kristinHenry, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to art

Hey folks!

Please do NOT report artists for sharing links to where their art is available to purchase!

Just DO NOT be such a jerk!

If you want artists to keep sharing their work on mastodon, this whole "absolute no commercial posts at all" attitude has to stop. There is a huge difference between a big corporate ad campaign and an individual artist posting a link to their own art shop.

Edit/Update: Well, this blew up. I'm muting now, and won't see replies.

#ArtForSale #art #visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 6 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

This is NOT twitter. Please don't treat our Local Timeline like it is.

Use CWs generously, with a sense of overabundance of thoughtfulness about triggering others.

If there food or alcohol? Use a CW

Is the topic very upsetting to most people? Use a CW!!!!

Alternatively, make your posts Unlisted.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Hey vis.social!

Starting tomorrow, April 25th, @darth_mall will be helping out our moderation team as Admin.

I go in for surgery tomorrow, and expect to be in the hospital recovering for an additional 3-5 days.

If all goes as expected, I will be fully recovered in a month. But I'll be back online before then. :)

Editing to add: yep, it's Cancer. But hopefully, this surgery will take care of it.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

It looks like we need to draft up a new Community Rule regarding sexually explicit posts.

vis.social is much like a conference or art festival, where NSFW topics are not really appropriate, but we've never spelled it out before now.

We'd like to know your thoughts on how you'd like to see the policy written.

Editing, to add the #visSocialTips tag.

kristinHenry, 6 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Please remember to ad a CW for any posts about AI or ChatGPT or Bard... or whatever is being hyped at the time.

Think of a CW as a Subject Line

On Mastodon, we can edit our posts and add CWs to them: https://github.com/KristinHenry/vis.social#add-a-cw-to-your-post

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 6 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Our database will be migrated to a new server this Saturday at 9:30am UTC.

This will cause a down-time on vis.social for about 2 hours.

The upside is that this migration should improve our database performance.

Thank you for your patience.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 5 months ago to random

There's so much chatter about Threads today. I guess I should mention that we've had threads.net proactively blocked for months already.

We'll keep an eye on things, but I don't see us lifting the block until next year, at the earliest.

1. We don't know how much of a server load it will add, and thus increase our expenses.

2. Moderation is a big concern. We do not have the resources to deal with a new unmoderated instance right now.

--vis.social Moderation team
#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 3 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

An update on the wave of spam-mentions: I've gone through the tier5 and tier3 domains on https://github.com/Mastodon-DE/blocklists/blob/main/spam/2024-02-15/2024-02-15-spam-mute-list.md

I've added Limits to any that we didn't already have Limited or Suspended...that's about half of the list.

Please continue to report new spam, so that we can deal with them and help keep this a better space for all of us.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 3 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Why do we try to maintain our Local Timeline as on-topic?

There are so many reasons. But one big one is that our Local Timeline is what other folks see when they are checking out if they'd like to join our community or not.

We are a topic-based instance, so when our Local Timeline is all over the place and there's no Data Viz or Art or any Creative process...What are potential community member supposed to make of this?

--vis.social moderation team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Looks like we're seeing another spam wave from mastodon.social, so we're Limiting the instance briefly.

--vis.social mod-team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

There seems to be a lot of confusion about CWs, especially in regard to AI topics.

It seems clear that we don't want to see NFTs or text-to-image or GPT generation from tools that have a lot of hype.

What's less clear, I think, is that we really need CWs on other AI topics.

And I need to work more on explaining this.

But right now, we need our community to label any AI posts, so that we can pause and think. Is it hype? Is it something else?

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Please remember that this instance is topic based, and that posts on our Local Timeline should stay on-topic.

If you'd like to post off-topic subjects like sports or politics, please either add a CW or make them unlisted.

https://github.com/KristinHenry/vis.social#add-a-cw-to-your-post

https://github.com/KristinHenry/vis.social#set-the-privacy-level-of-your-post

--your vis.social moderation team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 4 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

We understand that this community is different from what you're used to. But a lot of it avoids our volunteer moderation team burning out.

If you can't be bothered to follow our code of conduct, or follow our community rules, maybe you should be on a different instance.

Right now, and for at least a year, is going to be a really tough time to be a community mod on mastodon.

A little effort from your part, helps ease our burden.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 5 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Greetings from your Admin and Moderation team.

Remember that this is NOT twitter. This community instance is taken care of by a team of volunteers, and that we have specific rules that help us avoid burn out and keep this all running as smoothly as possible.

Most of those rules revolve around being thoughtful of others.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 3 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Please do NOT harass our moderators when they ask you to add a CW to a post. Harassment of anyone is not acceptable in this community.

Please read the rules and code of conduct for this community instance. They are listed on our About page: https://vis.social/about

If you don't understand them, then ask us...without calling them "dumb".

If you don't agree with them, then please find a different instance or platform.

--vis.social moderation team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Mastodon is a bit different than most social platforms, and it can be quirky and confusing at times. But once you get used to it, you may appreciate it even more.

We've been working on some helpful documentation for you. It's an ongoing-work-in-progress, but there are already helpful bits in there.

CWs can be confusing. How do you even add them?

https://github.com/KristinHenry/vis.social#add-a-cw-to-your-post

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

There's a new wave of spam coming from mastodon.social, so we are temporarily Limiting that instance for a while.

You should still be able to interact with accounts you already follow there.

-- vis.social moderation team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Hey vis.social folks!

We could use some more help on our "part-time" moderators team.

Academics, Artists, Creative Coders, and more! We seek diversity of fields and backgrounds.

Especially if you're up to date on current AI tools, so that it's easier to spot posts on our Local Timeline that should have a CW.

Here's our application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeCflISwvcYXOtAxEhRlI80xLPdoIUy2j1_GGW0Mg8rofRUJQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 4 months ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Please remember to add CWs for anything political. This coming year is going to be very rough year, and we don't want to burn out our moderation team.

If you're posting 'unlisted', I would recommend still adding CWs out of courtesy to your community.

Not sure how to add a CW to your existing post? This might be helpful: https://github.com/KristinHenry/vis.social#add-a-cw-to-your-post

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 1 month ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

I've re-opened registrations for new accounts. All application still require approval before they can become active, as usual.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 1 month ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

I've been working on a new community instance for the past few months. It's still a work-in--progress, but is ready for a slow opening.

So, if you feel constrained by the on-topic nature of our Local Timeline here on vis.social, or you don't want to CW your posts that mention AI tech, you might be happier on the new instance: datavis.social

Can you stay here on vis.social and ALSO have an account on datavis.social? Yes!

https://datavis.social/home

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 13 days ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

Please remember to add CWs to off-topic posts.

Yes, even good news.

However, if the post is also on-topic...in that it has data in it...it should be fine.

Use your judgement, and be thoughtful of others.

You can also post 'unlisted', so that only folks who follow you will see it or boost it.

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 19 days ago to random

Hey vis.social folks!

We might be seeing a new wave of mention-spam. If you start seeing any in your notifications, please report it so we can deal with it more quickly and help support our whole community.

--vis.social mod team

#visSocialTips

kristinHenry, 6 days ago (edited 3 days ago) to Bloomscrolling

It's Friday!

Who are some of your favorite folks to follow on this and other instances?

What are some of your favorite hashtags to follow?
I'm particularly fond of #BloomScrolling and #SciArt

Edited to add: Ha! Apparently I don't know what day it is. Best case, you see this tomorrow, which is actually Friday.

#FollowFriday #visSocialTips