randuloIt's really hard to be looking at Mastodon for the first time and figure out the best server (home) for your interests. What matters?
Size and server capacity
Who's there
Orientation, Topics of interest
Rules
General vibe
What else?
Lorenzo Miniero@randulo to dip my toe I went with "what looks like the big/main server" which turned out to be a mistake, since its size made it slower and really didn't give a good first impression (which I realize is an unfair POV, but I mean looking it from the perspective of a clueless user). Then I looked for a server where the topic seemed to be a better fit for me, once I understood the local timeline purpose. "Who's there" is probably not important thanks to federation
@lminiero Isn't there is an effect if you view the local server only, and isn't there some interplay between who other folow? I believe there is, but it's been years since I learned the main details
@randulo I'm not sure I understand how this works 100%, but from what I understand the Local and Federated timelines are different when you just want to explore things, see what people are saying: with local you stick to your server, so the right topic fit helps for discovery purposes. If you follow people from other servers, it doesn't matter where they're connected to, as you proactively said you wanted to read what they have to say, so servers talk to each other to make that happen