Implement some kind of view for hastags

[georgeowell]

What's the problem you want solved?

Patchwork has an emphasis on both recently active channels and subscribed channels. In Oasis, you can currently view channels (or hashtags) only by clicking through from a thread or searching for them.

Channels are especially good for new users to find others who have similar interests.

Is there a solution you'd like to recommend?

That we consider how we can implement some views for channels. I'm open to ideas on this.

Rough Ideas

• UX to subscribed and unsubscribe to channels
• A page that is a list of the channels you subscribe to where you click through to them
• A feed of all the content from the channels you are subscribed to
• Subscribed channels appear in latest and popular if you are subscribed

[christianbundy]

+1 for supporting a list of hashtags, although I'm conflicted on 'channels' where you can only post to one topic at a time. This isn't something that Oasis currently supports, but maybe we should? I think I like the simplicity of using hashtags in the message rather than setting a channel in the message metadata, especially when it comes to weird stuff like 'what if someone changes the channel mid-thread?'.

[georgeowell]

Yeh I think I am getting confused about the difference between channels and hashtags and tags. I assume everyone else is confused about this also :sweat_smile:

[jedahan]

Same! I've also seen it written as 'topics' somewhere.

[georgeowell]

I'm quite unsure how is best to present this list of hashtags to the user. So many options....

[cinnamon-bun]

Some historical context about these SSB features in case anyone is wondering:

• Hashtags are autodetected when written in the message body. Works like Twitter.
• Channels are assigned in message metadata by the author. One per message. I think this was intended to work like subreddits on Reddit. It would create warrens that tuck each channel's messages away from the main view, creating a new social context, a smaller space. This also makes it easier to say "hey devs, please keep your programmer talk in the SSB channel so we can ignore it". This never quite worked out because Patchwork shows channel'd messages in the main feed, and ended up conflating them with hashtags.
• Tags are attached to a post after it's written, by anyone (not just the author). Possible use-cases are tagging NSFW things, organizing posts so you can find them later, bookmarking? They have technical issues -- there can be duplicate tags with the same name but a different internal ID, which leads to a confusing user experience.
• Topics are not an official thing. Christian uses this to mean "root-level posts" I think?

You can also subscribe to channels (and hashtags), and this brings those posts into your feed from people you're not following. So they are a way to find new people beyond your usual social horizon.

[cinnamon-bun]

My feeling is:

• Hashtags are familiar to users and widely used on SSB already, so let's support them. Pretty much make them work like Twitter.
• Either make channels more different than hashtags, or drop support for channels.
• Tags didn't work out, I don't feel excited about supporting them

If we decide to support channels:

• Make each channel feel like a separate space or room, and keep those messages out of the main feed. So it's like joining a slack channel or subreddit.
• Don't put # in front of channel names. Let # be for hashtags
• Try to keep whole threads in the same channel. Apply the root post's channel to the entire thread.
• Allow private channel subscriptions

[Danie10]

I was pretty happy on Patchwork with subscribing to virtual topics (which are created from hashtags). So if I posted and included #hashtagA and #hashtagB it appears within both of those virtual topics. I do most of my following that way. Which is why for me it's a bit difficult to fully adopt Oasis yet. To manually type in and search for 10 different hashtags every now and again is just not practical.