Is better/seemless integration with Mastodon (and perhaps more) possible?
Here's the thing. I'm a mod for a small-time community for a niche interest, !castles@lemm.ee I'm also on Mastodon, and was before my Reddit exodus. I follow #castles as well as a few other related topics on Matsodon, so I get quality toots, such as this: https://mastodon.scot/@McNige/110926238926867959, that I wish I could just crosspost over to my community. Currently, I have to repackage the toot, which isn't a huge problem, but currently I just drop them a note on Mastodon that their content has been posted elsewhere on the Fediverse. What would be nice is if people who comment on the Lemmy post also get fed into OP's toot. More sharing, more connection, more activity.
On the flip side, I've subscribed to @castles@lemm.ee on my Mastodon instance and, while it's good to be able to follow posts in feed form, it looks like ass: 
I realize I should try this with Pixelfed, but I haven't made that leap yet.
I don't know, am I thinking crazy here? I'd think we'd want everything in the Fediverse soup interoperable in a more seemless way. Is this a feature request or am I missing some way to do this better?
@anafroj Thanks for the kind words and advice - much appreciated. Unfortunately on Kbin (where I run my forum) we don't have that option - the software exceeds lemmy in many ways, but there are number of lemmy features (including removing downvotes) that I'd like to see on Kbin. I'm glad that the solution worked for you and your users.
To compensate on Kbin, since the forum I run is built as be a safe space for creative folks to submit OC and their inspirations, one of our rules is that if you downvote, you need to leave a comment explaining why. This allows critique without anonymous negativity, which adds nothing to the discussion.
As for myself, I don't care that the trolls above are obsessed with downvoting what my profile posts (which literally says "For Amusement Purposes Only" at the top - another indication that they can't read properly).
They tell more on themselves than I with the downvote spam, and it actually helps drive engagement with my commentary because they're triggering the "activity" sorting algorithm - it's not like reddit where enough downvotes will actually hide anything. But neither troll is smart enough to realize this, so that's why I just smile and tell them to keep digging. If they keep going, I get more upvotes through the additional views than they could possibly downvote, so that's a win from my perspective. If they get tired and stop, that's a bit of a win as well, even though they're no longer contributing to my marketing campaign... ;)
Oh, my bad, I have yet to get used to the fact that we're having the same discussions over different apps. :)
If you can install custom stylesheets (some options are documented here), I've tested this rule to work for removing downvotes:
It will work only for you, though, not for other people on your forum (unless you're an instance owner and can change the website stylesheets file).
An other rule to remove upvotes if you want to:
Holy shit - you're brilliant. It took some tweaking, but this code works on kbin:
{span style="color:#323232;"}.vote__down { display: none !important; } {/span}I'm going to go and post this solution in @kbinMeta (if you don't do it first) - there are a lot of mods that want this functionality. I and our users thank you! Consider this an open invitation to @13thFloor if you'd ever like to stop by.
You're welcome, if I did my part to fight online harassment, this is a good day. :) You should consider legal action, though, if you have laws against that in your country (I assume it's most countries, nowadays?). The instance of this or those guys can be subpoenaed to provide their IP address, which then can be used to uncover their identity.
Thanks for the invitation, btw. The whole concept sounds fun. :) I enjoyed the article about imagination engine, it's on the edge of phenomenology, but still keeping things rational (I have a history with phenomenology 😅). I have my own way of exploring my imagination (written solo RPGs, it's basically how I spent my evenings), but I'll have fun reading your content. :) Enjoy!
You just introduced me into an entirely new field of study. Phenomenology wasn't even mentioned in my philosophy or history of consciousness studies back in college. I'm going through the wikipedia on the field now and it describes in amazing detail the line of reasoning behind the imagination engine. If you have more sources on it that you enjoy, please feel free to forward them or post them to the @13thFloor.
The same goes for your RPGs - they're more than welcome if you feel they're ready for public consumption. In fact, this comment made me realize that we're very RPG light right now, so that's a great content idea to start including.
Oh, and regarding removing the downvotes, I lost one sub who was vocal about the change on the thread I posted in kbinMeta about how to do it, then gained 5 more afterwards. I've got a thread up to see how the community feels about it, but no comments yet, so I think the change is a positive one. I'll probably make it permanent unless one of our regular contributors complains.
This has been one of the most positive interactions I've had on the Fediverse, which is kinda funny as it was spawned in reaction to troll harassment. You've got my thanks yet again - it's been a good day as a result.
Oh, ok, your article sounded so close I thought it was inspired by it. :) It's a very european thing, mostly developed in Germany and France. I have by blood with it, though. I've always been more interested in analytical philosophy so I didn't like it. Which shouldn't have been a problem, there are many schools of philosophy, right? Except I studied at a university where the philosophy department was specialized in it. Every day I was wondering what I was doing there. :) I actually consider it wasted my university years, so I'm probably not the good person to talk to you about it. 😅 (but your own articles stopped short of talking non-sense like phenomenology does in my opinion, so it was good to read, it's like taking only the good parts of phenomenology ;) ). The main authors, if you want to know more, are Heidegger, Husserl and Sartre. A note of warning though that it's very hard to read (well, at least if you have an analytical mind, I suspect it depends on people personality).
Oh, no, thanks. Actually, not being ready for public consumption is their whole point. :) I used to write (as an amateur) when I was younger, only to be confronted to a wall of indifference at each publication. So I was going back to it, doing my best, putting unreasonable amount of hours to make it likable, and still this indifference - in part because, I realized later, my folks just didn't like reading anyway. But it turned out that trying to please people was a terrible experience. Nobody was having fun, including me. When I started playing my RPGs solo, the reason why I enjoyed it so much was because I put this simple rule : nobody will ever read it. From there, I don't have to ask myself questions like "is it too long?", "is it too short?", "is it properly explained?", "does the pace progress fast enough?", etc. I'm just exploring and enjoying it. :) My oldest campaign (I play three different games) has a word count that would cover at least three novels, and it would be terribly boring to read, because of the slow moving pace, the returns to previous places that break the pace, the long sequences when there is just no narrative arc, the pages and pages of shopping narration, etc. And I don't care, because it's not meant to be read. :) I'm not writing, I'm exploring my imagination, spending just as much time I want where I want, with no regard to what makes an efficient story - or even just legible text, for the matter. It's basically a videogame powered by imagination. :) The day I even consider it may be read, all of that collapses.
Kurt Vonnegut advises doing exactly what you're doing with your RPGs. The end of that lecture touches specifically on it.
I completely understand about keeping that part of your work private. I have done much the same thing for the same reasons with the vast majority of my creations, and you're wise to protect the part of yourself that keeps your imagination flowing.
That being said, should you reach a point where you're ready to share work (RPGs, writing, or just things that inspire you), the magazine is always open to you.
Re: Philosophy - I agree on the difficulty of the writing. I've read some small amount of Sartre (Being and Nothingness), but I remember being frustrated at the density of the arguments, which often seemed an over-articulation of the obvious for the sake of precision - and the entire work felt like a response to work we hadn't covered. In my college classes, it was presented as existentialism (in fact, we went from Descartes to Hume to Sartre), and now, looking at it's place in phenomenology, I feel robbed that the connections to Husserl and Heidegger weren't properly illustrated - the historical context would have helped me finish the book. Looks like I'll have to give it another shot :)
Oh wow, thanks for that video, that was brilliant. :D
Indeed, if you had a teacher who made your class read Being and Nothingness without explaining phenomenology first, it feels like punishment or something. :) Not that Husserl and Heidegger are easier to read, but at least they don't presuppose other readings to be understood. That being said, I kind of get it, existentialism can be seen as its own thing, especially in Sartre's non-philosophy work (he wrote several novels and theater scripts). But not through Being and Nothingness. 😂