Stefan BohacekHappy Monday, fediverse!
Finally finished a prototype to help me visualize some ideas I've been thinking about for a while around how server recommendations could work.
A few thoughts before I share the link.
There are some great existing tools. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, include:
- https://fedidb.com/welcome (this one served as a big inspiration, more on that later)
- https://instances.social
- https://fedi.garden
And there is also https://joinmastodon.org/servers. I like that you can browse by topic and location, but beyond that, there isn't enough meaningful information to distinguish individual servers.
The above examples each have their strenghts. I particularly like how the one on FediDB lets you pick by community size and age, allowing you to, for example, find small, but established servers. This is one idea I took for my prototype.
And I like the hand-picked/curated approach of Fedi.Garden. I was wondering if there's a way to expand on it, and even include some automation to make the management of servers easier.
And finally, to step back, I've thought about why so many people prefer to stick with corporate-run social media. Do they perhaps seem more legitimate than what may look like "just a hobby" from the outside?
Anyway. Here is what I came up with.
https://communities.jointhefediverse.net
Now, I consider this a prototype, so rather than people suggesting which servers to add, I'd like to first hear thoughts on the ideas I implemented.
As a matter of fact, I am not sure if I want to handle a project like this, I am more interested in sharing these ideas with others who already run server directories to borrow.
But who knows, maybe based on the feedback, I might change my mind.
#fediverse #communities #servers #feedback #prototype #design #UX #UXUI
Addendum: Another possible outcome of this prototype could be opening an FEP to include additional details inside nodeinfo, such as links to annual reports, membership price, etc.
Does this already exist? Would anyone be interested in helping write it?
Let me know!
Addendum 2: I should also add that the best way to promote the fediverse is to tell people to join your server, or one you like, rather than expecting them to figure out the right one.
At least until we get https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola and full account migration, which server you start on can matter a lot.
Addendum 3, in case it gets lost: Listing admins and mods would also be a strong signal. Eg. is a server maintained by a single person, or a large team?
wakest likes your bugs ⁂@stefan getting NodeInfo updated with more information and more guidance would be amazing. It haven't had any updates as a protocol in years
@liaizon Trying to look into any relevant FEPs.
https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/0151/
"staffAccounts"
This is something I didn't get to show off in my demo, but you can actually fill out a "team" array and list your mods and admins using a little avatar widget I borrowed from https://css-tricks.com/responsive-list-of-avatars-using-modern-css-part-1/.
FEP-0151: NodeInfo in Fediverse Software (2025 edition) - Fediverse Enhancement Proposals
[NodeInfo] is a protocol intended to standardize upon a way to provide server-level metadata to the public. This enables tools and clients to utilize this metadata to assess server health or facilitate end-users choices about servers and software to use on the Fediverse. This document is a revised version of FEP-f1d5 NodeInfo in Fediverse Software, which was published in 2020.
Chris Hayes@stefan I like that the server blogs are linked. I hadn't considered that as a way to see what the moderation is like.
I also had no idea some communities were charging for membership. But, it makes sense considering the non-trivial cost and time commitments to host and moderate.
I like the straight-forwardness of the quiz formats from the other sites, but using those I can't help thinking how I'm possibly missing out on a good server. ie one might choose "No" for "Advertising."
But advertising can mean a few things, does an artist sharing their WIP photos and online store links count as advertising? And does saying "No" discount most servers that don't explicitly ban advertising?
jaz 
@stefan very nice prototype, and some great feedback coming in.
For Start Here Social I collated all my notes along the way and they are in this post: https://jaz.co.uk/2025/06/26/metadata-misleads-designing-discovery-for-people/
And I'll add I have a bunch of signals I use personally when choosing to federate or not, some might be helpful for upranking/downranking community choices:
- posts-per-user ratio
- MAU-to-total-users ratio
- last appearance of known admin
I think surfacing number of staff and mod/member ratio is a strong signal.
For Mastodon (and maybe others have this option) - presence of a filled in Privacy Policy and Terms of Service is possibly a signal of note.
I think nodeinfo declaring oneself as a general or topic-specific community might be helpful.
And I'll just add that nodeinfo can be filled in by anyone with anything, lots and lots of spurious nodeinfo data is being scooped up, there will always be a need for human curation for any nodeinfo-based guide to be reasonably useful.
@stefan to your specific signals:
Created in/Founded - agreed, strong signal for longevity, good past performance does not always indicate future but still...
Including an official web site or blog seems like a strong signal to me.
Annual reports - could this be coupled/replaced/enhanced by open finances like Open Collective?
Moderation and rules - really good to get server policies up front at decision point - it helps signal that different community guides are available
RE: "Annual reports"
Yes, originally I had a "financial report" link, but when I added Mastodon's report, the label didn't make sense, so I made it more general.
I really like how detailed https://hub.techhub.social/finances/ is:
"Estimated months fully financed at current costs: 8 (balance only), 110 (including pledges)"
I know I'd be asking for too much to have this included in nodeinfo, but hmm, imagine.
@jaz Love this!
Yeah, showing how long a server has been around, the size of the team managing it, and expected longevity, I think surfacing all this information would help people understand that many fediverse servers are not just "some guy's hobby", but are maintained on a professional level.
Evan Prodromou@jaz @stefan so, what about connection to a real-world account you might already have?
If you're an ACM member, you can use mastodon.acm.org. If you use Vivaldi, social.vivaldi.net. Medium author? me.dm. Flipboarder? flipboard.social.
People with WordPress and Ghost.org accounts may want to use them. They're not bad a general purpose Fediverse clients!
For people who already have a Meta account on Instagram or Facebook, signing up for Threads is easy and fast, and they can turn on Fediverse sharing with one click.
I get that many people don't want to share that information, but for most people in 2026, it's the fastest and easiest way to get on the Fediverse.
I thought we were talking about onboarding services. I think there are two measures of a good onboarding service:
- abandonment rate: how many people get all the way to having a fediverse account (or discovering they have one already)
- retention: median length of time the person stays active
@evan @stefan might just be semantic fuddle for me, but I think of onboarding as the thing that happens after a choice is made, and I think we're talking about decision support to make a choice so that there is now an onboarding need.
Stefan's project seems to me to be for providing decision support about which domain to use, vs abandonment/retention which is a later problem for the domain they actually picked (but of course all of this is intertwined and messy)
@jaz @stefan lastly, it's way better for the entire ecosystem if someone who wants to get on the Fediverse asks their employer or university about setting up a server under that domain.
Pushing people onto volunteer-run servers when they are members of organizations that can support their own servers might not be the best long-term solution.
@jaz Thank you, I'll give this a read!
Also, RE: " there will always be a need for human curation "
Absolutely! I think having the information in nodeinfo would be very helpful, because then you can create a tool where you just put in URLs of the communities you want to promote, and all the data can be fetched and presented on a page.
Eg. beyond directories, it would be useful for a project like https://stefanbohacek.com/project/fediverse-invitation/, where if you look at the example linked at the top of the article, the signals I am able to fetch automatically (to make the invitation page setup easier) are not very useful.
But this is giving me an idea.
I could create a data object that I manually curate, with links to annual reports, community blogs, etc, and show those for matching domains. Hmm.
>I could create a data object that I manually curate, with links to annual reports, community blogs, etc, and show those for matching domains.
I'd be happy to collaborate on this
(and for reference, I would likely augment this with those data points: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/Ric8ThY+rCmnp3FnYh9iDID+btsSuNJHNPyWb-+mNOw/ )
@jaz Thank you!
I do wonder if the time and effort would be better spent on an FEP. Let me give this some more thought and get back to you!
@stefan love it, we really need a new directory like this I hope someone takes up your offer of implementing some of these new ideas in an already established directory! While I'm here tho, this is obscuring ur attribution on Android
@liaizon Thank you!
And ah, good catch, let me fix that. Thank you for that as well!
Juan D. Jara 
Hey! Great initiative!
If I can offer some feedback I think it would be good to know what is the criteria for labelling a community "new", "established" , "small" , "medium", etc
@javascript Thank you!
And good point. I picked fairly arbitrary numbers for demo purposes, and omitted them to keep the interface simpler, but it makes sense to show them for transparency.
Or maybe the dropdowns should let you explicitly choose.
Let me give this some more thought!