@LottieVixen @CobaltVelvet you're talking to my host...

@Gargron @CobaltVelvet well in that case, awesome, but does the host make calls on such things?

@CobaltVelvet that sounds like a good future path.

@kurisu @CobaltVelvet a prominent banner is the only option to do this but i don't know how effective it would really be. in the past when we closed sign ups new people thought "mastodon is closed", not "mastodon.social is closed", despite all the text explaining otherwise.

@kurisu @CobaltVelvet @zatnosk this is why switter is great for the fediverse, they get their own press and act as a completely separate "entrypoint" to the idea of the fediverse

pawoo, friends.nico and social.coop are like that too. a lot of the other servers don't have resources or interest in attracting an outside public and rely on inter-fediverse movements, e.g. people who are already into the idea.

@gargron @kurisu @zatnosk i totally didn't think about that and it's an excellent point

@kurisu @gargron @zatnosk i mostly wonder if that way of advertising other instances instead of mastodon.social isn't going to be even more important later

maybe mastodon.social being popular is only because it's the beginning, and soon a few other specific instances will be more popular than m.s for most people

and we'll get some sweet optimizations contributed back 😎

@CobaltVelvet @kurisu @Gargron @zatnosk but many people will just want a "default" option that just works. it's like signing up for Gmail because you just want working email, or using the stock messaging app that came with your phone. That's what a "flagship" is supposed to be, in most people's minds: the one canonical thing they can point to. maybe the biggest, but definitely the most "official". the reasonable confidence that it won't go away suddenly.

@kurisu @CobaltVelvet also - which instance to link to? (linking to the picker is not suuuuper effective tbh, too much choice). if you want *me* to host another instance, well, it's got its benefits (my reputation, track record) but also downsides (centralization on me as a person)

@gargron yeah more like that, i was thinking about leaving the log in as is, but redirecting registrations to the new instance(s)

@CobaltVelvet yes but the form is embedded on the page and you can't post to another website because of CSRF

@gargron well since you'd own both we can always imagine ways around that

i mean it's really a long-term solution to a very hard future problem (scaling vertically pg)

@CobaltVelvet @Gargron maybe something based on BDR (multi-master) (coming soonish for pg10 as a plugin) would be cool, but there's of course some gotchas (specially if you modify objects from two locations at the same time)

@CobaltVelvet @gargron what happens when people return to m.s to log in on those new registrations?

Multiplex login that redirect to different subdomains? O.o

@electrotamitha we already kind of do that, except there is much more to keep shared between the servers so we usually keep them clustered.
but i was thinking about irc too while writing that, and we could inspire a solution from it