As more people are abandoning X, again, perhaps my short introduction to Mastodon might be of use, if you'd like to share it with your friends?
-
@stefan Oh yeah, it's the page i translated into finnish
-
@Jarska96 Ah, yes, thank you so much!!
-
@stefan Good write-up! I was surprised to learn that I didn't know about Followgraph https://followgraph.vercel.app/ and disturbed to discover that my language was set to server default, and that indieweb.social does not rank on @AltTextHealthCheck
Some of the recommendations were people I was already following (1), but it looks like there are some real gems in there. Thanks
1. should it do that? I think that's a bug 🪲
-
@mcrocker Thank you, glad you find something useful in there!
-
@stefan Oh, this is amazing, but I do have one critique, when I got what the Fediverse is, and I feel ready to "join the fediverse" I get a list of links that point me to wiki pages, rather than select and instance/sign-up pages.
It felt a bit like a let down, even though I'm not sure if there is a good index for each software available.
-
@sheogorath Thank you!
And that is a fair critique. I myself have admitted before that I should've structured the site more around servers rather than platforms. The fact that the site has been translated to so many languages makes making big changes a bit more difficult, but I am definitely looking into how to best go about this.
Thank you so much for your feedback!
-
@stefan Honestly, I think there wouldn't be a need in change of the translation. It was just surprised that when I clicked on Pixelfed, I ended up on a wiki page, while I expected to end up on something like this: https://pixelfed.org/servers
-
@sheogorath I see what you're saying, that makes sense! Thank you!
-
@stefan You might want to add either the snazzy https://fediverse.party front page or directly - per the point by @sheogorath - the curated server list (max 5000 users, +other criteria) https://fediverse.party/en/portal/servers .
Two and a half million new Fediversizens in a month per https://fediverse.observer/dailystats - that's nearly a 20% jump over a month.
Welcome to everyone new :).
-
@boud @sheogorath Good advice, thank you!
And nice to see more joining and coming back!
-
@stefan I have signed up for more than one account on the "fediverse" but routinely get messages at the bottom of a reply stream telling me there are other replies I could see if I followed them...I click the link and then have to become a member of that server too...please explain how this is a fediverse?
-
@loran_hayden Right, so this is a technical limitation of the fediverse.
If you're interested, I wrote a bit about this on my blog, with a few links to browser plugins that can help with this, while the Mastodon team is looking into a permanent fix to this problem:
Lessons learned from running a single-person Mastodon instance | Stefan Bohacek
It's not for everyone, but worth a try!
(stefanbohacek.com)
Hope this helps!
-
@stefan thanks, but you're not explaining. Why am I even seeing these messages since I am a member of the fediverse and my posts should be seen by everyone everywhere in said fediverse?
-
@stefan I just keep hearing about this "fediverse" and I don't feel like I'm part of it.
-
@loran_hayden Right, so I mention in the article that your home server may not show you posts or full profiles of people it doesn't know about. I know this is a problem with Mastodon, not sure how much this is an issue on other fediverse platforms.
But you are absolutely right, this does seem to defeat the purpose of how the fediverse should work.
-
@loran_hayden I think it would be more accurate to say that yes, you can see anyone's post, but sometimes it requires a bit of work to interact with them. Luckily, some of the browser plugins I mentioned in the same article help with this, until Mastodon starts to handle this better.
-
@loran_hayden Ah, well let me tell you, this is even worse if you're on a smaller server, like myself.
The biggest problem we have in the fediverse is that everything is either crowd-funded, or a labor of love.
We don't have millions of dollars in funding, so missing features take a bit longer to arrive.
-
@loran_hayden And that's why Mastodon is a bit rough around the edges, and things are not as user-friendly as they should be. Yet!
I appreciate you giving this a try though, and hope your experience gets better!
-
@stefan Thanks for your replies. I hope you understand the reason I am frustrated.
-
@loran_hayden Oh absolutely, trust me. I have been pretty vocal about many of the fediverse's problems, both technical, and also cultural.
There are times when it feels like the fediverse is really not living up to its potential.
Still, I am very grateful to everyone not giving up on it, and sticking around to help build better, healthier communities.
And improvements are definitely being made! It's just...a really slow process.
