I love Micro.blog but I’ve come to resent how broken search and discovery is here.

BROKEN.

Can we please, please, please get some improvements here.

PLEASE.

I would love to be able to add to my current follows but by design it is made difficult.

PLEASE FIX THIS.

@Denny Specifically: Micro.blog feels like a community of 50 users. While the human curated Discovery timeline sometimes does feel like a feature and a benefit it's also true that it might be biased by the curators which is only three people. Regular users don't have access to the full timeline. I feel like a child being babysat and over protected.

A part of the result is I often feel alone here. And perhaps I am. But the discovery timeline looses my interest. How could it not? It's managed by such a small subset of users. And while I enjoy pleasant topics I'm a human that has an interest in a full range of human affairs including difficult, sometimes painful ones.

In the past I've sometimes drifted from the micro.blog community feed because it often doesn't feel real. It feels like a safe, gated community of priviledged people that don't live in the real world. What I'm trying to figure out now is, is it that or does it just appear that way due to the bias of the curation?

I want more than the sanitary black and white of Pleasantville (movie reference there). I want the full color and messiness of humanity. Or at least the option to see that.

@Denny I’m conflicted on this. The discovery timeline is very, very safe. Mostly pictures and tech talk—not stuff that really interests me. On the other hand, I also appreciate how calm it is here. I honestly don’t want a lot of arguing about politics or controversial issues. I just don’t know.

@jabel Exactly, yes. I suppose I'm looking for an option to turn off safe mode. As an adult, give me the option to see more. I'm not looking to torture myself but my interests go beyond coffee, pens, desserts, etc. Currently discovery/searching seems to be locked down to a severe degree.

I sometimes see folks here debating whether Micro.blog can be their only home in the Fediverse, forgoing a separate Mastodon account. I've considered it as well... but there's a vast difference in diversity. In my Mastodon account I can search for any number of things and get actual results for a wide range of interests and feels far more real and representative of the human experience. And yet, my experience there is still very pleasant. Certainly more people and so a higher likelihood of encountering negativity. But far, far better than other social media I've used in the past.

Perhaps I should just accept the limited scope of micro.blog as it is.

@Denny

I want more than the sanitary black and white of Pleasantville (movie reference there). I want the full color and messiness of humanity.

You will not get that here. It's a over-curated very-positive feed; often like the Facebook timeline where everyone presents their best side. I had joked that during the COVID years, you wouldn't know there's a pandemic out there if you just browsed the Discover feed.

IMO, use Micro.blog as a blogging platform more than for its community features although the latter is the first thing people mention when asked why they love Mb over other social networks.

@Denny @jabel It's a trade-off for sure. Micro.blog is smaller too. We're growing but becoming more diverse is a long process. In the future I hope we can highlight users around topics from outside Micro.blog. Because you can follow Mastodon users from Micro.blog, it should be easier to expand your following beyond Micro.blog users, but still stay on Micro.blog.

@jabel Agree here about politics. There is enough of that on the internet (and you don't have to look far), so it would put me off tbh (I avoid it both on the digital space and also avoid/stop any talk if it ever becomes a talking point). cc @Denny.

@manton I was actually thinking about this also. I like the idea of having "topics" one could subscribe to, on top of discover, which could auto include posts of certain topics (if so set by the author). Non committal of course, just thinking out loud. @Denny @jabel

@vincent I really like this idea! It’s clever because it means you can post 90% of the time on a topic, but for that 10% of the time you talk about something else, you just don’t tag it.

@Escribitionist @Denny Just a quick clarification: whether you’re using Micro.blog or WordPress does not change how we approach Discover.

@Escribitionist Discover is just intended to be a snapshot of posts, so it might be random that some posts weren't featured, or something else. I just wanted to point out that it's definitely not whether you have a paid account or not.

@Denny Yes. I think there’s a difference between micro.blog’s design choices that foster “calmer” discourse – no retweets, follower counts or likes – and the community that has sprung up around it. Or rather, the one shouldn’t necessarily lead to the other.

It should be possible to discuss “the full range of human affairs” reasonably, and the absence of likes, retweets etc. would presumably encourage this. But you’re right, that’s often discouraged. I see the argument that There’s politics on plenty of other places on the internet, I don’t want it here pretty often. It just creates a small ‘c’ conservative network.

It’s a shame, but at the end of the day, if that’s what the micro.blog curators/community wants, then that’s their right 🤷‍♂️

@jmanes @manton To be clear, what I'm asking for is better search of posts (those that fall outside of the Discover feed) and the OPTION to view the full feed.

Keep the curated feed for those that want the safer, quieter timeline.

But for those that want a more complete view, allow the full feed. Allow for the more open view. It seems heavy handed and overly restrictive to not allow the option.

@leonp Yes, exactly this. For folks that don't want to see politics, don't follow folks that are political. People can curate their own timeline. On top of that the Discover timeline is currently very safe for anyone that wants to avoid politics, current issues, etc. I could accept that bias more easily EXCEPT that it forces that limitation and bias on those that might want a more open view of the world.

To be CLEAR, I'm not attempting to foist politics or difficult issues onto the Discover timeline. Just looking for the option for myself and others that want that openness and greater diversity of topics, issues, etc.

@Denny Showing the full feed would create new problems, and ironically require even more curation and monitoring for spam. But I do want to do much more with search and discovery. There’s a lot we could do to expand it.

@Ddanielson Agreed with @Pratik on the difference in the two aspects... it's a good point. I've found myself spending less time in my MB timeline and Discover feed for that reason. I just don't fit here. As I spend more time on Mastodon I've considered following more MB folks over there so I don't miss their posts.

Funny, slightly related story about me being depressing. Years ago (1992) I had a summer job at a local Girl Scout camp. I was hired to do "Nature Programming" or something along those lines. At the end of the summer the counselors would do a sort of scrapbook about the summer. And while my nature "classes" were generally well recieved I did talk to the kids about their responsibilties as caretakers of the planet and we talked about some of the things we humans did that were harmful. Back then it was climate change but also the depleted ozone layer. One of the notes in the scrapbook: "Nature=Depressing" 🤣😂🤪

@Denny Seems like a reasonable request to me. Maybe even bury it a little bit as an option to enable in settings. The firehose would be a good release valve for the limitations of discoverabilty here.

@manton At some point back you said something like you’d prioritize what you heard from the community, so here’s my vote for prioritizing search and timeline sync. 😄 I think a lot of your users would love to see those things.

@Denny @Escribitionist @manton This is an interesting thread. FWIW I've never had a hosted blog and have been on Discover fairly regularly.

A few years ago, a few of us, lead by @smokey used to post a set of links to posts we liked that week. I did some tagged micro week. Part of the fun was getting them in under the character count. Although this is not search or a full feed it could be a way to have a wider net of discovery. Maybe posts could have their own emoji on discovery 🔭

@Denny Is there any social network that gives users raw access to the fire hose view?

@Escribitionist @johnjohnston The lack of hashtags and just the fact that search of posts only includes posts that are featured in discovery (as far as I know that is the case). There are 13 emoji featured on the Discovery page emoji dropdown.

!!!!!

At the bottom of that is a "Show More" that takes the user to the help page with links for further searching.

It falls somewhere between user hostile and completely broken. even that list of links is predetermined and insufficient. I can find more by using google site:micro.blog keyword

@darby3 Yes, that or something close to that. My Mastodon account is at social.coop where I can tap to see my "local" timeline which is a chronological timeline of all posts on social.coop. It's my understanding that this is universal to Mastodon with local views to all posts on the instance where one's account is located.

Given that micro.blog functions similarly as an ActivityPub/Fediverse instance, it seems like this would be a similar experience.

@darby3 Bluesky had that. Not sure if it still does, haven’t been there in a while.

@maique @Denny @darby3 Yes, there's firesky.tv. It's super fun and easy to follow along with the discussion. 😁

@Denny If you want the Mastodon experience but want to use Micro.blog as your blog, you can simply cross-post to your (separate) Mastodon account and browse the timeline with Ivory, Mona, Ice Cubes, Mammoth, or any of the fantastic apps that make browsing a timeline fun. Disable your feed from posting to the Micro.blog timeline and you can basically ignore the community and its limitations here. I know more than a few people who have done this time of ‘quiet quitting’ and I’m tempted to follow suit. Micro.blog still gets my money via the subscription and I have the pleasure of tinkering with my blog but keeping the social aspect separate.

@sod wow. Didn’t know about this. Thanks. FWIW, I like Bluesky’s approach with the custom feeds especially the Re+Posts one.

@sod Whoa. 😳

@Escribitionist I don’t think “the entire internet” is using hashtags, which were invented for a very specific purpose: when Twitter was limited to 140 characters, you could tag a tweet while losing only one character. For any other purpose hashtags make no sense. What MB lacks isn’t the hashtag, it’s search. Try using Google, with site:micro.blog. It’s not perfect but it’s useful.

@pratik This never appealed to me because it would still be two places to check (Mb and Mastodon). I hadn’t considered that you could disable posting to the Mb timeline completely. I’m still content with the slower/limited social web experience in Mb, but it’s good to know that it’s possible to separate it out without much downside.

@sod That’s it, thanks!

@pratik @jarrod What do you mean by disabling your feed from posting to the Micro.blog timeline? Even if you were using Mastodon to follow people from MB, you’d still want your posts to populate in the timeline here, would you not? Maybe I’m not understanding, in which case I blame the time change. 😂

@pimoore @pratik @jarrod I didn't know this was possible! But I think the idea would be:

1. Turn off posting to Micro.blog timeline and stop checking it for replies, etc.
2. Follow micro.blog folk from mastodon account/app and just participate from that end.

So, I'd follow/comment micro.blog folks from my account @dennyhenke and have an integrated timeline there. And with that approach, anyone wanting to follow me could do so via RSS or by following the above Mastodon account at social.coop.

@Denny @pimoore Yep, that’s exactly what I’m envisioning based on @pratik’s suggestion.

@jarrod @pimoore @pratik I think I'll start by just manually following a bunch of the MB folks I follow. Add them to a group on Mastodon and see how that looks. Just try it for a few days before I commit. The reverse of what I'd actually prefer to do but it might work just as well! Thanks for the suggestion.

@Denny You'd have to remember to do all your original posting from a Micro.blog app (or with a shortcut/API) if you wanted that blog-as-source-of-truth approach. You couldn't get replies to posts to show up on your blog page either.

@pimoore @jarrod @Denny I mean, you could simply delete the /feed.json associated with your Micro.blog account. That sends your post to the Mb timeline. But now I see that it also controls the cross-posting settings, so I'm not sure if you can delete that but retain the cross-posting. Otherwise have to simply not check your mentions here.

I am not doing that yet since my mentions are manageable and I don't mind the community here.

@pratik @jarrod @pimoore For now I'm just going to leave my micro blog settings as they are. I will follow Micro.blog folks from Mastodon and see how that works. I can leave my notifications here on so that I know if someone has commented here and chime in as needed.

If nothing else, it'll be an interesting experiment and combining the two timelines.

@Denny I can't find your @denny@social.coop via the Mastodon apps.

@pratik Ah I think you’re right, deleting this feed would disable cross-posting to Mastodon, and I don’t see a way to turn off sending things to the Mb timeline.

@Denny Hope it works well for you! 👍

@pratik social.coop/@dennyhen.

@dennyhenke lol, whoops. forgot it was my full name. I've corrected it in my earlier reply.

@jarrod Worth a try!

@Denny Found you. Followed you from the Mastodon instance where I cross-post my Micro.blog posts

@johnjohnston Thanks for the reminder about those featured posts. I really liked seeing that.