@inkdroid

Good point. I don't hate this platform at all. It's just that the switching costs on social media are steep.

@ekansa yeah, I haven’t though of it as switching but just exploring.

@inkdroid

I'm hoping to switch. Not thrilled with the way Twitter is run.

@ekansa yeah, I hear that. I will certainly pay more attention on here if this is where you are.

@starbreaker @inkdroid

I agree. I just want more of my friends here where it's nice and commercial surveillance and Nazis don't ruin everything.

@ekansa @inkdroid

We can't persuade your friends to switch. You're on your own for that, and good luck to you. :)

@ekansa I wonder if it might make sense to create a small mastodon home for digital preservation folks? My local timeline on mastodon.social is pretty hit or miss. I know it has been tried before (digpres.club) see convo here https://twitter.com/beet_keeper/status/919339303234183168

There are so many quirky little instances. For example I recently ran across wandering.shop which is for scifi fans -- I like their desription of the local timeline they want to have https://wandering.shop/about/more

@ekansa The goal wouldn't be to get as many users as possible, but just to get a small group of like minded folks together who benefit from sharing ideas.

Of course thinking along these lines led to absent minded dns lookups. The best I could come up with was memex.social 🤨

@ekansa then again, maybe we are better off infiltrating the galaxy of other mastodon instances, since they can all talk to each other anyway...

@ekansa oh! https://cybre.space/about

@inkdroid

I think this. I'm not hugely thrilled with my local instance conversation stream. But at the same time, my social media voice tends to cover lots of territory outside strictly professional topics.

So, if we can balance these issue, we may get a really engaged and sustained community here?

@ekansa Yes. that balance would be key. Perhaps one way to start would be to draft a charter that describes who the mastodon community would be for, what it's interests & values are?

@inkdroid

@Electricarchaeo is actually someone who may be good to brig into this and help find people to help craft such a charter.

@ekansa @Electricarchaeo If there could be a diverse group of 20-25 like-minded people that were interested in committing $1/month on patreon and some time to engage I think it could be an interesting experiment.

@inkdroid @Electricarchaeo
Worth a shot! Like the ideas of a "platform collective": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative

@ekansa @Electricarchaeo hey, Platform Collective does capture the idea very well -- thanks for sharing that!

@inkdroid @ekansa biongiorno lads. i think @DrDonnaYates was keeping a master list of like-minded folks: so maybe just make sure we're on that, we follow that, and just see where M organically takes us?

@Electricarchaeo @inkdroid @ekansa the list is still up for self adds

@DrDonnaYates @Electricarchaeo @inkdroid @ekansa

Hello, just dropping by (which is one of the benefits of federation I think) to say that the social.coop instance does this well.

I started with mastodon.social when it was smaller, and had a look at scholar.social but the tone didn't quite work for me.

What has made me feel at home is weaving a timeline across instances.

@DrDonnaYates @Electricarchaeo @ekansa Where is the list? Did you ever get together a short paragraph about what the instance was for, and who you wanted to be part of it? I think it's important to start there so people know what they are signing up for.

@inkdroid @Electricarchaeo @ekansa I have nothing to do with the running of this instance, I just joined up

@DrDonnaYates @Electricarchaeo @ekansa oh, sorry, I thought y'all were talking about a new instance, separate from scholar.social -- nevermind me!