Also I'm reading @GarethDennis's #HowTheRailwaysWillFixTheFuture on my train journeys today because it seemed the most appropriate book to bring with me. :)
For reasons no one is clear on, English people say someone is "sent to Coventry" to mean ostracised: not talking to the person, avoiding their company, and acting as if they no longer exist.
Today I'm technically being sent to Coventry for work, but it's because Coventry is a city where a thing is that I need to go look at.
The idiom, and its cathedral (rebuilt after WWII after being famously bombed to destruction), is all I know about Coventry so far.
my thought is that right now it's all or nothing in terms of when you use a "CW" your post will be hidden
if instead people can choose that only certain topics are default hidden and the rest aren't, then there's a lot less "but i don't want to hide this" stigma against using a subject line
not sure if this has been thought about before or if some other flavour of activitypub does it this way but i wonder if "CW"s would be better utilised if they were treated as email subject line and only defaulted to closed if a word in your custom blacklist appeared on it
i think that would push people to describe the content of posts much more if they're not implied to be opt-in, though this would also need a defacto "standardisation" of subjects, for example "uspol" vs "us politics"
My Fediverse Advice:
* Follow more people. No, even more people than that. Basically, if you find a real person and their posts are good follow 'em
* If you get a good reply to a post boost it. If you make a good reply to a post boost it. Replies are not visible in the feed unless you do this. As long as the post is an OK start to a conversation or interesting boost it.
* Write thoughtful replies. And if you put effort into a reply boost it or probably only the people tagged will see it.
Trans woman, bisexual, someone's fiancée, forever a programmer, poly, and former total mess