fosstodon.org is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Fosstodon is an invite only Mastodon instance that is open to those who are interested in technology; particularly free & open source software. If you wish to join, contact us for an invite.

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Server stats:

11K
active users

Hey new people and those thinking of joining, you do NOT need to sign up on huge servers!

You can follow and interact with people on any server from any server, the servers are connected.

It would really, really help the network right now if you could sign up on medium or small size servers. You will still be able to follow and interact with whoever you want, and the network as a whole will work much better.

A good safe place for beginners to find servers to join is joinmastodon.org/servers

joinmastodon.orgServersFind where to sign up for the decentralized social network Mastodon.
Brendan Jones

@feditips unfortunately while joining a small server might be good for the network, it's not rational for a new joiner to pick one. Unless of course they know someone on that network, and especially if they know the admin. For anyone else who doesn't know anyone on Mastodon before joining, the rational choice is to pick a stable server with good rules and moderation. The easiest way to know a server has that is to see lots of other people using it.

@Brendanjones

Umm... I'm not sure if that's true?

Big servers tend to have worse moderation due to the lower staff-to-user ratio. The biggest servers of all can have real trouble moderating due to this issue.

(By the way, the easiest way to see if a server has good rules is to check the "about" page, by going to the website and clicking "Learn more".)

@feditips I agree, it's not necessarily true when it comes to moderation, but it's logical to new users. Especially people coming from the birdsite and other centralised platforms. The more people using a thing, the better is, right? (that's rhetorical) It's social proof in action.

It is true for stability, though. You don't want to join an instance only for it to close on you. More people using an instance probably means it's sticking around.

@Brendanjones

I get what you're saying, but I don't know if perception reflects reality?

There are lots of nice little servers that have been around for years while some big servers have disappeared.

One way to check if a server has been around is go to its website, click "Learn more" and then click on the admin's profile. It will show the month and year they joined, and this will (usually) be the age of the server.

e.g. laserdisc.party was founded in April 2018, has 85 users.

Mastodon hosted on laserdisc.partyLASERDISC 💿 PARTYWelcome to laserdisc.party, a movie-flavoured instance home to friendly video store chitchat and general bonhomie.

@feditips

> One way to check if a server has been around is go to its website, click "Learn more" and then click on the admin's profile.

That's unfortunately way too hidden for any new user to be expected to find. Date started should be prominently displayed on instance.adress/about and instance.adress/about/more with the server stats.

I'm going to Github right now to suggest it ...