i think we need our own consortium of flagship servers
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scott freplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@seachanger probably. see you in august 2025 to have it again
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to scott f last edited by
@scott ha ha, well i do feel like i understand the terrain a lot better, which makes me slightly more willing to be an organizer in this space. also Erin and Darius's paper is out now, IFTAS has gained steam, and the need is still painfully there
i like your idea of starting with existing servers and perhaps outlining common needs/goals
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@seachanger @scott
Fwiw, activitypub doesn't specify any handling at all for replies. The choice to let anyone anywhere attach a reply to anyone else's post with no consideration for what the OP wants is a choice made entirely by mastodon, and different software can do different things.A lot of projects that aren't mastodon want to give people control over their replies in some way.
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@scott @seachanger
In answer to 3)forking mastodon in order to improve the moderation and safety features is uniquely unappealing on technical grounds. And the commiters like it the way it is so they won't support upstream changes on the scale it would require to make a meaningful change.
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@jenniferplusplus Why uniquely unappealing? In principle, forks of Mastodon that already have significant usage such as Glitch and Hometown could add improved safety features, and maintain them while periodically merging changes from mainline Mastodon. This probably involves a greater maintenance burden than those projects are currently prepared to take on, but that's the social problem I'd like to find a way through.
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@seachanger @scott so, this is a social problem, but it's rooted in the influence that Eugen has due to how widely deployed mastodon is. And that is addressable from a technical angle. I'm building alternative software, and there's a couple other serious projects also doing that. Contributing to one of those would help. Another option would be to build migration tooling to let existing servers go from mastodon to something else.
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to Jenniferplusplus last edited by
@seachanger @scott and my last idea is to build a SaaS service for some other software, in the vein of mastohost.
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@scott @seachanger mastodon's architecture and schema are both pretty convoluted. If the goal is to maintain compatibility, that will quickly swamp out everything else. And if maintaining compatibility is not a goal, then you'd just be adopting some really extreme technical debt for very little benefit
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@jenniferplusplus @seachanger benefit I see would be ease of migration from mainline Mastodon to the fork.
this server I'm chatting with you from, was a mainline Mastodon server, and now it's a Hometown server.
also would benefit from the maturity of Mastodon having already been widely deployed, the attention it receives from security researchers, etc.
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@scott @seachanger I really think that the changes you want to make are so far reaching that you're actually just talking about making different software. If you try to use mastodon as a starting point for something that isn't mastodon, you'll end up fighting that legacy forever, and it will be a large net negative
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@jenniferplusplus @seachanger it's THAT hard technically to implement limiting replies?
oof.
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@scott @seachanger if what you want is exactly mastodon plus reply limiting, then maybe a fork makes sense. But I think you'll want more, and you'll rapidly hit a limit on what you have capacity for while maintaining compatibility.
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to Jenniferplusplus last edited by
@scott @seachanger anyway, if you two do end up organizing some kind of coalition of instances, I'd like to stay in contact with it, as a fediverse developer if nothing else. I consider admins and moderators to be my most direct users.
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to Jenniferplusplus last edited by
@jenniferplusplus @scott seems like theres a question of scale and scope. are we looking to kind of improve a little bit in the near term? Or set up a way better system for the longer term?
Eugen is slow and annoying but he also seems to be kind of thorough and is actually still following through - that’s not nothing in this world
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@jenniferplusplus @scott easy to shoot for the moon and either get nowhere or even drag the whole project backwards as you contribute yet another unfinished project or lofty kickstarter with no real plan etc
Actually seems like a solid first step would be to compile an overview of all the big failures and look kinda closely at those
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@seachanger @scott it seems like Eugen responds to competitive pressure. He's really focused on first party mobile apps right now. Supporting servers with features you want seems like the best way to shift his focus to that. And if it doesn't work, you still have more developed servers with features you want
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to Jenniferplusplus last edited by
@jenniferplusplus @scott that’s a good point! Ha ha - so when you say “supporting servers with features you want” do you mean tweaking mastodon servers? and maybe being the tail that wags the dog that way?
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@seachanger @scott I more meant alternatives to mastodon, but I'm a little biased towards that path. I think there are technical limits to what can be done with forks, and I don't expect Eugen to respond to that. But I could be wrong
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to Jenniferplusplus last edited by
@jenniferplusplus @scott gotcha. As a non tech person, here’s what I’d look for in a masto-alt
1. easiest and most fun for volunteers to plug in to and help with, including young people
2. designed around safety and moderation
3. buildable in the near term
4. Hmm not sure yet
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malena / bikes not bombsreplied to malena / bikes not bombs last edited by
@jenniferplusplus @scott like as a non tech person I feel like I encounter a lot of siloed personal projects on here? maybe you succeed with one like the fire fish guy or whatever but then what happens when you flame out and leave everyone in the lurch? go fast alone or farther together right