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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Jim,
I'm 72...hashtags have not been a part of my life...and yet IThis use for the number sign is a creature of social media. Wikipedia cites Twitter as the place where this usage first flourished. In Groups.io hashtags are only detected in the message Subject, not the message body. I think that's a reasonable accommodation to the different nature of an email message versus a "tweet" or other social media message. Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
J,
I don't think that works. Groups.io will still create a hashtag outOh, right. As seen in Full Featured Digests and the Messages section the hashtag will be pulled out to the end and made into a button shape. I forgot about that. In individual email it just passes through unmangled. My email-centrism trips me up again. Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Just wanted to say that as this hashtag thread rambles on I am learning a lot.? I'm 72...hashtags have not been a part of my life...and yet I see them around. I guess that they are here to stay. Thanks for the lessons. -Jim Coffee- one of the Print Exchanges group's Moderators To post a message email to?[email protected] On 17 April 2017 at 07:39, J_Catlady <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote: On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 02:00 am, Shal Farley wrote:if you're not planning to use them for anything particular then it doesn't much matter that the members may incidentally create useless ones while using the number sign for a different purpose. |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Dano,
Because of the group history and demographic, I am concerned thatI think you may be right, asking those members to add well-chosen hashtags to their message Subjects would likely slow down their participation. I know when posting in my PTA group it takes me some extra effort to review the Hashtag page and make sure I've added the "right" hashtags for a given message. Ditto starting a topic in beta@, when I remember to do so. Whether that extra effort would prove worthwhile to your group members is likely something that varies widely among groups. In this case, simple is better.Fortunately, if some self-motivated members choose to use hashtags in their message subjects, that by itself doesn't really affect other members much - unless those other members get the impression that they must or ought to be doing likewise. Which is apparently the problem J had. As moderator you'd have to set an appropriate (to your group) tone when answering any questions that come up about hashtag usage. In a friendly, conversational group a casual "use them if you like them, otherwise forget about it" attitude may help avoid giving members any anxiety about them. And, I would add, we've seen a significant increase in traffic sinceCongratulations! Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Dano,
I have selected "Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags".That is a concern of mine as well. Our friend the octothorp has many other names and uses. Which is one reason to take a laissaiz faire approach to the hashtags - if you're not planning to use them for anything particular then it doesn't much matter that the members may incidentally create useless ones while using the number sign for a different purpose. It appears that technology is eliminating a written character that weSadly, that's usually the case where a marker is needed to alter the meaning of what follows. Fortunately this marker is "mostly harmless" in the sense that most non-hashtag uses will not affect the way the message posts. It would be a (hopefully) rare case that a member accidentally combines the number sign with a word that a moderator has designated as a hashtag with special features. I'm trying to avoid suggesting that there be a new group setting which turns off hashtag processing altogether. That would be another way to allow the number sign to appear freely in message subjects. But it is a way that cuts off the possibility of mixed usage (which a human can distinguish by context). An alternate approach is to have a modifying choice to the "Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags" setting: whether the attempt causes the message to be rejected (the default, as it is now), moderated, or accepted. And in either of the latter two cases no entry is created in the hashtag list for the member's incidental use of the number sign. That again leaves it to humans to understand by context (or explanation) why that usage did not create a hashtag. Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Shal Farley wrote:
. . . . . . . . . . However, since I've opined that hashtags may not be useful in all groups, I'll ask about the con side of the question. What motivates you to prevent the occurrence of hashtags in your group's message Subjects? Or is that even what you're trying to do? ___________________________ I have a group that has operated fairly well for almost 19 years. The members are typically older and the focus is historically based. The reality is, a lot of members may fade away with time and our membership may not be sustained at the level it is now. I have received a lot of positive feedback from group members since the transfer indicating they like the cleaner, more understandable layout. Limiting the group to plain text was a conscious decision knowing that some members don't see as well as they used to, so plain text allowed their systems to use their own preferred settings. Because of the group history and demographic, I am concerned that hashtags would just add a level of complexity and confusion that would simply serve to slow down participation. These guys can generally use search and that seems to solve most of the need. One big change we did make was to allow attachments, and we're still struggling with that change. A significant portion of my users are what one might call 'not technically sophisticated'. I had one member send an attachment of two images with a total size of 17 Mb, because he had no concept of file size. Needless to say, I'm working at educating a certain portion of the group on technical issues. In this case, simple is better. And, I would add, we've seen a significant increase in traffic since the transfer to groups,io. Dano |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Why not edit the message and you can them change the hashtag in the description. On Sun, Apr 16, 2017 at 9:28 PM, J_Catlady <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
Yes, what you have written is more accurate. I have selected "Only Moderators Can Create Hashtags". The setting means that posts can be tagged only with existing hashtags, but there have not been any hashtags used *as hashtags*. I should note that there were some existing messages that were to be transferred that had a pound symbol in the title and caused problems with the transfer. At this time, moderators are not to add hashtags.
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Unfortunately for those of us who remember farther back than computers, what this does is effectively disallow the use of a pound symbol in a title. In my groups this may be a minor annoyance, and I would like to be able to simply turn them off, but looking to the future that would limit further use. It appears that technology is eliminating a written character that we used, instead of finding a solution that didn't limit what a poster might wish to write. I wonder if the future will bring the limitation of other characters. Dano On Sun, Apr 16, 2017 at 04:22 pm, D R Stinson wrote:I've left them turned off.What do you mean? How can you turn them off? I've already set |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
J wrote:
I've already set mine to only allow moderators to create them.Although J prompted me to ask, the questions that follow are open to anyone who wishes to eliminate or restrict the use of hashtags in their group(s). And of course, anyone wishing to weigh in with other perspectives is invited to do so as well. I've provided the pro-active hashtag example of my PTA group, and implicitly a laissez-faire example in GMF (where I've made no attempt to control their use). However, since I've opined that hashtags may not be useful in all groups, I'll ask about the con side of the question. What motivates you to prevent the occurrence of hashtags in your group's message Subjects? Or is that even what you're trying to do? Here are some related rhetorical questions to see if they help prompt any thoughts: Is it something about how they appear in the Subject line, in email or in the Messages section on-site? Is it the Hashtags page itself? Are you concerned that members who find it will be confused by it? Or are you trying to avoid feeling compelled to spend effort on keeping it tidy? Is it the appearance of the #Hashtags button in the left column of your group? Would you turn that off if you could? Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
J - Good question. Like Shal, I couldn't figure a need for them in my groups so I've left them turned off. I was concerned that it would just add confusion for the group members, since they've not used them previously. As you noted, if the search works well, is it necessary for most groups?
Dano |
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Re: removing a hashtag from a thread title
J's reply to Duane moved here: Shal |
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Re: removing a hashtag from a thread title
J,
I want to remove an erroneous hashtag from someone's thread but don'tIf you're talking about using "Edit Topic" item from the More menu on a message in the archive, then I think you can edit the Subject freely and it will affect the whole topic (thread) without splitting it. Now if you're asking about the effect that has on subsequent replies to messages already posted, I'm not sure. I'm sure Mark said something in beta@ about having to keep the old subject(s) so that future replies would still match the thread, but I don't recall if he did it. Given that he already keeps old copies of message bodies when they're edited it doesn't seem too big a stretch to do the same with Subject lines. But even if not, I thought at one point it was known that hashtags were excluded from the Subject match for threading purposes. But it has been a long time. Either way this is something that you could learn in a test group before making the change in a "live" group. Shal |
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Re: Why use hashtags in a group?
#hashtags
J,
I'm thinking of doing away with hashtags altogether in my group.Hashtags may not be useful in every type of group. For example, I haven't been encouraging their use here in GMF because I haven't really worked out how to get value from them. Hypothetically I can think of categories that might be useful, but I just haven't taken action. What is their advantage if search is working fine?Even if search is working fine, having them gives you a set of uniform search targets. For example in my PTA groups I use the hashtag page as a kind of index to several broad topics. #asb - Associated Student Body events/announcements #award - Awards given by the PTA to students/teachers/community #donations - Requests for PTA or school activities #events - generic #fundraiser - for PTA or affiliated groups (clubs) #meeting - Notice and agenda for PTA unit meetings #membership - PTA membership drives #minutes - of PTA meetings #phone - Weekly announcements (from the school) #principal - Special messages from the school principal #registration - School Registration #scholarship - Given by the PTA #volunteer - Requests for PTA or school activities Usually when I want to know something I'll have an idea which of those categories it will have been in. So starting the search in an appropriate hashtag makes sense, and often no further search is needed: the item will be obvious in the list for that hashtag. I implicitly assume that other members find them useful that way, but in fact I'm pretty certain that the number of times any member (other than the co-owners and I) reads the site pages at all is a number near zero. When I acquire the round tuit to move my alumni groups over from Yahoo I expect I'll do something similar. Or as an alert within a thread title as to what a thread is about?That too. Particularly since I think most of the PTA membership is email-only. Maybe the hashtags help them search within their email folders, assuming they keep any of our messages. Shal |
Shal Farley
Jim Coffee
D R Stinson
DMR Quebec