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Exploring Mastodon

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#181

Post by yborg »

halfbrite wrote: post #99

What I'm looking for is effectively a fidonet style federation. I understand Lemmy is bordering on that, but it's not quite there from my observation, and I'm yet to see a suitable implementation that would entice an old fart like me.

There is nothing to prevent a set of instances from agreeing on a common set of operating rules or even common high-level management a la Fidonet or the way IRC networks are managed. If the Fediverse continues to grow, I would expect that something like that would naturally evolve.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#182

Post by pwinnski »

toofy wrote: post #176
pwinnski wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, I cannot sign up at "your friend's server" nor mastodon.social, so neither of those things help me. The phrase is key because it reflects a familiarity which new users do not have. Have you never in your life been introduced to an environment you didn't understand and felt put off by everybody using words you didn't know, or words you did know in ways you didn't understand? Never, in any situation? Because tha…

yes. of course i have. maybe we're talking past each other, i dont know, but... what im trying to say, again, is that their panicking is entirely unfounded. whether you create your account at mastodon.social, fosstodon.org, mastodon.online, vis.social, toot.cat, or your friends totallyraddomainname.com--its not a life or death decision. particularly because you can simply migrate to another server if you're picky abo…

Okay, so you're in the half of comments saying it really doesn't matter which server one picks. I hate to tell you this, but there are others recommending pretty strongly that one pick a server that aligns with their interests or identity, which is a challenge given that all available lists of servers seem to include a lot of exclusionary language, at least for me.

As it happens, I picked a server earlier today, more or less at random (one that didn't manually review applications), so I'm set. But the experience was very negative, and fraught with apparent peril.

If the choice of server matters so little, perhaps this site could be improved: https://joinmastodon.org/servers

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#184

Post by rakoo »

pwinnski wrote: post #179
rakoo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of federation is that you don't need a central authorization to do what you want. Discoverability is only easy with centralization. Of course it won't work as well. The fediverse is young. Don't expect a finished product when there has been so few man-hours and so little funidng put into it.

Mastodon has been around for six years, which is young but not infant-young, and what I'm getting at is pretty central to the entire concept. If it is still this poor of an experience six years in, one might wonder what is going to change in the next six.

No, it's not central. Discoverability of the entire universe is not a goal of any fediverse tool; the goal is to put back communities in the hands of users. Diackverability happens by talking to people, asking your way around, following interesting accounts from afar, being part of the discussion and organically grow your network.

If you search for Twitter2, the fediverse is not it.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#185

Post by Kye »

_ph_ wrote: post #178
Kye wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nerds often have an overthinking problem with it on both the learning and explanation sides. For example: extremely normie comedian Kathy Griffin got on via a short primer in an aggressively mainstream publication and started teaching her friends how things work. Lots of recent happy users are non-tech journalists and other professionals who got it from similar publications or had a friend helping. Meanwhile,…

Do you have a link to that guide, I would be quite interested to read it, as I am still trying to figure out mastodon.

I lost the link. And it was on her now-suspended Twitter, so I can't go get it, unfortunately. However, I would not be surprised if helpful people popped up in your notifications if you asked questions on Mastodon (assuming you have an account).

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#186

Post by zzzeek »

pwinnski wrote: post #157
mroche wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can visit any available instance and view their public feeds. For example, I use Fosstodon, so you visit the site[0] and click on "See what's happening" to preview the local feed, or navigate to the /public page. It's up to the instance to expose the "Explore", "Local", and "Federated" feeds. Fosstodon only exposes the local one to unauthenticated users. [0] https://fosstodon.org

I clicked your link and found a "Why is Fosstodon currently down?" page.

this is a tech website so I'm sure you can appreciate the need for urgent migrations given the sudden changes in userbase

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#187

Post by halfbrite »

yborg wrote: post #181
halfbrite wrote: post #99

What I'm looking for is effectively a fidonet style federation. I understand Lemmy is bordering on that, but it's not quite there from my observation, and I'm yet to see a suitable implementation that would entice an old fart like me.

There is nothing to prevent a set of instances from agreeing on a common set of operating rules or even common high-level management a la Fidonet or the way IRC networks are managed. If the Fediverse continues to grow, I would expect that something like that would naturally evolve.

There's some subtle technical differences that would need to be overcome, and I cannot see the existing encumbents agreeing to those differences.

First, take private messaging - on Mastodon, if @alice and @dave talk about @mallory, @mallory will be pulled into the conversation. With Fidonet, in it's simplest terms, private messaging was private.

Second, if there is a forum / discussion board for / called Java on ProgrammerWoes.fiction and a forum / discussion board for / called Java on ProgrammerSuccess.fiction then with the existing solutions a person comes along and they are unsure which is better, and one eventually dies, or a third springs up, etc.

With Fidonet, there was one forum per topic - the contents of which was federated, so you didn't end up with two Java forums.

Yes, we have hundreds of programming forums - but there's a reason people flock to Twitter or more specifically Reddit to discuss a topic that goes beyond simply signal to noise - it's that they aren't flooded with a confusing choice.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#188

Post by pwinnski »

zzzeek wrote: post #186
pwinnski wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked your link and found a "Why is Fosstodon currently down?" page.

this is a tech website so I'm sure you can appreciate the need for urgent migrations given the sudden changes in userbase

Absolutely. Been there, lived through that myself.

I'm sure you can appreciate that every one of these issues impacts the uptake of mastodon, of course.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#189

Post by pwinnski »

rakoo wrote: post #184
pwinnski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon has been around for six years, which is young but not infant-young, and what I'm getting at is pretty central to the entire concept. If it is still this poor of an experience six years in, one might wonder what is going to change in the next six.

No, it's not central. Discoverability of the entire universe is not a goal of any fediverse tool; the goal is to put back communities in the hands of users. Diackverability happens by talking to people, asking your way around, following interesting accounts from afar, being part of the discussion and organically grow your network. If you search for Twitter2, the fediverse is not it.

Every IRC server or Discord server I ever joined, I joined because there was something there to which I wanted access, or an existing community I discovered another way, and was directed there to fill things out.

If either of those things exist for mastodon, I'm not seeing them, and half the people on here are saying, "this isn't twitter go away" while the other half is raving about how exciting it is to be the recipient of "#twittermigration"

Which is all very cute, but it does tend to give commenters whiplash, not knowing whether the responses they're going to get are going to be from one side or the other, or both!

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#190

Post by dredmorbius »

jszymborski wrote: post #134
radarsat1 wrote: post #56

The thing that surprised me a bit about federation is that it puts instances front and center. You have an account at your "home instance", and that's the first thing you see. When I first read about federation I had thought that the idea was to have one big network of independent but equal instances that just transparently share data under common topics. But instead I discovered that you are identified with your ins…

There are three timelines: - Home Timeline: The people you follow - Local Timeline: The people on your instance - Fed Timeline: The people on the fediverse You take your pick. Be as siloed as you want. On the fed timeline, block people and instances, or just let the unfiltered hive mind flow over you. When you want something quieter, go to the local or home timelines.

Keep in mind that your local view of the Federated timeline is instance dependent.

The Federated timeline is best described as "all content from other instances by profiles followed by accounts on your own instance".

If you're running, say, a single-user instance, the "Federated" and "Home" timelines will be identical.

If you're on a large instance, the Federated timeline will be fairly comprehensive (and tends to clock along quite quickly). If you're on a smaller instance, the timeline will generally be far smaller. And of course, if your instance restricts (through any of various levels of blocking) remote instances or accounts, the Federated timeline will lack those as well.

Put another way: there's no such thing as a "universal" Fediverse feed, at least not without some very heavy-handed (and widely discourage) automated following.

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