually select a category via a dropdown, many more toots would have a category on which other users can filter. Other than hashtags, the category would not lead to the toot being included in more searches (use an additional hashtag for this), but they could be muted by category and filtered by category (e.g., by pinning a "Politics" (Categories: Politics, Activism, ...) column and a "Beautiful things" (Categories: Art, Photography, ...) column).

The list should be mostly fixed, and if custom categories are allowed they should be discouraged, e.g., by making it one click to select "Politics", but more clicks to create a new category, e.g., Other Category -> Add Category -> "Some Category only I am using". Custom categories would be more an option to find out which categories are missing from the list. For more dynamic tagging there are still hashtags and for more dynamic warnings there is still the CW function.

Motivation

People seem to use hashtags rarely and inconsistently, making it difficult to filter on them.

The use of spoiler tags CWs either hides everything with a CW or shows everything depending on the user setting to always show content with a CW, but does not allow to only hide posts with certain content.

Using a dropdown list of categories is both fast to use when writing a toot and easy to filter on, as the list of categories is much smaller than the list of hashtags that one has to filter to achieve the same result. It can also be expected that people are more willing / less forgetful to use categories than always adding a hashtag. It also makes categories discoverable, so people notice "Oh, there are people who like me to tag that a post is about sports" who would not have thought about tagging sport posts when there was only a text field.

[shaedrich]

I think this would be neat to incorporate into Mastodon. Say Alice often posts about cats, dogs, fish, and national politics, but I only follow her for her cat content.

One benefit of "user categories" might be that they are, other than a hashtag, "local" to the user. Meaning, if you follow the hashtag #Cats you get Alice's cat posts as well as Bob's cat posts, just as you get all of Alice's posts when you follow her, not just those, she makes about cats. The category #Cats@alice@mastodon.example (https://mastodon.example/@alice/tagged/Cats) would combine this into "show me everything, Alice writes about cats on my timeline".

[fernandoaestrella]

I have a similar idea that could be applied if this feature was created, but considers a bit more directly why we use social media and how it could be used.

The idea is:

Social media can be used very efficiently if we are conscious that everything we do is in pursuit of happiness. Every post is implicitly a proposed solution to the question: "what should I do to be happy?"

If we are explicit about

which problem we were trying to solve, which solution we tried to solve that problem, and how effectively did that problem solve that solution (e.g. with a 0-5 rating) then

a search can aid us in finding better solutions to problems we have. Also, when others see our post, they can suggest better solutions to our problems. We could also keep track of if we are using better solutions when solving recurring problems. For example, I could post: "I was looking for friends, I tried going to a local bar, i rate this 3/5. The people were warm but we didn't share interests so we weren't able to develop deeper friendships" This can be used in any social media with a feed of posts. We can definitely beautify it. No need to be so robotic heheh.

So, in the context of this feature, the problem and the solution can be categories, or, better yet, problems are a set of categories and solutions are another set of categories, so you could search each or both if needed.