Welcome to Diaspora. A fellow 3D modeler here.

@David Lazarus Greetings from Finland and a warm WELCOME!

The first rule as far as many of us are concerned is to block out the alt-right neo-nazis (and it looks like one of the most rabid and ignorant of them jumped on you as soon as you arrived as they really have a self-professed hatred of pluspora G+ refugees). He goes after anyone that appears by name, or what is backwards mind thinks looks like someone of some Jewish ancestry. I blocked him long ago when he went all rapid Alt-right KKIsh because he thought my family name Jewish (it isn't and I'm not but that never stopped his blathering).

Save yourself and everyone esle trouble and just block Theaitetos. He's rude, crude and sociably unacceptable and just likes being a troll.

welcome o/

Welcome David :)

Welcome to the 'verse! And yes, what @Joseph Teller said.

Welcome!

Welcome! Just a tip, you can delete comments in your conversations. I have done so then left a note that they were so off topic that I just cleaned it up. That was intrusive and not in the spirit of being awesome to each other.

Bienvenue ! Besides above (shared) warnings, you'll also find here many nice people !

Welcome to D*
Click on the profile here :]
Ill be posting important news regularly!

@Baloo Uriza - No. I wasn't at Conifur Northwest.

@Dave Sutton - I'm happy to be here. Can you do custom aspects? Also, how do you submit suggestions/feedback? Being a G+ refugee, I'm quite used to being able to +1 comments. Not having a similar capability here is a bit irksome.

@Eric Buijs - Hi. I work more with fractals than anything else these days, but I have done 3D character modeling, dabbled a little in Autodesk Inventor and 3D landscape renders.

@Team Sintti - Thank you. ☺️

@Joseph Teller - I appreciate your suggestion.

@Astheroth 明日照 @Passagier 451 @Cliff Bramlett @Nate Bohman @Cass M @Anne Har @Billy Notagoat - Thanks for welcoming me to Pluspora.

I ignored the "most censored" person. Per @Tony Steele,I'm not sure how effective that is though.

@david_lazarus@pluspora.com When you have time you might want to take a look at the work of @Jack here on Diaspora. He's doing some great stuff with fractals (and more) in OpenSCAD.

@Eric Buijs - Thanks for the recommendation. I use JWildfire and Incendia Next. I'll have to look into OpenSCAD.

@david_lazarus@pluspora.com Both these programs look very interesting. Thanks.

@David Lazarus...Just click the pencil next to the aspect and rename it

Diaspora is run by volunteers so we are participants and not customers. There have been many suggestions for improvements and many are being worked on by a limited amount of programmers but making diaspora like G+ is not a priority. It has been argued that not having a +1 facility is of benefit as it encourages people to comment rather than just clicking a button. I think this thread indicates that.

+1

XD Anyway, @David Lazarus if you're into hacking your social experience or seeing what features have been bandied about, you might also check out @Isaac Kuo's stream. He's been having some very interesting conversations about Diaspora #features.

And if you haven't seen it yet, let me reiterate how important hash tags are here. They are gold, but like gold, don't just toss them around anywhere. People can get hurt by flying ingots. Rather, use the tags that fit your post and that will ensure that interested people see it.

Another important tip for content creators in general is to use #mywork or #myphoto etc. for your content so people wanting to ask questions about how, why, how much you charge, and so on can without the awkward shuffling that results when someone shares a stock photo and is asked about it. :)

Isaac is also a very talented artist who can bring a simple drawing to life with just a few pencil strokes. This place is full of very interesting people to interact with and in my three months here I have really enjoyed the experience

@Eric Buijs - You're welcome.

@Dave Sutton - But sometimes a +1, smiley, thumbs up, heart or whatever will suffice. Thus, being able to do that for comments would be nice. It saves time rather than having to tag people in new comments and do the same.

@Cliff Bramlett - Thanks for the tips. Yeah, hash tags are not something I'm used to using except in my art posts where I use them to indicate the type of art and the software used to create it. I run/ran two Communities on G+ (Know and Visual Symphony) and used Collections rather than hash tags for topics.

@Dave Sutton - I'll check out his stream. Thanks.

@David Lazarus I did the same. I was an avid collection user on G+ but though it has taken a little time, I do like this hashtag system. That it requires no maintenance by me is a big bonus.

@Cliff Bramlett - I'm sure there are pros and cons to both. I'll have to get used to using hashtags here.

The problem with Diaspora's ignore function is something my alterego goes into here https://pluspora.com/posts/908112

@David Lazarus welcome aboard! We are so sorry you had a rough start. But thanks to the community for stepping up for David.

@Tony Steele - Quite a dilemma.

@Nathan Weaver - Thanks again! No worries about the German Nationalist (Theaitetos).

It may keep me from spending much time on any Diaspora pod. I require content control. The things I write about are important to me.

@Tony Steele between curating how you post and actve moderation, you should be ok.

Sidenote to all in this thread, please remember when using #Hashtags that they only work in primary posts for the search function and not i comments.

Also remember to enter hashtags with a Capital Letter at start (example : #Technology) as this allows people with screen readers to navigate better, the software functions from what we have been told, do not work predictably when they encounter a hashtag that is not capitalized.

@Cass M is definitely correct, @Tony Steele. Moderating threads you start and using your ignore list is the best way to keep sane.

@Tony Steele - I too publish a lot of posts on topics that are important to me.

@Joseph Teller - Interesting tip. I'll try to keep that in mind. I haven't always capitalized the first letter in hashtags on G+. Especially for one's like #fractal and #abstractart. I'll try to remember to do that here.

If you post publicly, then even the people you ignore can comment on those posts. Comments that are visible to everyone but you. You set yourself up to be the butt of many, many jokes that way. BBS software worked similarly, and I fought for better moderation tools on that software for a long time before giving up on BBSs entirely. Without the ability to exclude misuse and trolling voices from your works, you are better off just publishing on other platforms that you retain control of and not wasting time and effort dealing with software that isn't set up to benefit authorship.

I will not be ignoring anyone so long as the ignore function works the way it does now on Diaspora. This is going to limit my willingness to deal with the voices I cannot exclude from my feed.

I think common courtesy and keeping to polite protocol is something that most people here respect. To appear on a #newhere post and have an open discussion on religion (or whatever) and drag the topic so far off thread is not, in my mind, the right thing to do.

I think anyone who "feeds a troll" on any thread will definitely have problems in trying to keep their posts free from abusive comments

The system of ignoring is far from perfect but people have informed me that most people in the Fediverse get along very well anyway and this seems to be supported by the wonderful support David has received on this thread.

That said David, a very good friend, is more than capable of dealing with such situations. He is more intelligent and better qualified than I will ever be and will be an asset to Pluspora if he decides to stay

Well, he's definitely off to a good start. I only got two comments on my #Newhere post. ;-)

@Tony Steele - Well, I guess I might as well unignore the troll for the time being because I plan to post public. After about the first year or so, I always posted public on G+. I figure that I have nothing to hide. Well, OK, there were a few exceptions where I wanted to have a "private" conversation between one or two other people. Nevertheless, the vast majority of my posts were public.

@Dave Sutton - I appreciate you compliments. However, I will admit that trolls do occasionally ruffle my feathers. I generally try to keep my cool though. Even when outright insulted. I'm happy that you consider me a friend.

As for staying here, it's likely. MeWe's interface is too busy with all of the chat functionality and other nonsense. I'll probably keep the account there and check in once in a while, but this will probably be my main venue and youme.social my secondary.

@David Lazarus I created an account back in October and all my posts here were public (the same as I did on G+). Until now I haven't had a single issue with trolls etc. Perhaps I was lucky.

@Eric Buijs - Good to know. :^)

@David Lazarus... How can someone who has put up with me since 2011 on G+ not be a good friend.

If you are using Chrome I find the Diaspora Optimiser works well
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/diaspora-optimizer/mkikpnediddhpamaahceedjpjciphkpk?hl=en

@Eric Buijs but you're not on pluspora. The Trolls have taken a very specific Dislike to pluspora denizens because we lean to the Left politically and socially and came in as a huge number of folks all at once that were in their minds an immigration threat to their nasty boys club of hate that they were churning out.

You post mostly on tech/software subjects, not on politics, social justice, current event awareness and such and so are not a target for their hate.

Oh and no one will mistake your identity for being of a cultural/racial/ethnic background that they hate. You get some 'Privilege' by your name and appearance to not be assaulted by them verbally.

@Dave Sutton - Firefox is my default browser. I do use Chrome occasionally though. As for being a friend, I appreciate the compliment. I've always seen you as an interesting person. Sadly, Google's algorithms often "hid" many of your posts from me. It's crazy, really. I have a Quiet circle and I see more posts from people in that circle sometimes than my Friends circle. If memory serves, I think you are in at least three circles of mine. Probably redundant, but that's OK.

@Joseph Teller...I'm on Pluspora and have had very little attention from any trolls, it did annoy me that they were using some of my favourite hashtags but in that case it was easily sorted by using the ignore option.

I think I have seen one post by you (a graphic of the Trump with lettuce in his mouth) that might be considered political of the sort that would draw their attention... and you're a Dave, so you are automatically considered to be part of the Conspiracy Of Daves.

@Joseph Teller... I rarely post anything political but my last post may be considered "spamming"
https://pluspora.com/posts/d87bd3f027020137cfb1005056264835

Yeah but I suspect most folks would take it as satire spamming.... a grey area....

@David Lazarus... I apologise if I have gone slightly off topic but in my case you can blame my age.
@Joseph Teller... Sadly I have too many grey areas

@Joseph Teller I see, the immigrants are taking over D*. Perhaps a wall can keep them out. XD.

Yeah I know... its crazy but it's one of the many things they told me... we folks on pluspora are horrible immigrants....

@Tony Steele

Welcome here :)

Are you sure your #newhere post is public?
I'm asking because I can't see it when I go to your profile.

Tony's Newhere was about 2 months ago :

Tony's Newhere Post

@Dave Sutton - Some people are sticklers for OT comments. I don't mind when a post organically goes off topic. As long as it's free of Glyphosate and neonicotinoids. 😃

Yeah, that's it. lol

Back in the day, before the Web, when we ran BBS systems, there was a term many of us used for threads that wandered so far off their original topic and just kept going ; Greek Restaurant Threads.

This came out of a thread (which ended up involving a hundred or so people and spanning most of a year) which originally started on a networked BBS I ran that started with a conversation about Good Greek Restaurants in New England.

It eventually changed so many times over that time that almost none of the participants had been in the original conversation or why it was titled that at the top of the thread as it went thru dozens of twists and turns and ended up a tech discussion on cross-platform computer networking software modifications and fixes to deal with dead end or dropped out nodes in systems that worked thru a telephone tree data transfer systems and a supplemental short wave ham radio data transfer.

The Hard part was closing the thread as everyone was enjoying the various discussions that came up inside of the one long continuing thread.

@Joseph Teller...The Greek restaurant thread would have intrigued me as I love Greek food and have been to some of the best Greek restaurants in Cyprus thanks to very good Greek Cypriot friends. I speak a little Greek as well. Maybe someone should start such a thread here, I would definitely participate

🙂I'm also a great fan of Greek Food. I used to live in Lowell MA which at the time had a wonderful Greek neighborhood, numerous places to eat, grocery stores, etc. Several places that did the multi-course meals with live entertainment and belly dancers etc.

Later I moved back into the 128 belt, and we had some great Greek, Armenian and even some Persian places (which have similar cuisines).

Now the area has all changed. Can't find decent place with 5 miles of where I live and that's my absolute mobility range these days.

@Joseph Teller... The nearest place for us is Maidstone, about a ten mile journey and we always do it by train so as to be able to have a few ouzo and ice. I absolutely love sheftalia (Greek Cypriot ) and have even made my own

I can make some dishes, but can't always get the ingredients for the rest. Some things you need to buy pre-made as the ingredients are imports. Add in the way we have problems locally even with common things (olives have skyrocketed in price thanks to Trump, for example) and its not easy. Lamb/mutton is only available locally for about 1 month year, for example. I hate to say it but where I live is now halfway to a being food desert. Most of our food is from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, both of which are edging upward in costs as they are at war with each other Nationally.

@Joseph Teller...Brexit could affect food prices here but it could also cause a shortage of sperm
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/no-deal-brexit-could-cause-13130489

Oh I know the potential horror show that you folks in the UK may be facing are just that, especially on many medical supplies and fresh food. I've heard rumor that you may actually end up facing rationing again for some items because of import problems from the continent.

@Dave Sutton @Joseph Teller - Man, I really have to get used to using @ instead of + for tagging people! I too enjoy Greek food. Alas, I haven't been to a great Greek restaurant in southeastern VA. There were a few in Broward County, FL. Great restaurants are one of the only things I miss about south FL. Brexit aside, I think a small village in southern England would suit me better than where I currently reside. I doubt it will happen in this lifetime though.

The best Greek Cypriot restaurant is about an hour and half drive from us so we often have a long weekend holiday there
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g8147352-d2145948-Reviews-Demetrios-Greatstone_Kent_England.html

I have been having a good sort out on G+ and look what I found from 2012

@Dave Sutton - Looks like a nice place. That's from 2012? I didn't think I had my beard quite that short then. Maybe I'm thinking of 2013.

@David Lazarus...I'm not going to argue, I have been deleting loads of stuff and saving just the good bits and my G+ account has been stripped down to the basics.
The Way Back machine is archiving many public posts on G+ and I did not want my work, some of which is stale to say the least to be included but I did want to stay and watch you clinging to the sinking ship as it went down

@Dave Sutton - I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. It's going to be strange to possibly post something on April 1st only to have it disappear the next day. I did a backup at the beginning of the month. I'll just have to let all newer posts disappear. Or maybe get saved by the Way Back Machine. Who knows? I guess it will be a roll of the dice.

@David Lazarus...If the way back machine captures web pages like it has with some of my old work you will find missing image and broken links but it does give a very good idea of what things were like

@Dave Sutton - Kind of like partial fossilized remains of long dead creatures from a distant era.

@David Lazarus...Exactly, Fascinating stuff.

I haven't posted on G+ since https://plus.google.com/+AnthonySteelerant/posts/D1BM3QKJHpu

@Dave Sutton - 👍

@Tony Steele - I wish the shut down was a cruel April Fool's joke.

@joseph_teller@pluspora.com, @Tony Steele, thats strange.

When I access Tony's profile from Geraspora, I see this:

If I access Plusspora directly I see this:

And if I access his profie page directly:

I think this is once again a problem with the Federation...

So then, welcome here, @Tony :-)

@Joseph Teller It is not the first letter that needs to be capitalized but the first letter of every subsequent word in a multi-word hashtag. So, use camel case. Diaspora’s hashtag search will resolve all capitalized and uncapitalized/camel-case tags to the same thing. So, results from both #thisHastag and #thishastag will show up in the same search but screen readers can only parse the first one.

Thank you for the additional information @alysonsee (Fca) I was working from data from someone else's post a few weeks back and didn't know there was a distinction.

How do screen readers react to hyphens and underscores? I see a lot of folks using these as well when the post (examples : #Current_Events and #Current-Events)

@alysonsee (Fca) @Joseph Teller - First, what's a screen reader? Second, why doesn't it operate in a more logical fashion? Say, either with all words capitalized #LikeThis or with the first word capitalized #Likethis. Also, what about software names such as #JWildfire? Or #IncendiaNext?

Screen readers are used by people with sight impairments of various sorts to read the text on the screen. They are a fairly common software tool so that folks with cataracts, various other eye conditions and levels of blindness can access modern technology like phones, tablets and computers (in combination with voice control units and tools).

I tend to be sensitive to try to adapt to them as I have my own vision impairments (not yet to the point where I need use of a screen reader) from cataracts. I can get along with increased magnification settings on browsers and such at present but lots of other folks depend on them to navigate the internet.

Different software packages operate differently and not all are available on all platforms.

In years past (like when I was in high school) I had a friend (who has since passed years ago) that I used to correspond with thru cassette tape exchanges of letters... I also occasionally would take the time to record articles and short stories for him that were not otherwise available at the time from the libraries for the blind.

I also worked for a couple of years for a company that produced veri-speed recorders that were used by the Perkins School for the Blind (now just known as the Perkins School) so that much longer works could be recorded at much slower speeds to do books on tape. (This long before most of the modern digital revolution).

I guess some day it will be a kind of 'paying forward' that I did back then when my own eyes get too bad to use the kind of tech we have.

@Joseph Teller - Oh, text to speech. Cassette letters. That's innovative. Or was back in the day. I'd love to work for a company where I felt like my job had meaning rather than simply being a source of income. As unbelievable as it might seem, I've been unemployed for more than six years. Long, sad story. Still, had you asked me five years ago if I'd be unemployed for more than six years, I'd have said, "Heck no! I'll find something."

@David Lazarus you need to capitalize the first letter of every word because otherwise you might be posting about your #therapist and really mean #theRapist (or vice versa). Or, more famously, when Thatcher died, people used the hashtag #nowthatcherisdead, and loads of other people thought that Cher had died.

@Joseph Teller I don't have a screen reader to test this but I would think that it would read the hyphen outloud like #current-events would be "current dash events" or even "current minus events".

One person on my team at work uses a screen reader and I see how she is constantly at a disadvantage when software makers and content writers don't stop to think about these things. It has made me really appreciate those that do.

@alysonsee (Fca) - OK. That makes more sense. Thanks.

@Passagier 451 Thanks for the screenshots. If you want to post them to my share of Frac's breakdown of the ignore problem, that would be fine by me. It's interesting that none of my public posts appear in the public (on other instances or pods) but only appear when you go to my profile. Makes you wonder about the usefulness of public posts.

@David Lazarus @alysonsee (Fca) @Joseph Teller I occasionally use a screen reader myself even though my sight is correctable with eyeglasses. This is because the back and forth movement of my eyes can cause vertigo, and is quite tiresome. https://ranthonysteele.com/2015/02/treating-menieres-its-symptoms/

@Tony Steele - Yes, even my wife has found it useful at times.

@Tony Steele I read your blog post, and I’m wondering if Meniere’s might explain my dad’s bouts of vertigo. He is also hard of hearing. Thanks for sharing this information, and I’m sorry that you have had to go through this.

@alysonsee (Fca) Only an ENT doctor can determine if someone has the disease. I'd have him get checked out.

I hope you enjoy this site @David Lazarus I much prefer it to Facebook, etc.

@Eileen - I think it will work out. Yeah, I abandoned FB in 2009. I have a "stub" account because I have at least one app that requires it.

I'm curious how many people here would recommend using the Diaspora app for Android. I currently access Pluspora via FireFox even on my tablet. I'm asking because I see that the app doesn't get the best of reviews.

The chrome interface is perfectly acceptable to me. I also access Mastodon through chrome.

@Tony Steele - Do you have a CSS that makes Pluspora two columns? If so, what version? I have one but it causes a delay when I type; especially on my tablet. So, I had to disable it there.

On the phone it's just one column. Mastodon is three columns on the desktop but Pluspora is still just one column. I have no idea, in other words.

@Tony Steele - OK. I have an add on that allows me to use a CSS for Pluspora. However, I think the CSS is causing delays for some reason. Significant delays. Up to about two minutes for long comments. Thus, I had to disable it on my tablet. The desktop version isn't as bad. It's tolerable.

CSS is one of those things I should probably learn but probably won't learn. If past experience is any kind of signal of future performance. I tend to use whatever program I'm using straight out of the box and not try to alter it to fit some ideal I have in my head. Makes it easier to start at a run when the boss takes your old CAD system away and gives you a new one with a vanilla installation on it, for example. I like the new photo, just FYI.

@Tony Steele - I can agree with you in many respects. Thanks. @Dave Sutton is a magician. I'll post the original photo soon.

@David Lazarus Welcome to the Federation!

@JB Carroll - Thanks!