this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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For example, !lemmy starts with an !, but why not start with a # symbol?

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A hashtag for community seems much better than an exclamation mark.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But you didn't say why Lemmy does not use hashtags for communities.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I explained that hashtags use the pound symbol already, and usernames use the @ symbol. Communities needed their own symbol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, but how does a hashtag work? Can you give an example of a hashtagged word where Lemmy uses a hashtag?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

#hashtags don’t automatically work on Lemmy, but if I cross post this comment to another federated service (mastodon etc.) the hashtags should work there. #lemmy @knova@[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, we have:

  • # for tagging something
  • @ for usernames
  • ! for communities

But does a question mark have any purpose here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Not that I’m aware.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

probably because a hashtag is already a thing that means something else in other apps. making hashtag mean a community here would give it 2 meaning depending on the app and that's not user friendly cause people will make mistakes if they move between apps.

therefore a new character was chosen for communities to avoid such confusion