Why did channels use #?
Why do email addresses use @?
Because.
A hashtag fits more for communities than an exclamation mark.
hashtags are for hashtags
What kind of purpose does a hashtag have on Lemmy?
For one, it makes the post searchable on Mastodon
I think it has more to do with the federated nature of the platform. If you are ingesting content from Mastodon for example, # is a hashtag in a post, and you can tag someone with their username with the @ symbol.
Edit: you can tag people here with @ too - such as @knova@knova@dartboard.social
So that leaves a new symbol for community linking
I’m on kbin, and to sub to a community on a lemmy instance, I have to replace the ! with a @, because that’s the actual underlying name, it seems. It’s a bit confusing.
A hashtag for community seems much better than an exclamation mark.
You already said that
But you didn’t say why Lemmy does not use hashtags for communities.
I explained that hashtags use the pound symbol already, and usernames use the @ symbol. Communities needed their own symbol.
Okay, but how does a hashtag work? Can you give an example of a hashtagged word where Lemmy uses a hashtag?
probably because a hashtag is already a thing that means something else in other apps. making hashtag mean a community here would give it 2 meaning depending on the app and that’s not user friendly cause people will make mistakes if they move between apps.
therefore a new character was chosen for communities to avoid such confusion
Why does this matter? I’m not aware of any meaning # has, outside of sheet music.
It can be used to denote pounds. Such as an item weighs 10#. There is a reason a lot of stuff did and still tells you to hit the pound sign on automated phone call menus.
Interesting. I’ve know of it as the pound symbol, but have never actually seen it used as such. I never put the two together.
It’s called an octothorpe you heathens
I assume because its like that on matrix, just kind of a symbol of the fediverse maybe to differentiate it
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My guess is to leave open the possibility of adding HashTag support within the app. YouTube hash HashTags that allow you to jump between channels… I could see something like that working.
