Help:TootCat/hashtags

Hashtags on TootCat

Adding a hashtag to a public post means that the post will be listed whenever anyone searches for that hashtag (which you can do just by clicking on any example of the same hashtag). It doesn't work with user-profiles, unfortunately; this seems like a missed opportunity which we hope to eventually address.

Some items of note:

• Hashtags are not case-sensitive; #HashTag and #hashtag are functionally the same. But note --
• We encourage folks to camel-case hashtags, however, as this makes them more friendly for screen-reader software.
• You can subscribe to hashtags in much the same way as following another user -- posts with a hashtag to which you are subscribed will appear in your notifications.
• You can link to a hashtag from a post without tagging that post into the hashtag by linking to the hashtag feed URL. In TootCat, the syntax for this (using #softwareGripe as an example hashtag) is:

* #<a href="https://toot.cat/tags/softwareGripe">softwareGripe</a> - link to a hashtag feed without indexing the post containing the link
* #<a href="https://toot.cat/@woozle/tagged/softwareGripe">softwareGripe @ Woozle</a> - link to only posts in that hashtag by a specific user

Tags to Use

You can of course invent your own hashtags, but here are some particularly clever ones (usually used for photos, but can also apply to text posts):

Topic	Tags
cats	#catstodon
cats: Saturday	#caturday
dogs	#mastoDog / #mastoDogs
flowers	#florespondence
lichen	#lichenSubscribe
moss	#mosstodon
Saturday: cats	#caturday

Utility Tags

There are some tags which are used for spreading information which many users and admins consider to be important, and these should only be used for those topics.

• #fediblock is frequently abused by users (on other sites) who dislike the idea of fediblocking. Only use when you are trying to broadcast a legitimate fediblock advisory.

There may be others, but so far that is the only one which has been problematic.