Musings by @rg

A place to jot down ideas, notes, pointers.

[ originally posted as a series of un-edited Toots at the QOTO.org mastodon instance ]

Folks, good morning, hope you all are well. A personal request of mine.

Please consider trying to reduce the amount of General posting, as we have so many short messages with momentary thoughts that more serious posts are getting buried.

A couple of things to suggest, which I think could help:

a. If you post a topic, and follow up with a reply to it soon, talking to yourself with an update, etc.

You can greatly help reduce clutter in the Local timeline (and all the federated ones) if you set the privacy level of the Second and further messages as 'Unlisted'.

They WILL go out, and anyone interested in the first post will see the following replies. These replies will NOT appear in the Local, Home (for your Followers) or Federated feeds.

Keeping it simple – – First post, you can use the Globe icon, Public setting.

Replies to follow – – Use Unlisted, the one with the Open Padlock icon. See illustration below.

(continues on next message)

b. If you have friends in other servers and simply wish to chit chat with them – mostly, not the local users.

This can be done without clutter, if you select 'Unlisted' , the open padlock icon too.

Insert their @ usernames, and they WILL get notified and respond to you, all without cluttering Public timelines.

People who Follow you WILL see Unlisted messages — they are NOT Private !! 😮

c. Need Privacy?

Use the Direct Message privacy level, and it's like an email – from you to the people included in the message ONLY.

Will not show in any followers feeds, or on your personal profile!

(continues!)

d. About messages that are kind of private, but you don't want them in your Profile Toots List?

You can get that result, some privacy and NOT showing in your profile to a default or anonymous user – – by using the * Followers Only * (closed, locked padlock icon!).

  • Your Followers will see the message in their Home feeds.

  • They WILL get a notification if their usernames are included.

  • They WILL ALSO be able to see those messages later, if visiting your profile.

(continues)

Thank you for being a valued user at QOTO.

At this Moment, I am simply a very active user, although I have been nominated for a Staff Moderator position in our December election as announced here.

The opinion expressed here are my own, and might differ from the instance administration.

But I think we NEED some clarification as explained above, or we risk losing valuable members who come here for what QOTO is UNIQUE for.

The S T E M community, Science, Engineering, Tech and Math interested people.

Your comments are welcome, thank you for your attention and considering these suggestions.

You can reply either here or via Direct Message to me if you prefer.

Enjoy your stay, friends. Let's make this place better and nicer everyday.

RG signing out. 😉 @design_RG@Qoto.org

A guide written by Mastodon.art administrator.

  • This thread contains Suggestions and Guidelines for new Mastodon users, and is copied from the series of Toots posted by @curator@mastodon.art on August 9, 2019.

  • Original thread is located here

  • All Toot posts are being copied here for easier reading and access by any interested parties. With a big thank you to Rheal, the operator there and author of the posts.

I'm going to start a thread of quick #MastoTips for new users. Apologies for any hiccoughs, these toots aren't planned, so they may seem a little haphazard. :da_sweat:

First of all: Welcome to Mastodon! If you're coming from Twitter you'll find some things very similar. Mastodon is a microblogging platform for sharing thoughts, photos, music, video, etc.

Posts on Mastodon are affectionately called “toots”. You can laugh, it's OK. We found it funny too when we first joined.

The biggest difference between Mastodon and Twitter is that Mastodon is decentralized, and federated. This means that no one person or company owns Mastodon; the larger community (called the “Fediverse”) is made up of hundreds of smaller servers called “instances” which speak (federate) with each other. That means if you're on Mastodon.ART you can still follow users on Mastodon.Social, and so on! You don't have to be on the same instance as your friends to be able to interact with them.

When you open Mastodon you have the option of viewing different timelines. The main three are: Home, Local, and Federated.

Home: This is where you see the toots of people you follow. It works just like your old feed from Twitter did; except you see just their toots, not their faves, no sponsored posts, or random posts Mastodon will think you'll like. It'll just show you what you want to see: the posts of the folks you follow, in chronological order.

Local: This timeline shows you all the public toots of your local timeline. If you're on •ART that means you'll see all the public toots of all the other users of Mastodon.ART. Useful to get to know new people!

Federated: This timeline shows you a whole whack of public posts from instances that are connect to yours. They could be from anywhere, and anyone! This timeline often moves very fast, and shows you toots from many different communities.

Make sure you take a look at your Preferences page; that's the cog icon. You can set up your profile page there, and customize your Mastodon experience to your liking. Try out some of the interface settings, see how they work!

Try out the advanced interface; you can have many timelines open at the same time showing you different feeds. You can also make timelines that follow specific hashtags; you could have a feed just for viewing art tags! Find a way to make it work for you.

Speaking of hashtags: Mastodon's search function doesn't search any and all words in a post, it only searches for public hashtags. So if you want folks to be able to search and find your toots, make sure to use hashtags! #MastoArt and #CreativeToots are popular ones, as are #Art, #FanArt, #CommissionMe, etc.

Use the search bar to see how healthy a tag is to see if it's one that will reach the most people.

When you make a toot you have a variety of options. You can add media (images, video, audio) and polls, just like on Twitter. [ editor note: this can be done via the paperclip icon, or simply clicking inside the toot editor window, and selecting Paste – Control-V for Windows users.]

Clicking the Globe icon will allow you to change the privacy level of your toot. This determines who will see it, and what timelines it'll show up on. Only public posts will be visible to hashtag searches and on federated/local timelines.

The CW icon stands for “Content Warning” . CWing is a HUGE part of the Mastodon experience! More in the next post…

A Content Warning hides the body/media of your toot under a “read more” link. You have the option of adding a descriptive line of text to indicate what's below the “cut”.

CWs are used in many ways: To indicate sensitive content (nudity, negative discussions, potential triggers, etc.), to prevent spoilers, to hide the punchline of a joke, and many more.

CWs are not censors; they're allowing people to opt-in to viewing your content, which goes a long way to making Mastodon a fun and safe place.

When you've added an image to your post you have a few more options.

The most visible is the option to “Mark Media As Sensitive” ; this will hide your image under an overlay, just like a CW. This won't hide your text, but it will allow people to opt-in to viewing an image for whatever reason. (We require this on •ART for nudity, blood/gore, etc. See our CoC Code of Conduct for more on what we allow.

If you mouse-over the thumbnail of your image you'll see more options: “Delete” (self-explanatory!) and “Crop”.

Crop doesn't actually alter your image; it just changes where the focus of the thumbnail is when viewed on the timeline. That way you can choose to have it focus on the face rather than on the, um… naughty bits.

You also have the option of adding an image description. Please do this if you can! It goes a long way to making Mastodon more accessible for folks with screen readers.

All right, that's most of what you need to know to get started… but there's still more!

You can make lists of specific users you follow to make customized timelines.

You can boost/retoot (aka. retweet) people, but you can't quote-retoot them; this is by design. Not allowing quote-retoots cuts down on the amount of “dunking” and harassment.

If you see something upsetting or that violates the rules of your instance, please Report it! Your mods need your help to find that stuff and deal with it.

If you ever need help or have any questions, please feel free to contact me, @Curater, or any of your mods: @EmergencyBattle, @ChrisTalleras, @ScribbleAddict, @adamk678

We work hard to make this place as safe and supportive as possible, and we'd be happy to help you.

Be sure to read through our CoC Code of Conduct and ToS Terms of Service to make sure you're following our rules.

Thank you for being here. We're looking forward to seeing you around the Fediverse!

If anyone else has any good #MastoTips that I've missed, feel free to post about them using that hashtag, and/or respond to this thread. I'll boost them for our new users!

Two more #MastoTips:

Ever make a post, then notice immediately that there's a typo in it, or you forgot to CW something, or or or…? That's what the “Delete & Redraft” function is for!

Click on the menu link in the toot (it looks like an elipses: “…”) and select “Delete & Redraft” to edit it in the toot compose box. This deletes the toot so you'll lose any favs/boosts, but if you act quick enough it's an easy way to fix mistakes!

Also, if you click the cry-laughing emoji in the toot compose box ...you'll see one of my favourite features: Custom Emoji!!

We have a fine selection of DeviantART Emoticons for those of you who feel nostalgic:

Plus lots of pride heart emojis by our very own @katwylder@mastodon.art

I'm still fine-tuning the rules for adding new ones, but if you see one around the Fediverse/wider internet you like let me know, and I'll check it out and see what I think.

This Blog version created by RG. @design_RG@Qoto.org

[ A copy of post previously made in the QOTO Discourse Forum area. ]

QOTO Moderator Nomination Process – Notes

This month we have a process for nominating candidates for Moderator position here at the Mastodon and Discourse Forum instances at QOTO.org. It is an important one, and I would like to post a few notes and thoughts about it.

  1. First of all, it's surprising how open and transparent the process of Staff selection is here; In most cases, these discussions are held In Camera, by existing site staff (moderators and administrators), sometimes subject to a vote between them, sometimes with Admins having the final decision, after accepting input.

    Here, it's done in the public Feed, the posts are also federated with other instances. And the nomination process is open to participation by any current user in QOTO. (an election should ensue, if more than one person is nominated; otherwise, it's considered hors-concours, and the nominated person gets the job)

  2. Nomination is currently done via a post in the QOTO Discourse forum (a less known and used feature of the community), you will need to register an account there as it's different software that Mastodon running here.

    As an alternative, you could post a Mastodon post, and declare your support for any user here you see as a good candidate, include the person via their @ tag name, and include @freemo, our system admin so he won't miss it.

  3. Who can be nominated? the site rules expects a user to have been registered and active in the instance for at least one month. A good candidate would be someone who has shown balance and tact in their posts, ideally also being helpful and building community spirit.

    There is currently a thread open for nominations here.

  4. What makes a good Moderator? Ideally a stable and pondered person, capable of communicating clearly and actively present in the community.

    The job of a Moderator is, in my personal view, more than simply keeping an eye out for unacceptable behaviour or content. But any Staff member in a site should be interested in it and a community builder him/herself.

  5. Previous experience, is it required, mandatory or what? It certainly would be helpful, and make the person's job easier, if they have experience in other communities, by producing content, helping other users, assisting site Staff.

    All of those can be characteristics of a valuable member, and sometimes they are recognized with a “Contributor” tag and status in the system, even if they are not in the moderation team itself yet. They might progress to that level in the future, or might prefer to stay in their current role.

  6. What kind of experience could be valuable? Someone with Forum, or Facebook User Group moderation experience, for example. Or people who have worked in leadership roles in team projects.

    People with varied knowledge and backgrounds related to the instance's theme of STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) are ideal, as this is the focus and pretty unique in the Fediverse.

  7. This is interesting. I might like to help or be part of it in the future. What should I do?

    QOTO is a work in progress, there has been a big influx of new users (more than 1,000, or 33% of the existing user base in the past month or so), and this growth is likely to continue.

    We enjoy some great things here. Professionally hosted site (at OVH, one of the largest European Hosting providers), full daily backups, an administrator that is very present and open to suggestions and discussions. There's a lot of positives, and we can help in many ways.

Any user can contribute to the site, through their posts and added content, thru their interaction with others. I find the size of the community ideal, we don't have a huge crowd or overwhelming numbers of new posts.

We all can help:

  • say hello to a new user, when they post that first toot. I remember it, mine was just a month ago, this mastodon thing totally new to me. And I also remember receiving a welcome message from the administrator, which is not something you see in many larger places.

  • keep an eye out for unwanted posts (for example, as per site rules, porn, open advertising, any spamming, etc). Use the Report button at the bottom of any such post, and send in a report to Staff. This will result in that post being checked and removed asap if in fact it's improper.

  • respond to other user threads, even a small comment is encouraging. It's sad to see someone put the effort to create a nice post, well written, with additional info link(s), maybe image(s) —– and see that post sit, ignored. It's disheartening but sadly common.

  • make the place feel like a collegial, friendly place to be, which we enjoy spending our time in.

To finalize, all of these points above are my personal opinions, I believe they align with the QOTO mission statement and site policies.

I have been a moderator in various sites in the past, mostly Forums, starting the process as an interested user and acting the ways I suggested above, being recognized as a valued Contributor, and eventually being invited into Staff positions.

I have time and enjoy my activity in the Fediverse, have volunteered for the position now open in the December 2019 Moderator Nominations and would be grateful for your support if you feel I might be a good Staff member here.

The Discourse Forum thread for Nominations is here .

...or you can consider suggesting any names here or via Direct Message to our Administrator, Dr Freeman, @freemo@qoto.org

Thank you for reading this, please feel free to comment in this thread, your input is important.

RG. @design_RG@Qoto.org

Review

“Read this book. You’ll find plenty about John and all the other sky-high crackpots who were in the field with him and you may even get (as I did) a glimpse of the heroic excitement that seemed to make it reasonable to cuddle with death every waking moment—to say nothing of learning a heck of a lot about the way in which the business of science is really conducted.”

(Issac Asimov)

Product details

  • Hardcover: 214 pages
  • Publisher: Rutgers University Press (1972)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0813507251
  • ISBN-13: 978-0813507255

From a detailed review by user Coyote at Amazon.com:

A Fantastic Review of the History of Rocket Propellant Chemistry December 17, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

This book is just delightful!

It covers the history of rocket propellant research from the late 1800s to about 1980 through the eyes of a propellant chemist. The writing is engaging and humorous.

For those interested in the specifics of propellant chemistry, this book is a fantastic starter. Note that this is a history, not a lab manual. The author spends plenty of time talking about why a particular chemical works and why others don't. Chemical handling problems are discussed along with spine-tingling accounts of accidents. There were a few fairly tedious sections where the specifics of a particular family of propellants were explored but these sections are easily skipped without serious impact on the following text.

Readers are strongly encouraged not to try this at home because everything in this book is designed to go bang in a very big way. There is more than enough information provided in this book to get started with making liquid propellants. However, even experienced chemists accustomed to working in this field are hurt or killed. DO NOT TRY AT HOME. “

Amazon has other good reviews at their Kindle eBook edition page.

The Science Madness Library has a free PDF file here.

Some images – Click on Images for Larger versions – from page 2:

...and the same site, after a less successful test, on page 3:

Incidentally, we were talking about this book on a QOTO mastodon thread here, and the question of “What is a Mach Diamond?” came up, naturally. (seen in the caption on the first photo above)

Wikipedia has an excellent page for the curious minds.

Enjoy, the author has a good sense of humour besides extensive scientific and historical knowledge on the subject.

Thank you for reading this, please feel free to comment about this post, your input is important. This page created entirely in MarkDown language.

RG. @design_RG@Qoto.org

Not yet familiar with this, but it's clean and no distractions around. What can it do? Images are needed.

Don't see a control to insert one, and copypasta doesn't do it either. Found it — via HTML markup language for all formatting.

Images need to be hosted somewhere else, and you need full url to insert into an img tag to display it. Using your home instance's own storage, say, images which are already posted in one of your own Toots, is possible. They do have pretty LONG urls, but hey.

A Dark Theme is nice and easy on the eyes.

IDEA: look for Browser extension/add-on supporting html markup tags; will save time compared to hand typing each time.

Found a Firefox add-on for Markup! bbCodeWeb Extensions.

Now tested and working, used here in the Blog and at our QOTO.org's Discourse Forum posts too.

RG @design_RG@qoto.org