I think it has more to do with the federated nature of the platform. If you are ingesting content from Mastodon for example, # is a hashtag in a post, and you can tag someone with their username with the @ symbol.
#hashtags don’t automatically work on Lemmy, but if I cross post this comment to another federated service (mastodon etc.) the hashtags should work there. #lemmy @knova@knova@dartboard.social
probably because a hashtag is already a thing that means something else in other apps. making hashtag mean a community here would give it 2 meaning depending on the app and that’s not user friendly cause people will make mistakes if they move between apps.
therefore a new character was chosen for communities to avoid such confusion
A hashtag fits more for communities than an exclamation mark.
hashtags are for hashtags
What kind of purpose does a hashtag have on Lemmy?
For one, it makes the post searchable on Mastodon
I think it has more to do with the federated nature of the platform. If you are ingesting content from Mastodon for example, # is a hashtag in a post, and you can tag someone with their username with the @ symbol.
Edit: you can tag people here with @ too - such as @knova@knova@dartboard.social
So that leaves a new symbol for community linking
A hashtag for community seems much better than an exclamation mark.
You already said that
But you didn’t say why Lemmy does not use hashtags for communities.
I explained that hashtags use the pound symbol already, and usernames use the @ symbol. Communities needed their own symbol.
Okay, but how does a hashtag work? Can you give an example of a hashtagged word where Lemmy uses a hashtag?
#hashtags don’t automatically work on Lemmy, but if I cross post this comment to another federated service (mastodon etc.) the hashtags should work there. #lemmy @knova@knova@dartboard.social
Okay, we have:
#for tagging something@for usernames!for communitiesBut does a question mark have any purpose here?
probably because a hashtag is already a thing that means something else in other apps. making hashtag mean a community here would give it 2 meaning depending on the app and that’s not user friendly cause people will make mistakes if they move between apps.
therefore a new character was chosen for communities to avoid such confusion