Diaspora/Diaspora

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.

No, when you reshare a public post it automatically becomes one of your public posts. To share it with certain aspects, copy and paste the contents of the post into a new, limited post.

No, it is not possible to reshare any private post. This is to respect the intentions of the original poster, who shared it only with a particular group of people.

What happens when I add someone to one of my aspects, or when someone adds me to one of their aspects?

Let’s say that Amy adds Ben to an aspect, but Ben has not (yet) added Amy to an aspect:

Ben will receive a notification that Amy has “started sharing” with Ben.

Amy will start to see Ben’s public posts in her stream.

Amy will not see any of Ben’s private posts.

Ben will not see Amy’s public or private posts in his stream.

But if Ben goes to Amy’s profile page, then he will see the private posts that Amy makes to the aspect that she has placed him in (as well as her public posts, which anyone can see there).

Ben will be able to see Amy’s private profile (biography, location, gender, birthday).

This is known as asymmetrical sharing. If and when Ben also adds Amy to an aspect then it would become mutual sharing, with both Amy’s and Ben’s public posts and relevant private posts appearing in each other’s streams, and Amy would be able to view Ben’s private profile. They would then also be able to send each other private messages.

Is there a list of people whom I have added to one of my aspects, but who have not added me to one of theirs?

No, but you can see whether or not someone is sharing with you by visiting their profile page. If they are, there will be a green tick next to their diaspora* ID. If they are not, there will be a gray circle.

Tags are a way to categorize a post, usually by topic. Searching for a tag shows all posts, both public and private, with that tag that you have permission to see. This lets people who are interested in a given topic find public posts about it.

A tag added to a comment will still appear as a link to that tag’s page, but it will not make that post (or comment) appear on that tag page. This only works for tags in posts.

After searching for a tag you can click the button at the top of the tag’s page to “follow” that tag. It will then appear in your list of followed tags in the left-hand menu. Clicking one of your followed tags takes you to that tag’s page so you can see recent posts containing that tag. Click on #Followed Tags to see a stream of posts that include any one of your followed tags. Posts containing that tag will also be included in your main stream.

Who are the people listed on the left-hand side of a tag page?

They are people who have listed that tag to describe themselves in their public profile.

This is not yet available directly through diaspora*, but some %{third_party_tools} have been written that might provide this.