QOTO.org new January 2020 Features Added - 3 - Non-Federating, Strictly LOCAL posts.
Another desirable feature in Mastodon (which is already present and used in GlitchSoc instances) is to have Strictly LOCAL, non-Federating posts.
What defines these posts?
- The root idea is that they will NOT be shared or sent anywhere else, but stay visible only in the instance where the Toot was posted.
- The choice you made here is to create a post that is only for the local, logged in users.
- All the other normal Toot Privacy settings can still be used - a non-federating toot could be Public, Unlisted, Followers only (in this case, only Follower users in the same instance would see it) or a Direct Message (showing only to *Local* users mentioned in the Toot text).
Why do we need this feature?
- It's an option to the author of the post, sometimes they might have a small audience in mind, just some local users.
- sometimes the content of the Toot is relevant to local users only, like an event happening soon after.
- or you might be looking for help and someone who is close enough physically to respond, meet, etc.
How is controlled and selected?
- We have a new "Chain" icon in the tools are of the Toot Editor. (see screenshot #1)
- Clicking on the "Chain" icon will present the two possible choices: a normal, Federated toot (which will be shared and spread on the Fediverse.)
- Or a Strictly Local, non-Federating toot, which is selected via the "broken chain" icon. (see screenshot #2)
The same "broken chain" icon will be displayed in the lower part of any toot posted in the instance which used this option.
See an example of Non-Federated Toot, note the Broken Chain icon is there, see screenshot #3.
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@design_RG Its important to note our instance does NOT derive from Glitch-social (which no longer keeps up with new features from mastodon proper).
We on the other hand are a fork of masterdone proper and as such pull in upstream changes as-is. But we do have the local-only feature implemented here, and I do think it did derive partly from one of their commits. But the implementation we have here has a different implementation at this point (Even visually it behaves differently)
@freemo Yes, I think Renato has chosen and created the current controls for the Local-Only posting feature.
And I think they are better than the GS ones, at this point - easier to understand even for new users.
I have seen many advanced features in the Pleroma project, which I would hope someday can reach mastodon also.
Rich Text formatting, they have it, and you have 3 options even.
- html tags.
- MarkDown tags.
- or BBcode ones.
@oxbowcoda Thank you, I am glad to see many new features added here. 👍
Have you compared this functionality with that available in Hubzilla protocol?
@ourdiaspora No, I haven't -- never experienced Hubzilla, although seeing a post here by a local user showed a very pretty page and seems interesting.
Is it a nice alternative? Mastodon has some good points, but I like other projects and am open to trying and reporting my findings back -- so more people can find them too.
I mentioned that this feature is present (and our code derived from theirs) in GlitchSoc instances.
Here's an example of the Non-Federating Post control on a GlitchSoc instance (Hackers.town once again).
** We thank Renato Lond, the admin from https://masto.donte.com.br/ for porting the code from GlitchSoc and creating a Mastodon version, which he added to the main project Git.
Renato pointed me to https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/8427 for the code in question.