yeah 100% agreed. I don't want these to be taken as Official Posting Rules even though I'm user id 2 but the reason we put comments on here and the reason we said "microblogging sucks" on the welcome page is because threads of 280-character1 posts that get quoted out of context are a miserable2 medium to become the de facto only way people talk to one another.
it's not as simple as just saying this, and there's absolutely a learning curve, but comment that you liked a thing sometimes, if you're feeling up to it! ask questions! have misunderstandings! talk them out! we would love nothing more.
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or 500-character, or whatever
(fun fact about mastodon: each instance gets to set its posting rules, and if you're in federation with it you get their posts on the full faith and credit of the hosting instance. right after we shipped cohost publicly, someone posted a long critical post -- with a few fair criticisms in it, admittedly! -- that went mildly viral, but it was from an instance with a 5,000-character post limit so they got to take 10 times as many words as anyone rebutting!) -
and hilariously, a lot of people seemed to agree it was miserable until the time came to leave twitter, when they decided that it was actually good and healthy and needed to be kept exactly the same
that blocking anyone who kind of annoys you is actually a correct way to use the website. All of this is correct but if someone is being rude or annoying or needlessly argumentative or irritating in a way that doesn't really justify reporting them, you can just block them and never think about them again. Blocking works great on this website and it's a much healthier alternative to feuding with someone forever or stalking them or writing 80,000-word Gdoc callout posts
