I really don't like the idea of topic-specific instances being the standard way to handle group discussions in Mastodon. I don't want to juggle 15 different identities and 15 different sets of credentials just because I'm interested in 15 different things. Early adopters may put up with that kind of hassle, but a mass audience never will. And having to set up and maintain a whole instance just to host a group means that few groups will ever be formed.
I feel like there has to be a better way.
@jalefkowit It's called a groups feature. GNU Social has it, it's fantastic and works across instances just fine. It's basically a relay to pass tagged group messages and responses to all members subscribed to the group.
If Mastodon adopted it, that would be the best thing ever.
@deadsuperhero @jalefkowit I somehow feel bangtags are just a hack due to difficulty in making hashtags to federate.
They are too heavyweight in my pretty (yet) uninformed opinion
@saper @jalefkowit No, those two things service completely different utilities. Hashtags are relative to your instance and contacts, bangtags are a signifier for group relays of posts.
@jalefkowit @saper Generally, bangtags only work if you're already part of a group.
I used to think that, but I've come to disagree with your assessment.
Hashtags are more event-driven are topical, and require no subscription to a group, whereas a group exists specifically to provision the passing of messages to all participants, regardless of the subject of content.
@deadsuperhero @jalefkowit I fully agree that they are not the same and work differently; from what I read is that groups wouldn't be needed if hashtags federated nicely. I think it is a problem of all multicast protocols (how should a sender/relay know you are interested if you didn't subscribe first).