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@Friendica Support hello, i would like some help please to understand how to solve my confusion about the "right" way to follow #hashtags, using #Channels ... or otherwise some better way.

i follow a large number of hashtags [as a glance at my profile would attest]. afaict / afaik, fediverse posts bearing these tags appear [or are supposed to] in my "Network" timeline [with "Everybody" Circle & "Latest posts" Channel selected].

of my many tags, possibly my most "important" ones are #AusPol, #FOSS, & #Linux. in order to be able to efficiently locate all posts with these tags each day, rather than have to meticulously scroll down the full "Network" timeline [which is dissipated via also having all the other tags, & all my Followed accounts' posts], in Settings i created three dedicated Channels [one for each of those tags, ofc]. then i added each of those custom Channels to my Timelines, in Display Settings.

however, the result is just hopeless; really disappointing & frustrating. over recent years i have had several Friendica accounts, ie, at several instances, & doing the above has never worked properly in any of them, not only my current instance.

using the AusPol Channel for example, as it is the worst by far, every time i check it, its most recent post is several hours old, & often as bad as 12 - 18 hours old, with numerous other posts entirely missing.

i say "missing" because otoh, reviewing my Saved Search for #AusPol shows all these other posts, which therefore also appear, buried, in my full "Network" timeline.

over the months & years in exasperation, i have revisited the dedicated Channels in Settings, & for the Circle/Channel field have tried each of Latest posts, Latest Creation, Global community, & Latest activity, but none of them has solved the problem [indeed, a few make it even worse!].

please, what am i doing wrong? what aspect of Friendica's Settings have i been consistently misunderstanding / misusing, that causes this disappointment?
Question is, how the channel definition looks like.
@Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ i do not understand your question / statement. if there is more info i can give you, pls help me understand what that might be, so that i can help you to help me. thanks.
What fields in the channel definition have you entered?

Also: The channels only look at starting posts, not comments. So your result will vary between following hashtags and creating a channel with tags.
With this setting you won't see any posts that haven't got attached pictures, videos or audio files. Also you should use "global community" as the channel to base the channel on. The channel "Latest posts" that you are using here shows only posts that you already have got in your timeline.
@Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦
With this setting you won't see any posts that haven't got attached pictures, videos or audio files

OMZ! clearly i had no idea... i thought by ticking those boxes i was merely including all such posts along with text posts, not as you said actively excluding all text-only posts... that's a calamitous misunderstanding! that part of the Settings now desperately needs explanatory text there to guide users like me who had no way of knowing what you just explained.
should use "global community"

thank you! i shall now change that in all three of my custom channels [& ditto untick the three boxes in each].

so now i shall be very keen to see if, tomorrow morning, the behaviour has become much better 🀞 🀞 🀞

ps:
"Latest posts" that you are using here shows only posts that you already have got in your timeline

well ok, but i repeat part of my OP... atm, & historically, HEAPS of my followed-tag posts that are in my timeline [albeit "lost" amongst all the hundreds of other posts], simply never would also appear in my applicable custom channel for that tag. that said, now that you've also told me about those three ticked boxes, maybe that was causing what i just mentioned...?
Just try it out. You should already see the outcome of your changes, since channel posts are collected based on the current definition. You don't need to wait for some hours.
@Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ haha, you beat me to it... i just came back here to excitedly post a positive update... it is now working much much much better! it is now close enough to my originally envisaged ideal use-case as to be neither here nor there. finally, this is great! thx so much for --again-- solving one of my Friendica puzzles πŸ€—πŸ™‚
@Droppie [opensoc] Thanks for having asked. I had understood the three checkboxes as declaring things not to be left out and not as a filter for things having to be a part of a posting to be included in the channel, too. Life-long learning. πŸ™‚
@Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦
@Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ @Friendica Support @Droppie [opensoc]
I suspect that he is concerned about the fact that the posts in the channels arrive delayed. I’ve been observing the same thing since I’ve been using these channels.
@Thomas fwiw... she. it's not just delayed, it's never appearing at all [or, if they happen to appear >24 hours late, then i regard that as "never", coz my desire / use-case is to use these custom channels first thing in the morning to see what happened overnight, then periodically check them during the day for subsequent new posts on those tags]. by the time tomorrow morn comes around, i'm then looking for the new batch, not still wondering where all those missing ones yesterday got to. how it actually works atm entirely breaks that desire. my biggest confusion about this is that i know my instance is able to access all those posts, coz me doing that manual tag search proves it... so why does the custom channel, configured also for that tag, fail to find the same posts? and i repeat, this is NOT a criticism of my current instance; all my older Friendica instances also failed at this. @Michael πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

Content warning: follow #hashtags, using #Channels; or a better way?

Content warning: follow #hashtags, using #Channels; or a better way?

Content warning: follow #hashtags, using #Channels; or a better way?

Saved searches for tags don't work for this purpose?
@Marcus they work but are far less convenient than a custom channel. eg, my channel "FOSS" includes hashtags #Linux, #FOSS, #Firefox, #FirefoxNightly, #Thunderbird, #Arch, #ArchLinux, & several others. To do it manually just by my saved tag search links requites the tedium of having to do all those searches individually in series, not automatically in parallel as done by the channel.
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