IF THEY FITS, THEY SITS

Welcome to this shiny new fediservices blog, where you can hear about exciting stuff about what’s happening in the fediservices universe and how admin did X or Y with the techie wotsits, if that’s your jam.

First up is a round-up of some changes around the area, as there’s been a few. This is the TL;DR version as the full version would be longer than War and Peace and ain’t nobody got time for that.

By 1 September, the following services will be running and open for registration:

• Mastodon.nz (it’s Mastodon!)
• Firefish.nz (not Mastodon! You can have cat ears!)
• PixelFed.nz (photo sharing)
• PeerTube.nz (video sharing)
• BookWorm.nz (talking about books, like goodreads, storygraph etc)
• OpenEvents.nz (events service, like meetup or eventfinda)
• Write.nz (blogging)
• Mtrx.nz (encrypted chat, imagine something like discord meets signal)
• FediRelay (the relay service)

Other changes:
• Tinker.nz is closing (it never really took off and the domain is expiring)
• Calckey.nz has closed (it became firefish)
• Mastodon.NZ has been handed over to new mods!
• https://donate.fediservices.nz will redirect to the ko-fi page, rather than Open Collective. The Open Collective page will remain up for people who are already using that platform.
• A bunch of techie wotsit cleanup/efficiency measures behind the scenes that admin can blog his nerdy little heart about when he has the time (these measures will give him more time).

This seems like a lot all at once?

Yes and No. Most of this has been on the radar for a while. There were a few changes that triggered the “we may as well do this and this too...actually let’s just do it all at once and minimise the disruption” thought process. Fediservices is going nowhere.

Why is there a new mod team at Mastodon NZ?

Mastodon NZ has changed a lot since it was first started as a laptop on admin’s table. It’s also a hell of a lot more work these days, as you can imagine, with nearly 10K users vs. 100. All of the other services combined aren’t 10% the work of Mastodon NZ.

Some of the team are more interested in those other services. Plus, most of the mods (there were always 5-6 of us, some were just more ‘visible’ than others) have either moved on from Mastodon NZ as their hangout space, or otherwise don’t feel they’re the right people to look after it any more. Some put in so many hours it became like a second full time job and that’s not sustainable.

To sum up, there’s a whole bunch of reasons and it’s pretty obvious that the right thing to do here is to establish some “must haves” (ie legal stuff) and ground rules (Mastodon NZ will not be becoming a “free speech” server etc), get a few good people on board to get the ball rolling, and then let them run with it.

Admin still has the highest access and ultimate control but will be very much “arms length” from here on out – the plan is for “admin” to be system admin and an escalation path if and when required, but to otherwise let the new mods run the place as they see fit.

What’s the state of the server finances?

Perfectly fine, thank you! Fediservices started on an old laptop on admin’s kitchen table. As it grew, people started asking how they could support it. Admin insisted that fellow volunteers not donate money as they were already donating their time, but everyone else was welcome if they wished to.

Turns out that was quite a lot of people, and that has allowed fediservices to future proof a whole lot of things. There’s plenty of cash in the kitty, and that supports the whole suite of fediservices.

The only change is we did decide to redirect people to the ko-fi rather than the Open Collective link because of lower fees and some other features. The Open Collective will remain up for those who prefer it. Easy as!

I had no idea you did anything other than Mastodon NZ?!

My friend, there is a whole fediverse out there. As you can see from just the stuff that we run, the NZ fediverse goes way beyond Mastodon NZ, and Mastodon itself. Get out there and get exploring!

Who are you people anyway?

A volunteer group of nerds. Fediservices is neither a corporation nor a public utility. All these services exist because a bunch of volunteers decided to make it so. People dip in and out, different skills are required for certain projects, etc.

For privacy and safety purposes, we will not be naming everyone publicly. If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s fine! You don’t have to use our services. As we said above, we are just a drop in the fediverse bucket. We are quite happy to be the doorway that someone uses to step into the fediverse. They don’t have to come and live in our house.

IF I FITS, I SITS

The cats have it right. Find the space or spaces that seem just right to you, and jump on in.

Don’t let anyone else shove you into a box that you don’t like. If you’re the type who likes everything in one place, find that place and make it your home. If you like compartmentalisation, do that instead. Do whatever you want. We are not the boss of you.

You know how it feels when something just “fits” and when it doesn’t.

The beauty of fedi is that you can make it your own, and if the fit isn’t right any more, then you can change it. You can also just unplug completely and live a happy life offline whenever you please. There is a whole world out there beyond our screens. Sometimes it’s nice to just go smell a flower.