The reality is, you always take a chance when contributing to an open source development or projects. Just because you made a contribution, does not mean you own the project or can decide the path that project takes. Those of us who donated understood the risk (or at least, I hope most people did).
That said, when someone takes a proactive driving stance claiming they will deliver, you kind of hope you can take them for their word. And expecting the main website to be online is not a big ask, especially when that serves as a gateway for people to learn about and use the project you are funding. That, after all, was the reason I donated.
No matter, how you connect to the Fediverse, be if, for example, Misskey, Sharkey, Ice Shrimp, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Kbin, or by other means, the Fediverse instance you're using cost money. In the real world, web hosting, bandwidth, and storage space cost, money. And the more members who use and join your Fediverse instance (server), the more resources and the most it cost.
I earned by badge, by reaching out to my administrator, and helping them by donating. And while if it was not required to make a donation or regular contribution, I like using the Fediverse. It is ad-free and decentralized, meaning, someone like Elon Musk, cannot change things for everyone, everywhere, solely on their latest mood swing. So I made the choice to help fund my corner of the collective social media network, known as the Fediverse.
Join Sharkey dot Org has been OFFLINE for over 2 months. The reason given was hosting issues, and this was before the whole Hetzner drama. Join Sharkey dot Org is supposed to be the gateway for people to learn about Sharkey and how they can join.
The Documentation Page (Wiki) is still up, using the subdomain, Doc dot Join Sharkey dot Org, but the URLs are broken. I have repeatedly reported the broken URLs for over 2 months (both in the Git and on their Discord Server). No one seems to want to address that.
They have a private copy of GitLab located at ActivityPub dot Software, that you cannot find via a search looking for Sharkey (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google). That is where you can report code changes and fixes, but you would likely not know that unless you stumbled upon the URL somewhere (or someone gave you that URL).
Sharkey raised a lot of money so they can host their own content, safely, and securely. They now own their own physical server and lease the space to have that server housed (hosted) remotely. And while the lead developer promotes that server partially as a minecraft server, Join Sharkey dot Org still remains, OFFLINE.
I have pulled funding from Sharkey and will not be supporting it further until they get their act together. It is a good software, and it is my preferred method to use the Fediverse, but you would assume they would want their website working.
They're the mascot for #SharkeyWorld, an instance powered by @Sharkey (cc: @ruud). It's a community of roughly ~120 members, and part of the rapidly growing squad of instances based on this #Misskey fork. #OhHaai
Haai is also the Dutch word for shark, and also is a homophone for a greeting (Hi!).
Special shoutout to our administrator @chikorita157 who has been doing a good job keeping our Sharkey instance (server) running smoothly.
Being a system admin is can seem like a thankless job sometimes, and sometimes it means tracking down minor issues, going over logs, and occasionally dealing with user drama too (I do that for a living, it's not fun).
A friendly reminder that the Fediverse instance (server) is run by a volunteer who does not get paid, does not host ads, and is often paying things out of their own pocket. - All so complete strangers can share their random thoughts, views, beliefs, rants, or sometimes just sh*tpost.
😂 That was odd! When I mentioned @darnell on my #WordPress blog, it pinged my #Flipboard account on my iPhone even though #ActivityPub is not yet activated (I received a push notification, which later revealed nothing 😆).
Important issue, and an interesting discussion has taken place since last year on the #Mastodon side of things. I imagine this issue is also present for #Misskey and most other #Fediverse services, and I wonder if a fix is already in the works or even rolled out for them?
That encouraged me & others to donate and attracted corporate sponsors (I think someone just donated $100,000 or ¥15,728,365.80 recently). via @darnellhttps://darnell.moe/notes/9sq22w9724
Misskey, a decentralized micro-blogging platform, is in need of financial support.
Misskey is not a business, it is a non-profit, not a company.
The only income for the project comes from your donations.
If you like Misskey, please help us continue to develop it! https://www.patreon.com/syuilo
Those who donate a certain amount may have their name added to Misskey's credit.
Thank you for contributing to the future of Fediverse! #misskey
I don't like this move by #Threads. Limiting who can do #quoteposts pretty much defeats the purpose of quote posts in the first place.
Oh well, I'm confident that #Misskey will not adopt this beyond not allowing blocked users to quote a post by the user blocking them (which I disagree with btw), so this will not affect me thankfully and I can still quote Threads users as long as they haven't blocked me. :seija_coffee:
Présentement en train de faire un thème clair pour #Misskey / #Iceshrimp.
Finalement je m'éloigne un peu de la base dont je me suis inspiré :pikasmilesweat:
Tbh I think the #Threadiverse like #Lemmy and #kbin would make a lot more sense if they were simply frontends and perhaps a backend too but just for the forums themselves. IOW, no accounts live in Lemmy or kbin, all users post from their preferred #fediverse account instead.
Sure you can already technically do that from your #Mastodon or #Misskey or whatever fedi you're in, but that means using whatever app you're on right now, which almost certainly means it's not a #linkaggregator UI. Not ideal at all.
If I had any good programming skills I'd make it so that the link aggregator is merely a client that uses the Mastodon (with #Pleroma extensions too) and Misskey APIs, treat (almost) all #ActivityPub actors as their own forums or subs, and each post would be a boost from said actor. Users authenticate from their preferred fedi account. Voting would be tallied by few special actors, which internally receive votes via direct messages (the app will make this transparent, but this also means you can technically vote without the app if you know the exact command), which will effectively make votes secret to non-admins like in #Reddit. Users can also choose which vote counters they want to rely from.
This would make the fediverse-powered link aggregator very flexible and minimal, imo. It may look janky but that's the general idea I have. :seija_coffee:
One way to promote the #Fediverse is by making the different fediverse software support custom profile skins and themes. This can potentially create an ecosystem of skin and theme creators, which in turn will make more people talk about it.
I differentiate between a skin and a theme because:
A “skin” is like changing the CSS of the default layout. Adding an image here and there, new icons, and colours and gradients.
While a “theme” can change the layout itself. The widgets available, or shuffle them around. Possible even a way to add custom ones (careful with this though).
You can add, remove, and move widgets around. Use custom ones easily. Change colours easily. Change the widths, the columns, and so on. That is a “theme”. There were even third-party frontend packages a developer can use so they don't have to worry much about it.
Skinning is the simplest method; and this was what made #Plurk popular when it launched in May 2008 (yes, Plurk is as old as the Fediverse network). There was a Plurk skin ecosystem, which in turn increased the number of people talking about Plurk.
Apply the theming feature from the early CMS brands with Plurk's user-level skinning feature, and we create a playground for the users.
#Misskey and forks already had a good start with their user-level skinning feature (and user-level plugins at that). We just need to see it in the other popular fediverse software.
Make it easier to understand. Write guidelines in layman's terms, not dev terms, and maybe, just maybe, we can spark the interest of new users. Who doesn't want a customisable user profile?
#Threads user with dotted username (an impossibility in vanilla #Mastodon) spotted in the wild federating with a #Misskey instance (namely, Voskey)! So, does this mean Misskey can handle dotted usernames & thus can further do what #Mastodont?