Re; Hashtags; Anyone can chime in on a topic; Can’t they already do that with an emailed comment as we have been doing here? Maybe it seems ‘nifty’, or is a short cut method of accomplishing the same action, while using less keystrokes. I still don’t see the big advantage. I’m not saying this as a challenge, this is something I will have to learn about on my own over time. Thank you though, for your explanation.
The point is everything is world-wide public. Email only goes to who you want it to. FR is accessible, but only seen by those who come here. Technically Twitter is too, but they managed to attract the world. FR only tags threads, and poorly at that. Hashtags let people mark a single post to a topic, easy to search for.
Example: find info about Bundy Ranch. FR: search thread titles & tags, get broad swaths. Twitter: every post is individually tagged.