Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really talked about it here on the blog, but for a while now I have been helping with the operation of Gamepad.club. Recently there have been some situations in the greater Fediverse where instance Administrators have gone missing leading to periods of significant degradation in operation and instance culture. Due to these wider concerns, Gazz wanted to protect the instance from ever being in a situation where an administrator could not be reached. I was asked and I agreed to help around with the instance. The variance in our operating times helps us catch those sign-ups and approve them a bit faster. So if you have any questions or concerns about Gamepad.club feels free to hit me up through any of my many social channels. I’m not really around on Twitter anymore so if you reach out there, it is going to take a while for me to even notice.
I have to admit I had been somewhat hesitant to talk too broadly about my role as an administrator on Gamepad.club not because I was ashamed to talk about it, but more because I wanted to spare the instance any undue heat. I had a fairly significant falling out with the Administrator of another gaming instance that launched last November. Largely I was trying to keep from our small home drawing her spite and her blocking the instance. However, I feel like I have been walking on eggshells since the events surrounding the launch of that instance and my being removed from the moderation team. When the same exact things happened to the other moderator of the instance, I just got tired of trying to be cautious. I will not let that bullshit that we dealt with damage my joy when it comes to the fediverse any longer. I feel safer on Gamepad than I did on other instances, because I have known Gazz for so many years, and he also knows me.
We’ve not had what I would consider meteoric growth, but it has been steady growth nonetheless. I think the great social media land run is more or less over, and folks who would be willing to leave Twitter already have their flag planted on some instance here. Most of our growth has been folks migrating from other instances because they wanted a more chill local feed. Truth be told the great thing about the Fediverse is that there is no real reason why anyone needs to be on any specific server. More than anything it is about choosing your local feed and maybe having a “cool address” behind your name. We’ve thrown out a placard and announced that we were open for business, and folks have answered that call a few at a time. Even I put off moving entirely for a while because it is a bit of a hassle to uproot yourself and plant yourself in a new place… even when you feel like that new place will be a better home.
I have to admit I am honestly fine with having a bit of a personal touch to our home, rather than trying to bring in thousands of people. None of us are trying to make a living off running an instance, but instead just trying to carve out a comfy home for ourselves in this new social landscape. The really cool thing about where we are now in the fediverse is that you can maintain a small instance, yet still have a good federation with thousands of other instances. I think last I knew we were federating actively with some 9000 other instances. Small instances that are not terribly well federated have issues with hashtags and the like, but so far the handful that I follow habitually are still introducing me to new people. I admit I was a bit concerned about that by moving away from one of the “stuxlikes”, but I’ve not really seen any tangible difference. I don’t think Patreon fully covers the operating expenses but if nothing else it is putting a decent dent in them.
So far things seem to be trucking along swimmingly. There has been a bit of weirdness when someone migrates from an instance we have not had migrations from before. We aren’t entirely certain what is going on there but it settles out after a few minutes. Essentially when you migrate from another instance there is a flurry of activity as the new server handshakes with both the old server and every server that you were following folks on. The whole “moving” instance thing is relatively new as in the past the only option you had was to export the list of folks you were following and then import that list into the new home. Previously there was no means to move followers, and the new process essentially asks for permission from every instance. If it succeeds the instance has the person who was following you previously follow your new account and then unfollow your old account. This works great so long as every server is running the same version of Mastodon, but largely falls apart when you are talking about other fediverse variants like Pixelfed, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.
Because of the voluntary nature of server migration and follower moves, this is in part why I always suggest folks export all of their data manually to CSV so that they can fall back to importing those if anything does not go as planned. In a worst-case scenario, you can then manually import everyone you were following, and hope the nature of the fediverse takes hold and they follow you on the new account. Server migrations are commonplace enough that rarely does anyone really bat an eye when someone jumps instances. More than anything the ability to change instances provides a self-healing characteristic that you just don’t have in another environment. If an instance gets stale, too busy for your tastes, or is unsustainable by the administration team… then you can move your home and in most cases, the entire process takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. Instances sign onto the Mastodon Server Covenant as we have as a way of providing at least three months’ notice if an instance needs to shut down.
Right now we are going through a rather public scenario where a large instance is shutting down. Currently, folks are using this as an excuse to decry the failure of Mastodon. For me, I largely view it as the system succeeding because instance admins have thrown out the welcome mat to make sure the folks from Mastodon.lol needing a new home can find one easily. Migration is one of those things that is just built into the Mastodon experience. I’ve shared the entire history of my instances before, but Gamepad.club is my tenth instance and in each case, I had perfectly valid reasons to move. That isn’t to say you need a reason other than “I want to” and the beautiful thing is that after awhile folks understand that the nature of the fediverse involves people shifting into more comfortable positions. I would never put the hard sell on anyone to migrate to any instance because so long as there is no defederation nonsense at work, we will be able to talk freely no matter where you end up.
Anyways long post that went in a bunch of different directions as often mine do. I’m helping out with the operations of Gamepad.club and while I’m technically an administrator I still very much take my lead from Gazz. I mostly help out with tedious things like loading emojis and helping to approve account submissions, but am there to step in if there ever comes a need for me to take a more active role. It is a good home and we’d love to have you, but also there is no pressure to move if you are happy where you currently “live” on the fediverse.
The post Gamepad is Cozy appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
I realize I talked a little bit about this yesterday, but I am pretty happy I went ahead and made the move to Gamepad.club. So far thanks to the amount of work that Gaz poured into making sure we had good federation, the experience has largely been uninterrupted. I still have access to the various hashtags that I had been following and am still seeing a similar volume of traffic coming from them. That is one of the sometimes gotchas from moving to a smaller instance, is that oftentimes hashtags don’t work quite as well. Generally speaking, the federation of a given instance is dictated by who the members of that instance follow. The more users on an instance, by nature the deeper the federation and the more successful things like hashtags become. I follow 814 accounts and as a result, my joining an instance adds those 814 connections. You can quickly imagine that mesh being extended for each person that joins a given instance.
Relays come into play to try and solve this problem. They end up granting servers access to everything being federated within a specific group, and by joining multiple relay networks you can artificially expand the reach of your server. So while you effectively live in a much smaller bubble, the local instance… you can still see topics actively being propagated amongst all of the instance servers in that network. When Gaz was setting up Gamepad.club he joined enough networks to create this effective mesh of 4000 or so servers that we were connected to. So while we have a fairly quiet local feed, the federated feed feels pretty much like it did when I was on Mstdn.social or Masto.ai.
So you are probably asking yourself if everything is effectively the same… why did I bother moving? The truth is there is no requirement to really move servers ever. Stux is great and the instances that he is responsible for mstdn.social, mastodon.coffee, and masto.ai are also pretty great. There is a thing that tends to happen when folks become active on the Fediverse. They discover the local feed and for a while it is exciting and new. The problem with a local feed on a giant server is that eventually it stops being exciting. Eventually, it becomes this dumping ground of too much chatter going on at once to ever hope to follow any of it. On a smaller server, the local feed often feels like going to the corner store and seeing a bunch of people you only sorta meet and are as we call it in rural america… “on waving terms” with. I wanted that back, and while Gamepad.club is pretty quiet and largely made up of people that I already follow, I am certain at some point in the future it will be that place for me.
Migration is also just part of life in the fediverse. It is largely considered a “feature” rather than a bug and it means that even thought right now Mastodon.social the flagship instance is being impacted by a round of denial of service attacks, the rest of the network continues to truck along fine largely oblivious. Legitimately had Gargon not said anything about it and it was boosted into my feed… I never would have known because it hasn’t been impacting any of the instances I have been involved with this week. I’ve migrated so many times at this point that while I end up putting it off usually… it is also a fairly painless occurrence and given how often it happens for various folks… it is just accepted at normal. I’ve talked about my long history of moves, but just to throw it all out there here is my history on Mastodon.
Mastodon.cloud – signed up for this not even having a clue that instances were unique things because like so many Twitter transplants I assumed it was a monolithic service.
Elekk.xyz – when I realized different instances had different purposes I joined the only “gaming” instance at that time.
Nineties.cafe – my friend Liore started an instance on Masto.host and I popped over because it was something led by someone I actually knew.
Elekk.xyz – back to Elekk when Nineties.cafe was shuttered for various sundry reasons.
MMORPG.social – migrated over to a new MMORPG-focused instance because why the heck not?
Elekk.xyz – back to Elekk when MMORPG.social was shuttered for various sundry reasons.
Mstdn.social – I joined this server because Elekk was under new management and had defederated from a bunch of instances that my friends were on, making it impossible to communicate with them anymore. Stux seemed like a nice admin.
Masto.ai – Mstdn.social was overwhelmed with new sign-ups, and Masto.ai was created as an overflow instance. A bunch of us longer-term Mstdn.social folks migrated to try and help ease the load.
Gamepad.club – My friend Gaz creates an instance and I once again throw my lot in with a smaller instance because while I am perfectly fine with Masto.ai I missed the smaller instance feel.
So in my five years on the Fediverse, I have migrated nine times, and each time had its own reason. The thing is… I could have stayed on Mastodon.cloud and never moved. Some people are going to want to plant their flag and never leave. Others like me, are going to flit around the fediverse between different environments at will. Truth be told… ALL of my accounts other than the two defunct instances are still active and I could migrate to ANY of them at will again in the future.
The scary thing at the moment is that those who failed to get off Twitter when the rest of us migrated… might have waited too long. On February 9th the Muskrat is shutting off free access to the Twitter API. As a pre-emptive strike, he shuttered access to the accounts that were being used to run all of the third-party Twitter clients. Most recently his gaze has turned to the API accounts being used to create helpful migration tools like Movetodon that allowed you to connect your Twitter account, and then allow you to follow those same people on Mastodon. As of this week, those accounts seem to have been flagged as violating Twitter rules and policies. So the easy migration period is over, from this point forward you are on your own.
Yesterday in the real world, my team spent the day gutting Twitter from our public-facing websites. Previously we had used the free Twitter API to cache copies of all of the tweets sent from our official accounts. We had them appearing in the sidebar, and the cached copies kept us from running into issues with connectivity and causing that UI element to “wig out”. However even our very meager access pattern would end up costing us over a thousand dollars a month. I figure soon over the coming weeks you are going to find all of the ways that you used to integrate Twitter with applications you enjoyed, similarly shuttering that functionality. That means more than likely all of those video game integrations like the one I have used the most to get screenshots off my Switch and PS4/PS5, will be shut down and non-functional.
Twitter didn’t die in the fiery cataclysm that some of us thought that it might. However, it still seems to be dying a slow rotting cancerous death as it loses functionality and as a result cultural importance. I popped over the other day to change out the mastodon information in my profile and found myself depressed at how different it feels. Sure there are folks who are still using it, but the quantity of activity is a pale comparison to what it once was. I miss a lot of people, for example, I miss seeing Liani’s posts filling up my feed, but I can’t support what is happening over there especially when there is a better option. February 9th is going to be a significant moment in this saga because it will be interesting to see how devoid of Twitter content a lot of sites suddenly end up being. I just have to hope that my paths will cross with the folks stranded on the sinking ship that is Twitter because the easy life rafts have already departed and they might have to dog paddle away on a door.
Anyways long twisting post later… Gamepad.club is great and I am glad I made my move. It is small and quiet, but sometimes I need that in life. If you don’t have a good mastodon home already, then I welcome you to check it out.
The post You Waited Too Long appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! Surprised Josie is surprised that I am taking her photo. I figured since this is going to be a fairly light post this morning I would lead off with a cat photo and maybe even close with a cat photo. I’ve not really talked about it on my blog but late last year I was involved with the preparation and launch of a mastodon instance and said involvement went off the rails. As a result, I have not really had a default Mastodon instance to suggest to my friends. There are of course excellent sites run by Stux like Mastodon.coffee, Mstdn.social, and Masto.ai that I currently reside on, but there is just something different about having a nice focused local feed that you can rely on. Since most of my online interaction is with gaming-focused topics, it would be lovely to have a gaming-focused instance that did not have a shitbird for an administrator.
Back in 2019, during another wave of migrations from Twitter my friend Gazimoff founded MMORPG.social and it was a delightful place. You might know him better from his time spent writing for MMORPG.org or the ZAM Network… or even his intense involvement in the Wildstar community… or maybe the Mana Obscura blog. MMORPG.social was really cool but also of fairly limited focus… given that MMORPGs in general represent a pretty small slice of the total gaming public. Then there was the fact that a lot of lessons were learned in a rapid-fire succession about how best to build a Mastodon instance and be able to scale it with demand. While MMORPG.social was ultimately shuttered, lessons were learned about how to build a better community going forward and more than that how to make the entire site scale more sustainably.
Now we scan forward to yesterday when Gaz finally pulled back the curtain on his next venture. Gamepad.club is the result of that understanding gained back in 2019 and created to be a more general focus gaming instance rather than a niche devoted to MMORPGs. Essentially Gaz decided there was a need for a stable gaming-focused instance that could scale as needed and that had a steady hand. I am very happy to have an instance that I feel like I can wholeheartedly support and suggest to my friends. He is doing it right from the start and has signed on to the Mastodon Server Covenant that outlines some basic parameters for operating an instance. I’m not currently formally involved with the running of this instance in any way, because I decided it was probably best that I was not at least in the short term. I’m admittedly concerned that the vindictive admin of another gaming instance might take some sort of retaliatory action against Gamepad.club if I were.
I have however set up an account there and worked on my profile. I’ve not made the formal leap, but I am sure at some point in the coming weeks I will. I have a lot of faith in Gaz and the lessons that he learned while running MMORPG.social and how best to keep from running into any roadblocks with Gamepad.club. I think one of the huge benefits of the way it is configured is that it is not just another hosted instance on masto.host, and as a result, he can pivot and apply custom patches as needed rather than waiting for the entire hosted infrastructure to be updated at the same time. I plan on picking his brain on his experiences with Linode, because I have been deeply considering shifting all of my infrastructure to a self-managed cloud environment rather than the shared web hosting that I currently have.
I will close out this morning’s post with a picture of Josie and Gracie chilling on the sofa and actually getting along. Josie is not all that sure about her role as “Big Sister” and mostly gets annoyed by Gracie’s love and attention. Essentially my friends if you are looking for a more gaming-focused instance, then I highly suggest you check out Gamepad.club. It is still pretty small but I figure in the coming weeks it will grow into a lovely community, without any terribly onerous rules. Gaz is someone I trust and someone who has been a friend for years. I am very willing to put my faith in him when I migrate.
The post The Gamepad Club appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! The gang is all back at the same time… just in time to take a break effectively until after the new year. Because of how the holidays fall this year, we will not be recording shows for the next few weeks and returning after that with our usually two-part Games of the Year show.
This week we talk about more Twitter Madness and the time when a journalist misread the now-banned JoinMastodon account and created a fictitious person named John Mastodon that runs Mastodon. From there we talk about Tam’s epic journey in trying to find some way to comfortably use a push-to-talk key while playing games on a controller. We talk a bit about a few 2D games on the Steam Deck specifically Ghost Song and Salt and Sanctuary. After that, we talk about our progress in the Path of Exile Forbidden Sanctum league and just how much madness is associated with learning that game in general. Finally, we talk about playing Justin Roiland’s High On Life, a game about talky gunfriends.
