2020-01-11 |#metadata #search | @Acidus
I built an index of geminaut mentions (~beingname or @beingname) across gemini space. With it you can find people talking about ~solderpunk, or to see all comments from midnight.pub's ~bartender You can see when someone @ mentions you or someone you care about in a gemlog or post. Reply posts, so popular on Antenna, are easier to find and reply to yourself with an @ mention, helping to build connections and communication.
I collected this @Mentions index because I wanted to find content and discussions by beings regardless of what it was published. Originally I used it privately, but I have made it public because I believe it can help geminuats be closer together in this smol space of ours. I debated this choice for a while with myself, and should this index prove to not be a positive force, I will remove it.
I hate Twitter for many complicated reasons. However something that I like is the concept of @mentions. Created organically by its users, and not be Twitter itself, @mentions allow the community to have conversations. Also cool is how someone can see users talking about and forth, even if days or weeks separates the posts, and with the tweets themselves being separated. This asynchronous communication, across pages (even if it was on the same site) is interesting to me. Could it work outside of a closed system?
Absolutely it can! Because using @, or ~ prefixes to mention another user is already smol/tilde/gemini communities do, and has been for a while:
Here's Alex Schroeder @ mentioning ~solderpunk on their gopher hole about early protocol ideas.
all the posts on midnight.pub or Station are people ~ mentioning each other in posts and replies
posting on gemlogs, or answers @bronzie's monthly 5Q for the monthly 5 questions
I crawl gemini space, and in addition to finding hashtags, it also find @mentions made using ~ or @. You can browser the index here
When making a post or referencing another user, just include a mention with @beingname or ~beingname in your content. The crawler should pick it up. If you want, you can include your own name as a mention on content you write,, allowing others to find it, wherever you published it.
I really want feedback about how to improve the @Mention index or extend it. Tell me what you think by ~ mentioning me (~acidus or @acidus) or with email: acidus@gemi.dev