Replies are a hot topic!

~m15o

I was browsing CAPCOM on Gemini, which aggregates "gemlogs" (gemini-logs) from many people and places into a single feed. In it, a message caught my attention:

In that post, ew0k talks about a simple script that we'd be able to run on our posts to automatically notify anyone we mention. One of the assumption taken is the following:

There's a tradition of writing gemlogs as responses to other gemlogs, but there's no guarantee the original author will find the response.

That statement is very timely, especially on Midnight Pub, since I decided to disable the commenting system. As strange as it could sound, I'm enjoying not being notified when someone mentions me, because it adds an element of surprise. It makes reading other people's entries more exciting. To quote back what inquiry wrote:

I feel as though I've found ways (the above being the latest example). They aren't slick. They could easily go unnoticed. But if you even just somewhat believe in fate, part of me wants to believe the right readers will chance upon such, and be smart enough to make the connection to what ever link I include.

I was actually reading a message solderpunk wrote about replies in gemini:

Of course, this *could* be something as simple as people emailing authors to say "Hey, I've replied to your post on X over at Y". It's lo-fi, but it'd work. The original author could edit their post to link to responses which they think are worth sharing with their readers.

I'm becoming increasingly fan of those out-of-band approach to notify people. For many years, my email have only been a place for social media to notify me. When a real human takes the time to send an email, it makes it that much better to read. It's more effort, but potentially stronger engagement.