Diaspora/Diaspora

Click “My aspects” in the side-bar from a stream view and click the pencil icon by the aspect you want to delete, or go to your Contacts page and select the relevant aspect. Then click the trash icon in the top right of the page.

A mention is a link to a person’s profile page that appears in a post. When someone is mentioned they receive a notification that calls their attention to the post.

Type the “@” sign and start typing their name. A drop-down menu should appear to let you select them more easily. Note that it is only possible to mention people you have added to an aspect.

Since version 0.7.0.0, yes! You can mention someone in a comment the same way you would do it in a post, by typing “@” and then start typing their name. Please note that when you comment on a post which is not public, you can only mention users who have already interacted with the post.

A pod is a server running the diaspora* software and connected to the diaspora* network. “Pod” is a metaphor referring to pods on plants which contain seeds, in the way that a server contains a number of user accounts. There are many different pods. You can add friends from other pods and communicate with them. There’s no need to open an account on different pods! One is enough – in this way, you can think of a diaspora* pod as similar to an email provider. There are public pods, private pods, and with some effort you can even run your own.

I just joined a pod, how can I find people to share with?

If you want to invite your friends to join diaspora*, use the invitation link or the email link in the side-bar. Follow #tags to discover others who share your interests, and add those who post things that interest you to an aspect. Shout out that you’re #newhere in a public post.

You can search for people by entering their username or their diaspora* name (the name that is shown on their profile). If neither of these methods work, enter their full diaspora* ID (username@podname.org). If your search doesn’t work the first time, it could be due to network latency. Try it again.

If you point your mouse at the top of a post, an X appears on the right. Click it to hide the post and mute notifications about it. You can still see the post if you visit the profile page of the person who posted it.

diaspora* uses a simplified system called %{markdown}. The publisher has buttons to make it easy to format your text. If you want to format your post manually, you can find the full Markdown syntax %{here}. The preview tab means you can see how your message will look before you share it. Remember that you can’t edit it once posted, so use the preview to make sure it’s perfect before pressing Share!

If you want to include an image stored on your computer in your post, click the little camera icon at the bottom of the publisher. You can also drag and drop an image, or multiple images, from your computer onto that icon. If you want to insert an image from the web into your post, click the image button on the top of the publisher, which will create the Markdown code for you.

You can usually just paste the URL (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnnnnnnnnnn ) into your post and the video or audio will be embedded automatically. The sites supported include: YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr and a few more. diaspora* uses oEmbed for this feature. If you post a direct link to an audio or video file, diaspora* will embed it using standard HTML5 player. We’re supporting more media sources all the time. Remember to always post simple, full links – no shortened links; no operators after the base URL – and give it a little time before you refresh the page after posting for seeing the preview.

What if I'm sharing my post with a connected service with a smaller character count?

In that case you should restrict your post to the smaller character count (140 in the case of Twitter; 1000 in the case of Tumblr), and the number of characters you have left to use is displayed when that service’s icon is highlighted. You can still post to these services if your post is longer than their limit, but the text will be truncated on those services with a link to the post on diaspora*.

Posts by people you are sharing with, which come in two types: public posts and limited posts shared with an aspect that you are part of. To remove these posts from your stream, simply stop sharing with the person.

Public posts containing one of the tags that you follow. To remove these, stop following that tag.

Public posts by people listed in the community spotlight. These can be removed by unchecking the “Show community spotlight in stream?” option in the Account tab of your Settings.

Your public posts will appear in the streams of anyone following you. If you included #tags in your public post, anyone following those tags will find your post in their streams. Every public post also has a specific URL that anyone can view, even if they’re not logged in – thus public posts may be linked to directly from Twitter, blogs, etc. Public posts may also be indexed by search engines.

Comments, likes, and reshares of public posts are also public. Any logged-in diaspora* user and anyone else on the internet can see your interactions with a public post.

What happens when I deselect one or more aspects in the left-hand column when making a public post?