@wieland @Omega_Scribet @MarloesdeKoning als je iemand -maakt niet uit wie- gaat volgen op een andere instance laten we even zeggen iets in Australië of whatever dan komen volgens mij alle # van je gekozen onderwerp van die instance wél voortaan op je tl terecht.
Het loont dus de moeite om in de mensen die je volgt te zorgen voor een zo breed mogelijk instancebestand.
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@Omega_Scribet @wieland @MarloesdeKoning ik ook ergens gelezen, maar ik zocht net en kon het niet zo direct terugvinden. Maar het gaat om de verbindingen met andere servers. Volgens mij krijg je dan ook niet àlle # te zien, maar wel veel.
@Franka @wieland @MarloesdeKoning Ja, zoiets 😄, zie mijn edit. 😃
Enneh, dank je wel voor het zoeken. 🙏
@Franka @wieland @MarloesdeKoning @rolle
Rolle, could you please help us, if you have a moment?
Assume you’re on a small instance and you’re not seeing that many results after searching a hashtag: how can you get more search results?
1. Does the person performing the search need to explicitely specify somewhere in the client’s settings (large) servers, like mastodon.social, that need to be used by the client when searching keywords or hashtags, in order to get better search results? (I myself don't see any settings in Mona nor Ice Cubes where I can submit servers to be used when searching, but apparently some clients do offer that option.)
2. Or should the person just follow accounts on mastodon.social and the like to get better search results when using a hashtag?
3. Or do several people on that small instance need to follow accounts on mastodon.social and other big instances for that one person on the small instance to get better results when using a hashtag when searching?
I’m asking this on behalf of someone else who's on a very small instance, as I have no issues myself with searching nor with mementomori.social. 😃 (Never had. 😄) But also, I just want to understand this issue. 😃
Hi all, and great questions. This is by design. The fediverse has no central server that holds every post. Each server stores only the posts that are sent to it, and posts are sent mainly to servers where someone follows the author. If every post went to every server, even a small server would need huge amounts of storage and bandwidth, and only big companies could afford to run one. A missing global search is also a deliberate choice: it makes it harder to find and pile on people who never meant to reach a wide audience.
So when you search for a hashtag or click one, your server only looks through the posts it has already received. It doesn’t go out and fetch posts from other servers. A small, new server like nrc.social has received fewer posts, so its hashtag results are thinner.
1. No, you don’t need to specify anything. The client always searches through your own server, so no client setting can make your server know more posts. Clients that let you add other servers only let you view those servers’ feeds in the app. That doesn’t improve the results on your own server.
2. Yes, that helps. When you follow someone, your server starts receiving that person’s new posts and boosts. You only get posts from that one person, so following someone on a big server doesn’t bring in all hashtags from that server. Older posts don’t come along either.
3. One person is enough. When anyone on the server follows someone, their posts become visible to everybody on that server. The more people on a server follow different accounts, the fuller the hashtag feeds get. Following a hashtag works the same way: you only see tagged posts that your server has received.
How much you find also depends on how the server is set up:
Basic Mastodon: you can search for hashtags, accounts and direct links. Words inside posts can’t be searched.
With full-text search (Elasticsearch server): you can also search for words in your own posts, favourites, bookmarks and mentions, and in public posts from people who have allowed searching. Still only among posts your server has received.
Our server, mementomori.social: full-text search plus relays. A relay sends us posts with chosen hashtags from other servers. That’s why hashtags work well here, but we don’t cover every hashtag either, only ones we have added via fedi.buzz.
For tiny instances the best fix is for the admin to add a hashtag relay, for example relay.fedi.buzz. Users can’t do that themselves, so ask the admin.
@Franka @wieland @MarloesdeKoning Ja! That does ring a bell - van lang geleden ooit ergens in het Engels gelezen. 😄
Dank je wel dat je dit effe noemt! 🙏😃
Edit.
(Al herinnerde ik me vaag dat dit voor de hele instance geldt, dus als een account Barbara van de instance X een account op een andere instance Y gaat volgen, dat dan de hele instance X profiteert, dus dat dan Alex van instance X ook sneller en meer posts van instance Y ziet. Oid. 😃)