sdfpubnix

No worries. The Fediverse is a complicated beast 🙂. My understanding is that the @ symbol is a way of directly responding to that person and can also be used by others who see the post to actually identify that person. So say you have 20 followers - when you create a post all of your followers would see it and the person you contacted with the @ symbol.

But if you’re wanting to mention that person or bring more attention to them for a wider audience, then you would need to use # with words that are closely associated with said person.

For example, you could create a post to mention SDF as so: “If you’re interested in #retrotech and #Unix like systems, then I would recommend checking out @SDF.”

In this example, you would want to use relevant hashtags to reach a wider audience, and you’d want to tag the correct person with the @ symbol so people could connect with them.

At least, that’s how I would go about it. Hope this helps.