```Datestodon — Fedi dating posts

[joscelyntransient@chaosfem.tw]

@alice Love this idea!!!

[adriano@lgbtqia.space]

@alice I think it's a bit too obscure. Even with your explanation I'm lost with MX4FXM. You're a mid-aged enby looking for... what? fem/enby/masc of any age group?

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@adriano yup. I decided not to use age as a filter on the poster's side, because 1. I don't want to add too many filter options and have the hashtags get super complicated, and 2. so it's not so full of old guys looking for 18yo girls.

[adriano@lgbtqia.space]

@alice one suggestion would be to not have overlapping letters. The M for Mid and Masc at the same time is...

(Also I did not get your intent there, I was trying to figure out the age group).

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@adriano Yeah. I agree overlapping letters is not ideal.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@BriBear it would be great if it was a pretty standard set of flags, but Friendstodon would designate looking for friends/gatherings, and Datestodon for romantic/dating.

[adriano@lgbtqia.space]

@alice "so it's not so full of old guys looking for 18yo girls."

One could argue that if they exist (they do, but in this particular setting I mean), at least the particular hashtag makes them really easy to identify, the problem would be upriver from this.

[loonling@lgbtqia.space]

@alice I like it! Maybe standardize some categories on what people are looking for? I don't want to regiment it *too* much, because that's how you take all the humanity out of it! But do you think some general categories would help? Or is that going too far?

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@loonling I'd want to design to encourage "good behavior", so I'm partial to broad categories and short descriptions that encourages people to read rather than use filters.

It would be nice if you could browse he main hashtag to find folx to reach out to, or even better, be in a conversation with folx and just check their profile for a #Datestodon pinned post or bio.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@loonling making it easily scrapable is a bad design, and I don't want it to turn into a numbers game. I'd want it to encourage folx who happen to be open to dating each other to interact with more intention, while not attracting people who are "cruising"—there are already enough sites for that.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@BriBear I've met so many people from Fedi over he last few years, and they've all been wonderful 🥰

[loonling@lgbtqia.space]

@alice These are all very good points, yes! Everything you've described here lends itself well to more organic discovery, something I appreciate when meeting people offline. I'm strongly in favor of systems that get people off of their devices and interacting with others IRL. Keeping it simple, organic, and messy (i.e. human) is the right approach here In retrospect, I agree that adding categories or the like would make it scrapable and I wouldn't want that, either. The apps are all about that kind of filtering and just. It feels so minmax-y if you get what I mean? Like using sliders to design a "perfect" partner.

That turned into a bit of a word salad ramble, but maybe there's something useful in it?

[lydiaschoch@mastodon.social]

@alice This is perfect!

[lydiaschoch@mastodon.social]

@BriBear @alice How soon can we start using the #Friendstodon hashtag because I am quite excited for it.

[dodothedev@front-end.social]

@alice
Dang it, mid. Now I feel old!

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@DodoTheDev 🫂

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@loonling I made some improvements and formatted it nicely for markdown (I hope ). Thanks for the feedback

[alreadydeadxd@infosec.exchange]

@alice seems cool

[quasit@beige.party]

@alice
Can we think of some different way to represent age? I'm not sure how many people will be willing to call themselves "Old". I presume that's what "O" stands for.

Perhaps Rare, Medium, and Well done?

[quasit@beige.party]

@alice

Do we want a unique hashtag prefix for locations, to differentiate dating locations from regular locations? So #FDBoston, for example, as opposed to #Boston?