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Mastodon Renaming “Toots” to “Posts”
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoWhere does it say in the discussion that it was accepted? Someone suggested that it be done, and most seem to be against and no conclusion has been reached at the bottom, as far as I can tell.
- tosh 6y agoGargron is the lead developer of Mastodon
- xiaq 6y agoAFAICT the PR author is actually the #1 developer of Mastodon and also authored the original change of renaming "posts" to "toots".
- kgwxd 6y agoIt shows "Changes Approved" at the bottom. I've never done any collaboration work on github, does that mean it's happening?
- ufo 6y agoIt means that another mastodon developer (ykzts) reviewed and approved the code. However, the commits haven't been merged to the main branch yet.
- detaro 6y agono, that just means someone has given approval. The more relevant bit to "will this be merged" is that Gargron is pretty much the BDFL of Mastodon.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- FalconSensei 6y agoMastodon is open source, but Gargron 'owns' it and does most of the dev. He does what he wants, and he approves or not what other people want to do
- imgabe 6y agoAs someone who doesn’t use Mastadon, I immediately went to the toots -> farts connection. I get that a Mastadon is an elephant, elephants trumpet or “toot”, so, toot is a post. A lot of people are going to think of farts though.
- myself248 6y agoI didn't realize they were meant to be trumpets, I thought it was a deliberate lambasting of the implied quality of tweets or whatever. Huh. Posts it shall be.
- LegitShady 6y ago>I thought it was a deliberate lambasting of the implied quality of tweets You are not alone
- bscphil 6y agoLikewise, I've never heard it used in a different way. At best, in my head, it was an onomotopoeia that could be used for the sound a kazoo or paper trumpet makes... but usually a fart.
- skierguy 6y agoSame. As an American, I would be much less likely to use or spread good word about a product that centered around the act of "tooting". Our culture sees the word as silly, childish, and a bit gross. I could get used to it eventually, but if it's the first thing I see about the product, I'm probably going to find something else to use that doesn't make me think of farting or introduce fart terminology into my everyday word choice.
- tarboreus 6y agoYes. If you wanted to be charitable, the other connotation is tooting your own horn, which isn't that great either. Bragging is better than farts, though.
- inopinatus 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoThis is very mature of them. (Now maybe i can stop giggling when someone mentions tooting, i mean.. "posting" stuff on mastodon.)
- quesera 6y agoI approve. No one asked me, but if they had, I'd have opined that the pre-cuting of your nomenclature is usually the result of too much time spent thinking about branding and not enough time building features. Note that "tweet" was spawned organically by the community, and Twitter did not adopt the word formally for a couple years after it was in popular use.
- bogwog 6y ago> is usually the result of too much time spent thinking about branding and not enough time building features. Uh, I think you might have it backwards there. The Mastodon folks probably didn't spend enough time thinking about branding.
- marcinzm 6y agoI feel it's more that they spent too much thinking about branding but they were just not very good at it.
- yifanl 6y agoIt was done entirely on the whims of a joke 5 years ago when mastodon was at single-server scale: https://mastodon.social/@Hbomberguy/146524 https://mastodon.social/@Hbomberguy/146524
- Uehreka 6y agoI’m pretty sure there are still some people who were on Twitter early, are grumpy that “tweet” was what caught on, and still say “toot” in regards to posting Twitter statuses.
- h0l0cube 6y ago> Note that "tweet" was spawned organically by the community It took the community to tell Twitter the obvious: > twitter v. (of a bird) give a call consisting of repeated light tremulous sounds. > tweet n. a chirping note. Seems that a 3rd party application popularised the term, avoiding yet another faux-pas: > One Twitter developer, Blaine Cook, had been testing the beta releases of Twitterrific. Early that month, Cook sent Hockenberry an email suggesting changing the word “twit” to “tweet.” Hockenberry immediately made the change. > twit n. a silly or foolish person. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-origin-of-the-word-tweet-2013-7?nojs=1 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-origin-of-the-word-tw...
- bscphil 6y ago> The word “toot” is a part of mastodon, it fits, people know what you mean. If you take that away you take away a part of mastodon’s soul. Proof people will react dramatically to basically any change, I guess. More importantly, as Blikkentrekker has pointed out, this hasn't been merged yet, and in fact from the comments seems to be very unpopular. Possibly it won't be merged at all.
- ggggtez 6y ago> people know what you mean If someone tells me "hey wanna toot with me" I certainly don't think I'd have a clue what they meant.
- ragnese 6y agoIf someone said "I tweeted about that" 15 years ago, would you have had a clue? If someone said "I Googled it" 20-whatever years ago?
- oh_sigh 6y agoI assumed you were referencing some obscure philosopher, but it turns out Blikkentrekker is just a hn username. I guess it's still the case!
- okareaman 6y agoToot (Oxford Languages): a snort of a drug, especially cocaine. "he still likes a toot"
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoI'll be sad to see "toots" go away. I understand it was unintentional (I believe an interview with the creator on a podcast stated: "As for 'toots'...[he] just thought that was the sound an elephant makes."), but as a commentary on the average quality of discourse on social media, it was brilliant.
- imwillofficial 6y agoBut it wasn’t commentary. It was His mistake. Everyone knows that Elephants go VROOOOONNANMMMMMMOHFJFF Right? No? Nobody?
- bigyikes 6y agoI know little about Mastodon, but it seems like somebody went out of their way to make the cringiest sounding product possible. “Hey man, I just tooted on mastodon!” It really sounds like parody. I hope I am just missing the point. You might say this is a superficial criticism, but I think naming is important when it comes to social appeal. At least, it becomes important when the naming has gone so horribly wrong. If they’re changing course there might be hope yet.
- catillac 6y agoThis is, superficially and stupid as it was, why I never really felt comfortable recommending “FogBugz” bug tracker from Fog Creek software. No disrespect to any capability it may have had, but I couldn’t bring myself to recommend something called that in serious conversation.
- dsabanin 6y agoI just googled Mastodon, and I think you're right. Now I'm going to go tweet about it.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoEven when 'google' as a verb was brand new, I don't remember it sounding awkward.
- jjtheblunt 6y agoand "go ogle" actually has the approximate meaning that "google" took on as a verb (phrase).
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoI don't find “to toot” sound any stranger than “to tweet”.
- imwillofficial 6y agoIn the US, “toot” is not only a word used for something you might do with a horn. It also means “a fart.” A hilariously bad name if your humor is like that of a child. (Mine is)
- agogdog 6y agoI prefer to opt for the more fun option, but it's generally an immaterial change.
- solarkraft 6y agoHow sad to see this piece of culture fading (or maybe it's not?). Luckily the Mastodon code base is merely a recommendation and lots of instances use custom names. I can see many sticking with toots.
- toastal 6y agocybre.space uses "ping" to fit the retro hacker theme
- egypturnash 6y agoThey’re still gonna be “rars” on my instance, whatever Garg does on his.
- ragnese 6y agoLame. There's nothing wrong with something being a little bit funny and irreverent. Not everything needs corporate marketing polish. I assumed it was making fun of Twitter. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't intentionally using "toot" as a double entendre.
- not2b 6y agoClassic bikeshed discussion; it's so much easier to argue over "toot" than actually fix technical issues, so everyone will chime in.
- causality0 6y agoReminds me of back when Twitter was getting popular and everyone realized "twatted" was no longer an appropriate term.
- whall6 6y agoImagine Mastodon was planning this all along. A card up their sleeves for increasing adoption. They named them toots (which is silly to begin with and likely captures attention) JUST so they could change it to posts and get more eyes on a hn post like this. Genius marketing.
- jpm_sd 6y agoAll social media activity should be called "wanks"* *including this post
- jkhdigital 6y ago> Videos on YouTube aren't yeets This guy needs an open mic
- zzo38computer 6y agoThis change would be better probably, although, aren't the messages called "notes" in the W3C terminology? Of course, the verb is "post", and I think the noun should be "notes" to be consistent with the W3C terminology probably (which can reduce confusion, I hope).
- gargron 6y agoYes, the objects are notes, but the verb is create. That being said, I don't see why the underlying terminology which is essentially more like a programming language keyword has to seep through to the UI.
- zzo38computer 6y agoO, you are right; the verb is "create"; I forgot.
- HomeDeLaPot 6y agoAww. I liked "toot", it was kinda whimsical and fun. "Post" sounds a bit dull and corporate by contrast.
- yborg 6y agoIt's amusing that the issue is the use of "toot" to refer to a post, which in English is used in the standard idiom of "toot your own horn", directly relevant to the platform's purpose as a social medium. Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room, is the completely non-sequitur name for the platform - 'Mastodon', best known as an Ice Age giant fauna and also the name of an American heavy metal band that is still one of the top hits on Google for that name. Whatever they call posts on the platform, the fact is that its usage will remain identically at a few percent of Twitter's.
- dariusj18 6y agoRelevant Duke Ellington - Toot Toot Tootie Toot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wazevw-uIDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wazevw-uIDA I also cannot get around the fart connotation.