[Adminsysters] Mastodon - what do we want and how do we want it

[Anne Roth]

Hi,

great to see this moving forward.

Am 11.11.22 um 19:12 schrieb Gaba:
> On 11/11/22 12:20, Helen Varley Jamieson wrote:
>> i think anna meant to share / discuss between ourselves what we want 
>> to see happening with systerserver.town, rather than to put that into 
>> the general guidelines. is that right, anne?

Yes, that was the idea but of course we can eventually merge the two 
(working on the text on the one hand and having a conversation more 
generally about what we want systerserver.twon to be like).

Like, how do we move on now? Threre is the new pad with quite a few 
comments and suggestions for change and the old pad with a lot of good 
ideas and suggestions. Does it make sense to try and merge or would it 
be better to stick with one and try to some up with a draft?

I'm fine with both, my thoughts about the new pad were to 'go the easy 
way' and have something to put up so that we actually have something, 
but I can also see it would be nice to have something that describes our 
ideas better. Is anyone up for writing that?

How do you feel about a meeting?
> 
> 
> I understood this too and I think it is important for us to discuss what 
> we want from that space. I like the approach that Darius Kazemi have on 
> running their instance [1]. 

I had a look at their website and could you be a bit more specific what 
it is that appeals to you there?

One thing I see there is 
https://runyourown.social/#how-to-run-a-small-social-network-site-for-your-friends 
and I instantly have sympathy for the idea and the feel of that.

He runs a fork of mastodon called hometown
> [2] that we could look into as it is for smaller instances . In hometown 
> there is the option of local only posting, meaning only the people in 
> your instance can discuss on those.

Are you saying you would like to see systerserver.town to be more of a 
closed small(er) community?

On the one hand I like the idea but it opens up a number of questions: 
We've been that for a while and my feeling is that it doesn't really 
'come off the ground', that it would need to be a little bigger to 
actually incite conversations between us.

Maybe that'll change now that Mastodon has become so much more 
attractive recently? But e.g. my impression during THF in summer was 
that there was some interest but didn't really lead to much interaction 
there. Which is fine, just an observation.

I'm still a bit torn between wanting a more lively but still smaller 
community on the one hand and at the same time feeling the need for more 
visibly feminist spaces in the bigger Mastodon / Fediverse world. Right 
now I see people searching for a 'feminist home' but not finding them. 
E.g. here https://fedi.directory/society/ feminism isn't even mentioned 
as a category. (I'm sure there's better directories, didn't really 
search and just came across this by chance)

> 
> Looking at the pad [3] that Mara shared I like many of the notes there. 
> I would like this instance to be a safe space for Queer, feminists, 
> feminist collectives and activists. I would like for us to have a 
> feminist approach on how we build the space and build it from our 
> trusted networks.

Very much. We probably should take some more time to talk / write about 
what this means, no?

Cheers,
Anne



> 
> 0. https://tinysubversions.com/
> 
> 1. https://friend.camp/about/more
> 
> 2. https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki
> 
> 3. https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/systerserver.town-fhm
> 
>>
>> the article anne sent is worth reading (reminds me also of my own 
>> experience during 2020 when suddenly thousands of other people became 
>> overnight experts in online performance 😂) & i think it is good to go 
>> with caution, be realistic about what we can do with the resources we 
>> have, & who we are doing it for (ourselves, first!).
>>
>> we could get mired down in endless conversations, for example what is 
>> "negative political content" indeed!!! the mmore concise our 
>> guidelines are, the better. and keeping the instance invitation only 
>> is good.
>>
>> h : )
>>
>> On 10.11.22 23:42, mara wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Here the pad we worked for our systerserver.town instance during a 
>>> workshop with Lurk last spring.
>>> https://pad.vvvvvvaria.org/systerserver.town-fhm
>>>
>>> The questions in the pad help formulating what, for whom and by whom 
>>> the instance is running.
>>>
>>> I don't quite follow all thread here, due to many deadlines I have 
>>> till mid Nov and some family issues.
>>>
>>> Nonetheless wrt:
>>> > And while we're editing our about page I think we should maybe share
>>> > what we would like to see happening on systerserver.town.
>>> I wouldn't go into this direction, feels too restrictive and not 
>>> really manageable from a modetator's perspective. In general 
>>> guidelines articulate what a community doesn't tolerate in this 
>>> instance, e.x sexist, nazis, trolling etc..
>>>
>>> ciao, M
>>>
>>> On 11/10/22 12:22, Anne Roth wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> apart from the pad I feel it might be helpful to have a discussion 
>>>> about the character of the Mastodon instance.
>>>>
>>>> Not sure this is something everyone wants to discuss - let me know 
>>>> whether that should be moved elsewhere.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Right now it feels like half of Twitter is moving over to Mastodon / 
>>>> the Fediverse and that results in a trillion of debates about what 
>>>> is different, what's similar, what is wanted and what isn't.
>>>>
>>>> There were so many debates about Content Warnings that people start 
>>>> to demand CW for those debates.
>>>>
>>>> (I'm currently entangled in a debate whether there should be such 
>>>> warnings, or notices, for all political content, or else for 
>>>> 'negative politics' and that entails it's own debate: What is 
>>>> negative political content?)
>>>>
>>>> I admit that I hadn't realized how different the concept of the 
>>>> local timeline is, and just came across this text whic I found 
>>>> helpful https://www.hughrundle.net/home-invasion/
>>>>
>>>> I don't share all of the views but it's definitely a good 
>>>> introduction to the current dynamics, I find.
>>>>
>>>> And while we're editing our about page I think we should maybe share 
>>>> what we would like to see happening on systerserver.town.
>>>>
>>>> More something of a safe space with a local timeline that resembles 
>>>> a community space with some reservation about the rest of the world 
>>>> out there, or rather like a place for our activism, ok to have 
>>>> controversial debates, mobilising and informing about what we fight 
>>>> against?
>>>>
>>>> Can we have both and how? I tend to lean towards the latter, I don't 
>>>> believe in defining politics apart from something else, everything 
>>>> is politics to me and I like controversies and discussion. I also 
>>>> have the need for safe spaces some times and room to withdraw from 
>>>> the world - it's not easy to draw the line but I'm thinking it's a 
>>>> good conversation to have before we open up the instance a little 
>>>> bit. I haven't moved my 'big account' to systerserver.town (yet) 
>>>> because it'll bring a lot of people debating stuff and my feeling is 
>>>> I'd like to understand better what type of atmosphere we'd like to 
>>>> see there.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts? Or should we actually try and find the time for a call 
>>>> about this?
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Anne
>>