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Jasper BurnsGroups, part 3: Replying to a thread, and how conversations work
If you want to reply, just reply. It's good manners to mention whomever you're directly replying to, and even that only if you're replying to a reply. But you don't have to mention anyone to reach anyone. Even then, your reply will be boosted to everyone who has received the top post.
Even if you reply to Carol who has replied to Bob who has replied to Alice who has started a thread in the group.
Within Mastodon, you'd have to mention Carol so she receives and sees your reply, you'd have to mention Bob so he receives and sees your reply, you'd have to mention Alice so she receives and sees your reply.
Conversations on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte work much more like on Facebook: Your reply will go past Carol. Past Bob. Past Alice. Straight to the group account/channel. From there to Alice because she has started the conversation. And to Bob and Carol because they have received the quote-post of Alice's post. And to everyone else who has received the quote-post of Alice's post.
Now, how does everyone see your reply?
At this point, it's important to say that a Friendica feed or a Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte stream looks vastly different from a Twitter feed or a Mastodon timeline and much more like a Facebook feed. Again, that's because Friendica was a Facebook alternative long before Twitter clones became the default. And Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are direct descendants of Friendica with largely the same purpose. So no mimicking Twitter's behaviour here.
What does your Mastodon timeline look like? Single posts with no context. And more single posts with no context. You receive a new post, it immediately shows up at the top of your timeline as a single post with no context. You have no idea how many unread messages you have. You want to see the context of a post, you have to click and click and click.
Facebook doesn't show you single-post-with-no-context piecemeal. Neither do Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. They always show you entire conversations with the top post and with all comments.
Imagine your Mastodon timeline. But instead of single posts with no context, you always see entire conversations with the top post and all replies; that is, you actually only see the last three replies, but you can easily unfold the thread view and see everything.
Imagine whenever someone replies to a post that you already have in your timeline, you automatically receive that reply.
Imagine that you have a little counter of unread messages somewhere. When you receive a new post, the counter goes up by one. When you receive a new reply, the counter goes up by one. But neither that new post nor that new reply is automatically added to the top of your timeline.
Now you click the counter of unread messages. Out comes a list of unread messages. Not the messages proper. A list, including who sent them and, if that's the case, whom they reply to (not as in whom they directly reply to, as in Carol in the above example, but who wrote the top post, as in Alice in the above example).
You can click on any item in the list. Imagine you do. You will leave the timeline view. You will be shown only that one conversation with the top post and the comments. And the view will focus on the new comment and flag it as seen, and the counter of unread messages will go down by one. You can scroll through the conversation and see the entire context in which that reply was posted.
This is what Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups and Forte groups are geared towards. They aren't group add-ons to Mastodon, and they aren't geared towards integrating perfectly into Mastodon. Remember that Friendica groups are almost six years older than Mastodon itself.
I'm not sure how exactly Mastodon users receive replies from Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups or Forte groups. One thing is certain: They will not visibly mention you. Another thing is certain: They will send you replies regardless.
I can only guess what happens: You do get replies. But you get them as new posts in your timeline. And you have to scroll down your timeline until you stumble upon them. If you really want to participate in groups, if you really want to see everything that happens there, you'll have to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll down your timeline until you hit posts which you know you've seen before. You probably won't be notified about these replies.
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