@KevinMarks

I like that a lot Mark… I’ve been calling them “community servers” in our explainer posts at Indieweb.social

We tried this years back, it doesn't work. Servers are not (always) communities. This nomenclature carries with it a lot of associations that are not true or helpful to Mastodon, e.g. that these "communities" are siloed and you need to create separate accounts to join each community, and that you need to condense your identity into one specific hobby to participate in Mastodon. Service provider is a potential candidate for a better term than "server".

@IPEdmonton @jdp23 @Gargron @chad I for one love checking out Jazz communities, or generative art community based servers to find new posts or new users.

@tchambers Yeah like I say I think it's been a been a huge mistake for Mastodon not to emphasize this more and better support it. But oh well. https://heat-shield.space/mastodon_two_camps.html is a good look at the tensions between the "bigger is better" flat view and the "networked communities" view.

@IPEdmonton @mike @Gargron @chad

@ArtBear @jdp23 @tchambers @michael @IPEdmonton @chad I had this idea as well. https://thecanadian.social/@mike/111624762543179623

Yeah, to me the instance-focused organization is the distinctive feature of the fediverse and the reason I spend so much time here is because it’s the best place to get real-world experience in how it works in practice at a scale that’s big enough to be interesting.but being able to participate as an individual is valuable as well. It’s complex!
@marcelcosta @michael @tchambers @ArtBear @IPEdmonton @chad @darnell @mike

The problem that I see for an easy-self-hosting fediverse is that tends to individualism and again eliminates the communal part. For us (the communities I am part of), the server administration is just part of a community growth. While I would say the technical part is not easy nor difficult (at least at small sizes), there are other important things that are discussed, shared and agreed such as how to finance the server costs, how to moderate, how to increase the internal visibility of the members, etc… I seems that the server organization fits so well with the movement organization we need.

I do get that other communities in other parts of the world may have other necessities or priorities, so I respect that, of course.

Yep. The frustrating thing is that the future could be now, it's just a path that hasn't been taken. @darnell had a post a while ago sketching how "InstaPost" could have a really compelling offering along somewhat along this line, it'd be kid of ironic if Meta winds up doing it first lolsob.

@ArtBear @mike @tchambers @michael @IPEdmonton @chad

@jdp23 @marcelcosta @michael @tchambers @ArtBear @IPEdmonton @chad I tend to view instances like towns or cities. You have small villages with a few members, as well as larger cities like the larger instances. I can interact with them all the same before retreating back to my tiny house on a hill (my solo instance).