š„ We are excited to let everyone know that our full website is now live!
We hope this will be an easy way for new users to get started with #Mastodon & join the wider #Fediverse & an organizing hub to build & spread a better, more open social web of ALL fediverse offerings.
With the #RedditMigration in full force & the likely #Barcelona launch bringing new attention to the Fediverse it is all the more urgent to help #TakeBackSocial
@[email protected] @fediversereport
Shortly we will be opening up all the code used in this website to a full Open Source license.
Not everything would apply, but we would hope this open source code could be used by anyone building out a similar onboarding portals for the Fedi.
For example: #Calkey, #Pixelfed, #Kbin or #Bookwyrm or
#Goldfish or other sites may find parts of the code here useful and not have to rebuild EVERYTHING from scratch.
@[email protected] @fediversereport
Hey: @stefan - if any of this code š helps with jointhefediverse.net, let us know, and we would be psyched if it did provide any help there!
@stefan @[email protected] @fediversereport
THANK YOU! And very happy to collaborate! ā
@mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
Thank you, Mike! That means a great deal coming from you! š„
@[email protected] @fediversereport
As we did before for this site, we are ābuilding in publicā & in stages.
So while our tool for sign-ups now points to mastodon.social for NOW we propose this round-robin plan. Give us feedback.
We think this model will work for any Mastodon/Fedi onboarding for apps and portals.
Principles of it could be adapted for places like #calkey, #kbin, #peertube, #joinfediverse & others...to balance the ease of sign-ups to decentralization.
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport
Iām not a huge fan of the āmake the big sites biggerā approach, even with the round Robin. I understand that lowers the barrier to entry for newbies, but I also think that raising awareness about specialized or regional instances is an important part of Federation.
@brian @[email protected] @fediversereport
š Very up for suggestions as to how the round robin proposal could include X number of mid-range servers that meed the other requirements.
And we are opening up the full source here and would welcome multi-language versions of this site and all the tools, including the onboarding tool.
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport
I respect the compromise that the official app has made for its sign-ups. There is a default āclick here to sign up for a big oneā button, which could be your round robin choice. But then a āFind another serverā option with sorting by different criteria and categories.
Bonus points: even better than the Mastodon appās flow would be some explanation about why someone might want to consider going one way or the other.
@brian @[email protected] @fediversereport
Yes it could.
The goal of this site is to incite ideas like that for every onboarding solution for the Fediverse.
@mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
Hi @mike - would definitely be up for Canadian.social to be in a future round robin.
The initial set of 60K registered users was just a stab objective metrics for high capacity servers. Very up for suggestions to move that down to numbers that would hit solid but mid-level serves as well.
And welcome exactly this feedback.
@mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
ā š -- All good!
I agree with @mike and @CrazyMyra that the 60K limit's problmeatic and with @brian about the problems of the "make the big sites bigger" approach. What's really needed is a series of questions that matches people to an instance where they're likely to have a good initial experience -- good moderation as a minimum bar, and beyond that based on geography, interests, or diversity. Sending everybody to .social is likely to be counter-productive.
@jdp23 @mike @brian @[email protected] @fediversereport
Taking notes on all this, thanks! Definitely will update the MAU and registered users numbers, but want to think more about what still ensures high capacity in an objective way. Up for suggestions to those numbers.
@spreadmastodon @jdp23 @mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
āwhat still ensures high capacity in an objective way. Up for suggestions to those numbers.ā
Iām probably just dense, but Iām not grocking why there needs to be an arbitrary number of users to define high capacity. There are sites that report metrics on the uptime of instances, which seems to be a better measure than number of users.
@spreadmastodon @jdp23 @mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
Saying it another way: I think the ultimate goal is to get a new user attached to the right instance. If they donāt know or care, then fine, go to .social. But if they have specific niche interests, then helping to guide them towards options is in support of āgetting them attached to the right instance.ā
tl;dr - best fit > server size
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport A few suggestions:
Sports should be follow category. There is a super active sports community on Mastodon.
Hockey is missing from your sports hashtag topics. This is an unforgivable sin. #HNOM
I picked some follow categories went to the next step and automatically followed a a bunch of people. Maybe an intermediary step asking if you want to follow these people?
Great first steps!
@mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
Which top accounts would you recommend for sports? Our goal here was:
1. not bots or no Twitter cross-posting accounts with no human involved
2. Actively and regularly posting on topic
@OutOnTheMoors @mike @[email protected] @fediversereport
Very up for ideas on how to add new metrics to allow mid-sized but high capacity servers to the round robin for sure!
@[email protected] @fediversereport
With all that said:
Do test out the new site and DM us with any feedback, ideas, questions or bugs.
Later we will post the top organizing projects and ideas for how we can use everyone's help to evolve the site and community from here.
And if you like it, please do share it far and wide to help #takebacksocial ā
(And it turns out we have an action tool for that: https://spreadmastodon.org/utilities/share-spread-mastodon)
@suicideasuicide @[email protected] @fediversereport
Thanks! Will fix!
@[email protected] @fediversereport
WOW, this post is now over 250 boosts! Thank you! š„
@aardvark @[email protected] @fediversereport
Always good to be careful. There are lots of parts of the site that do not need logging in to see.
@spreadmastodon @anildash @[email protected] @fediversereport You should really have a section for promoting third party apps. They make the experience of Mastodon *much* better. I bounce between @ivory @MonaApp and @IceCubesApp myself.
Using the official app is painful by comparison and I wouldāve never stuck around if that was my only experience.
@nmn @anildash @[email protected] @fediversereport @ivory @MonaApp @IceCubesApp
Agreed! You might not have gotten to that part of the site yet:
@spreadmastodon @anildash @[email protected] @fediversereport @ivory @MonaApp @IceCubesApp Interesting. I think my feedback here would be that this page (or any of the 5 steps) arenāt really discoverable.
Perhaps they are once you login, but I donāt think thatās the right decision. (Specially since the login ask me to input my password on a domain that is not my own instance)
Can I contribute on GH?
@nmn @anildash @[email protected] @fediversereport @ivory @MonaApp @IceCubesApp
Will shout when it's live on GH. And taking down these notes.
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport Itās great to see this site go live! Iām super pleased with the recommendations and the hashtags.
One comment as an instance admin: I wish we could stick your onboarding flow into the standard signup (after email verification) on our instance. If your team is able to provide assets and a patch file to the mastodon source to do that I would be in absolute awe. It could also help improve trust since it would just be part of the site on boarding flow rather than a separate website to log into. (And maybe even could go into the project itself)
@cd24 @[email protected] @fediversereport
On this:
"One comment as an instance admin: I wish we could stick your onboarding flow into the standard signup (after email verification) on our instance. If your team is able to provide assets and a patch file to the mastodon source to do that I would be in absolute awe."
We are about to open source all of this: so any chunks can be taken and reused in any form. Stay tuned.
@soaproot @[email protected] @fediversereport
Thank you! And see where we want to go with sign up here: https://spreadmastodon.org/utilities/round-robin
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport
Excellent idea!
Unfortunately, the three lines menu at the top right of the site does not open on my mobile (Google Pixel 6 pro) when it is in the usual vertical orientation.
Turning it horizontal, I can open the menu, but it's still almost covered by the huge "spread mastodon" logo.
Tried with FF and Chrome, no difference.
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport love the ideas and intention here. I'm very interested in all this, I'm building an iOS app for Mastodon currently and have my own ideas about potential onboarding and experience enhancements so I'd love to see how this works.
That said, the site is just spinning forever when I give permission via my current account, do you know how I can fix that? I can create a new one on mastodon.social for testing, but would rather not if I don't have to :)
@spreadmastodon @[email protected] @fediversereport ah I think I just figured it out.
Typing out hachyderm.io works, when I was putting in my full username it lets me through, authorises with the right account, but then hangs every time after authorising on https://spreadmastodon.org/enhance-account
I put the full account because typing my instance url into the box then hitting enter brings up a "server is required" message, which I misread haha. Clicking the log in and authenticate button works here though
aphonefriend
Spread Mastodon
Stefan Bohacek
Mike McCue
Brian Lawson
Mike Fraser
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CrazyMyra
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Thomas E. Gladwin
Tomb
aardvark
Naman
Roni Rolle Laukkarinen
John (he/him) 
soaproot
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Jake Nelson