The Ten Helpful Suggestions Of John Mastodon

1: Fill out your profile. It doesn’t have to include personal information, but it should give some indication about your vibe.

2: Pin an Introduction toot and use the #Introduction hashtag. Include some of your interests so like-minded people can find you.

3: Use hashtags. Hashtags not only make your toots more findable, but it also allows others to filter out toots on subjects that they would prefer to avoid. Use camelCase or PascalCase in hashtags. This will make it more readable for sighted users, and also help users that use screen readers. You can also follow a hashtag. Try following #Audrey.

4: Add AltText to your images. There are many blind Mastodon users. Providing AltText to your images makes them accessible, but also gives you an opportunity to give additional context. AltText is very important to much of the community, so much so that some will refuse to boost/share an image without it.

5: Use content warnings (CW) liberally, and combine with hashtags in the toot body. While a CW will hide the content, an accompanying hashtag will allow people to filter out that content entirely. For instance, a NSFW post should have NSFW in the content warning as well as a #NSFW hashtag in the body, because hashtags don’t work in the CW.

6: Follow liberally. Mastodon provides plenty of ways to curate your timeline, but first you need to follow people. Remember, if you decide that someone you followed posts content that isn’t for you, you can unfollow them, or set filters to hide the posts you don’t want to see. Try following @dgar now!

7: Support your instance. Toss a coin to your admin and moderators for all the work they do.

8: Be respectful. Polite and respectful discussion of supremely sensitive topics take place every day on Mastodon. There is no place for bigotry here. Trolls and bad actors are usually dealt with swiftly.

9: Be mindful of your privacy and security. Do not post sensitive or personally identifying information about yourself or anyone else, even in a DM or PM.

10: Participate! Boost posts you like. Boosting is how toots spread on Mastodon, so boost liberally. It makes you an active participant in what content is seen. You may see people say “You are the algorithm”.
Bookmark interesting stuff for later. Have fun! Meet interesting people! Listen to new music! Get involved in interesting discussions!
Share memes and toot bad jokes! Share your knowledge, stories, and art! Connect with people and make the world a better place!