That's true, but those uses of the word are pretty obscure. I would say the most common meaning of "toot" in the UK is the noise a horn makes, especially a bicycle/car/train horn.
Some of us who have been on Mastodon for a few years now insist on calling them toots, despite the official renaming in the original Mastodon repo. A toot is the sound elephant friend (our mascot) makes with their trunk.
Also it's silly and all of the other silly associations you have with it are a plus. "Twitter", "tweet", "google", "facebook", "amazon", "apple", "mac", "tumblr", "kindle" are all also pretty stupid names we've just gotten used to, but "toot" is OUR stupid name, and we made it ours, and if its silliness delays the corporate takeover of Mastodon, that's a huge plus.
I don't like the idea of Twitter-like quoting. Linking to the original toot is fine, it's clear that there's a link.
The Twitter-like quoting was used way too much for abuse. It had legitimate uses, but the abuse it generates does not warrant the legitimate uses.
Plus, it always made things so weird to read.
2. The reply
1. The original
3. The replies to the reply
You say you find linking confusing right now, but it's just a matter of getting used again to the idea that links exist and can be followed, without always having a link preview. I find Twitter-quoting confusing because it messes up the order of the conversation.
This has been discussed to death on mastodon already. However recently the mastodon devs added this feature to their short list of what they are working on. (I think they said they are “exploring” it.)
Quote toots offer a functionality not offered by other functions, which is the ability to show two toots at once as well as notify the original toot owner of this activity. Linking another toot has a pretty horrible UX in comparison. Last time I clicked on a linked toot, it opened a new tab to view it, and then in order to click like on that toot I was instructed by the UI to copy the toot address to yet another mastodon window in to the search bar. An absolute mess.
Quote toots allow side discussions while allowing everyone to see what is being discussed. And they’re great when someone has a long thread and you want to pull out one piece to share with your followers and add context like “this piece of the puzzle is particularly important.”
The fact that it changes the order of the conversation is the point. Conversations fork in ways not always conducive to a reply-only view.
I primarily want quote toots so I can quote myself to start fresh threads that build on old ones. I did this all the time on Twitter where I posted a thread of updates for every evening that I worked on a project, with a new thread quoting the last one for each new evening. Since replies and links don’t show the other posts, it’s not as clear what I’m talking about when I link to an old toot and say “I made progress on this project tonight” given the awful UX on link toots.
The recent wave of Twitter immigration has reignited the quote-toot discussion. People mostly want a silly copy of a half-baked Twitter feature. If we get something like it in Mastodon, I hope it's better thought-out. For example, editing toots was done in an entirely sane way: it's just plain possible to edit toots, and if someone edits a toot you boosted, you get notified, so people can't fool you initially and then insert a completely different idea in your timeline.
Don’t want to start a side discussion here, but what I like about quote tweets is that I can see the quoted content without having to click out to another tab and go back and forth. Could probably handled with some auto-expanding by clients though.
Looking at this Safecast map, do you know how these values are collected? From the path it looks like it's some kind of mobile collection where user submit data? Are there people walking around with Geiger counters every day?
Can you tell me how to find other stations with the Safecast map?
Rosenthaler Platz station is just blue all-around on that map - maybe I'm doing something wrong?
It's pretty funny due to it's usage in UK slang. It can mean everything from smoking a cigarette, to snorting cocaine, to oral sex.