How do people decide which instance to be on? How do you work through confusion of same acct names on different instances? Should we namestake on every instance we can and see which one seems best suited to us? How did you pick?
@erhardt For any particular reason? I picked octodon through dumb luck and timing.
@nancybaym I was initially drawn to the name of this server, but I also took note that @natematias also chose this one before I registered.
@erhardt @natematias excellent criteria. if it's good enough for nate....
@nancybaym @natematias I might trust him too much. As a researcher of community governance, Nathan could either be leading us into particularly well-functioning or particularly chaotic systems...
@erhardt @nancybaym I made a very quick decision. But I have definitely seen the sysop manage scaling challenges very well, and there are discussions of polls & other democratic governance possibilities. And in the worst case scenario, we can always "scoot"
For octodon updates, follow the sysop @CobaltVelvet Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/CobaltVelvet
After submitting the diss, I'm tempted to make an OAuth voting extension (which we also need on reddit). I expect that people will want to figure out how to sustain & manage the instance, starting in a few days
But that's a total guess, from observing the current focus on just keeping the system running. I have no special private knowledge.
@erhardt @nancybaym @natematias oh no is nate leading us collectively to social ruin?
@nancybaym If you would namestake every email system out there, then sure. But that seems like overkill to me. Similar names in email addresses do cause some confusion, but not that much unless you have a common name, so I think the same is true here. Maybe pick out a couple instances and try out the local communities? I like octodon a lot but I may see what witches.town is like if they open sign ups again. *shrug*
@nancybaym Great question. It seems like the instances are interoperable, so maybe they become less and less visible over time?
@nancybaym Wait - I have to be @dubber on every server? I just picked mastodon.cloud after mastodon.social wasn't working. Didn't know where all the cool kids had headed off to.
@nancybaym Hello! I can see the potential for instances to be set up based on mutual interest (kinda like Usenet groups), but I can't see how the casual user can navigate that simply and be able to curate a feed. The lack of shared namespace is definitely a thing!
@nancybaym I chose based on openness and uptime/specs. xyz is run by someone in France, and it's still very francophone, and it doesn't have a particular culture yet. The first .social was closed to new folks when I decided to join. I would've gone there by default, but now I'm glad I'm on another instance.
@nancybaym Also, I've seen people trying out various instances and then putting a green "verified" check next to the name of their primary instance so people know which one to follow... which was interesting.
@nancybaym That's indeed how I did it, namestaking. I've been trying to namestake @silvertje since IRC ;)
@nancybaym Homophily. It looks like most of the social computing researchers are finding their way to octodon.social.