newcomers | Cohost Is Now Read-Only

As of October 1, 2024, Cohost has gone to read-only mode.

"in read-only mode, cohost will look and function about the same as it does now. the dashboard, profiles, tag feeds, bookmarked tag feed, search, comments, and pretty much everything else will still function. you will not be able to make new posts, edit or delete existing posts, like posts, follow, unfollow, block, or silence users, edit your profile, or do any other action that would involve changing cohost. due to a bug, account deletions may not be available until after we have processed all data exports."
-- Cohost Staff

You still have time to copy your content to other platforms and/or archive your old Cohost pages via sites like Wayback or Ghost. The site is supposed to remain visible up to the end of 2024. It will be deleted on December 31. On January 1, 2025, the redirect will be set to Wayback to prevent linkrot.

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I also was on cohost, and while I hate hate hate twitter-likes, I really enjoy tumblr-likes. I think DW would benefit from some kind of reblog option even if it's opt-in. There's often posts which should be spread around more. It also should have something like public tag search, but not sure how to implement that. The interest search is pretty much useless because 99% of the time people don't post about their interests for some reason unless it's stuff like icons or layouts.

We need tumblr-like sites so badly. twitter (and mastodon) is a hellscape in webdesign, archiving, and atmosphere. It's not just "bad people", it's genuinely bad usability with the endless scrolling and forced site-wide tags and all that shit.

DW is capable of a lot, you can do many tweaks to make layouts look more like tumblr or even other sites. I highly recommend compressing images before uploading them here so you can take more out of the 500 MB. I have 25 pages full of images on my main and use only about 10%. Obviously this will be used up much more quickly if you upload large gifs.

>> I also was on cohost, and while I hate hate hate twitter-likes, I really enjoy tumblr-likes.<<

We need a wide variety of venue styles, because people want to do different things online. It would be nice if they were, on average, more competent and less evil in their infrastructure.

>> I think DW would benefit from some kind of reblog option even if it's opt-in. There's often posts which should be spread around more.<<

I agree.

>> It also should have something like public tag search, but not sure how to implement that. <<

You could always talk to the developers about it.

>>The interest search is pretty much useless because 99% of the time people don't post about their interests for some reason unless it's stuff like icons or layouts.<<

Interests help you see what other people care about enough to list. It's not always the same as their posting frequency. It does tell you if you and they have things you both like. It's pretty good for finding communities -- I use it that way a lot.

You can also use Latest Things, which shows up to 1000 recent posts using a given tag. Frex, here is the Cohost tag.

Admittedly, people on DW are not as consistent about tagging things as some other sites are. This may be an area where Cohost folks can encourage better usage of available tools. Many times when I check a community's Interests, there's nothing or just a few words. You need dozens -- everything someone might logically use to search for your kind of content.

>> We need tumblr-like sites so badly. <<

True. Diversity is good.

>> twitter (and mastodon) is a hellscape in webdesign, archiving, and atmosphere. It's not just "bad people", it's genuinely bad usability with the endless scrolling and forced site-wide tags and all that shit.<<

Yyyyeah. Bad infrastructure is common and dangerous.

DW may not be perfect, but it's pretty good. It's versatile. You can find stuff and people.

>> DW is capable of a lot, you can do many tweaks to make layouts look more like tumblr or even other sites.<<

True.

>> I highly recommend compressing images before uploading them here so you can take more out of the 500 MB. I have 25 pages full of images on my main and use only about 10%. Obviously this will be used up much more quickly if you upload large gifs.<<

DW is not a great image hosting site. There isn't a lot of room for that, they don't specialize in it, and there is no organization -- it's just a blogroll of your images. Most folks prefer to store images elsewhere and just paste them in here. I put mine on LJ and copy-paste the code.

If you want to talk about theory of web design, this is a great place for that, because people will be comparing-contrasting the pros and cons of different platforms. It's not going to get any better unless we talk about it -- what we like, what we don't like, why, and how to build something better.

Admittedly, people on DW are not as consistent about tagging things as some other sites are. This may be an area where Cohost folks can encourage better usage of available tools.

Ohhh, if only. I was part of the tiny squad of Cohosters who asked the yinglet community if they could please, just for accessibility reasons, tag their shareable posts with “yingletspeak” or “typing quirk” or something internally consistent so we could silence the tag and avoid the typing quirk that yinglets latched on to. The response was, at first, just annoyed. Then ableist. Then racist. All because they refused to accept that it was an actual accessibility issue, rather than a “conflicting access need” between their happiness versus our safety and ability to even use the site at all.

Some people just seem… allergic? to using tags on sites like this. I don’t understand why these people even want to be places like this that rely on tags.

>> Ohhh, if only. <<

It's worth a try. If nothing else, having more people who make better use of tags may inspire others to expand their use.

>> I was part of the tiny squad of Cohosters who asked the yinglet community if they could please, just for accessibility reasons, tag their shareable posts with “yingletspeak” or “typing quirk” or something internally consistent so we could silence the tag and avoid the typing quirk that yinglets latched on to. <<

I can see that it would be useful to have that tagged, and very useful to be able to silence a tag. I'm not sure DW does tag silencing. You can block people from commenting, but it doesn't make their posts invisible to you or vice versa (which it should: there needs to be a way for people to cease existing to each other).

>> The response was, at first, just annoyed.<<

People often get annoyed when somebody asks them to do a thing in their own space that they don't want to do. It's their space after all. But in a tag-based venue, the lines between "private blog" and "public conversation" get pretty blurred.

Tagging can get fraught, especially if someone has a hard time remembering to tag things or is not good at tagging. I've seen major fights break out over it in fanfic hubs and fests, to the point of people threatening to ban someone for using or forgetting to use a given tag or category of tags. :/ Touchy stuff. People have feelings. And they're not always careful of each other's feelings, which isn't a problem that software can solve.

>> Then ableist. Then racist. <<

That's no excuse for being mean.

>> All because they refused to accept that it was an actual accessibility issue, rather than a “conflicting access need” between their happiness versus our safety and ability to even use the site at all.<<

Yeah, that sucks.

>> Some people just seem… allergic? to using tags on sites like this.<<

That matches my observations.

>> I don’t understand why these people even want to be places like this that rely on tags.<<

Things I have observed:

* Some people use the platform in ways that don't really require tags. If they don't need the feature, they may not bother with it.

* Some people's brains just do not naturally pick out keywords that tell them "Good tags for this post are X, Y, Z." It can be really hard for them.

* Platforms close, people move, and they may be using this because it's the least-worst option not what they would really prefer. This leads to a lot of people not using some features, or handling them clumsily.

There's a ton of stuff I don't use, like filters. I've had people ask me to use them, but I can't. I'd never remember them. And if someone else locks some of their posts, but gives me access, I often overlook that little lock dingbat and try to link to locked posts, which annoys everyone. So I don't subscribe to blogs that are mostly locked. It's fine for people to use filters and locks, it's just not my thing. And that can apply to almost any feature -- it just doesn't work for everyone.

Still no reason to be mean to each other though.

Cohost Is Now Read-Only

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