Sadly it looks like #firefish is going to die a slow unmaintained death now, and I need to pick a successor to run.
#iceshrimp and/or #catodon appear to be the spiritual successors, but I think I'll be waiting to see who publishes and maintains a public Docker image first.
Just learned about the demise of #Firefish (head is M.I.A.). It's unfortunate for the thousands of instances running it, but with that comes #IceShrimp, #Sharkey, and #Catodon. All of them (I think) are being developed by former Firefish devs. Options.
Hopefully, current FF users are all, if they want to, able to move to another actively-developed community easily.
After giving this a lot of thought and discussing with the wonderful people that build Iceshrimp, #Catodon will rebase to #Iceshrimp. We feel that it's the right decision for the road ahead, as Iceshrimp is another #firefish fork that focuses in improving performance and they have already done some amazing improvements, like full Mastodon API support. With Firefish's future uncertain, we think it's better to stay closer to an actively maintained project. The two projects will stay distinct, as we have different design goals, but we have a common codebase so we feel this makes sense.
Just to be clear on all fronts and to answer the obvious question in advance, yes, Iceshrimp is also currently doing a full rewrite in C#, which is a few months away, and we haven't decided if we'll adopt this yet - it's a strong possibility, but we're keeping our options open. We're confident they're doing a great job, still, we'll weigh what the best decision for Catodon is on this when it's ready and the time comes.
Just wanted to let you know that this might push Catodon's development back a little, as it's sort of a structural change, but we feel that it's worth it, and that it might be better for the broader community. Catodon development will resume once rebasing to Iceshrimp is finished, and then we'll have better foundations to build this on.
There's a vision behind #Catodon: To build a software that will be as self-explanatory as it gets, so that you can invite your (irl or from other platforms) friends to your community and they will instantly feel familiar. People tend to not like change; they like sticking with what's familiar. So when they enter a fedi server and they see all the confusing terminology and buttons they don't understand what they do, it's just one more reason for them to give up and go back to facebook or wherever. Not everyone will want to come to your fedi community, but for those who are willing to try something different, let's at least not put unnecessary obstacles in their path. They're attempting to feel at home here - let's make them feel at home.
@panos I'm on #FireFish currently. What would you say is the biggest contrast between #Catodon and #FireFish, besides the obvious lack of updates and abandonment issues?
Is there a painless way to upgrade #calckey server (13.1.4.1) to something with more perspective (that will not die in the next 6 months)? What do you suggest? #Iceshrimp? #Sharkey? #Catodon?
I've just discovered that the #Firefish project seems dead. I tried it last summer (built my own server with this #fediverse platform). It had real potential. It seems now that it is replaced by a new project called #Catodon.
I'm thinking that maybe it would be better to call Replies "Comments". It kind of feels cozier and less strict to me. Might also help with distinguishing posts and reply posts a little more in the users' heads - it wouldn't be enough on its own, of course, but it could be a step in the right direction. The current timeline behaviour sometimes feels a lot like a big chat, and we could offer a better social media experience by moving to a more post-centric feed.
WDYT? Does this make sense? #Catodon
We're one week into 2024, do you know what that means? Time to clean up your #SNS “following” especially here in the #Fediverse.
Check the “dormant” accounts if you can unfollow them.
Check which accounts “moved”. Follow their new account, then unfollow their old account.
And maybe there are other accounts that you haven't interacted with in the past few months; and their content is no longer something that you are interested, you can unfollow them too.
If you still want to see their content, you can encourage them to use #hashtags and you follow those hashtags. Or, join a federated “group” like those powered by #Mbin#Kbin#Friendica#Chirp and #Lemmy.
Of course, depending on the fediverse platform your instance is using, there are probably better features to the content of users without seeing their content that is not of interest to you. A good example, #Firefish / #Catodon / #IceShrimp can do that through the “Antenna” feature.
Take some time to do this, and start your 2024 fediverse better than 2023.
Here's another new feature in #Catodon, cherry picked from #Firefish! A language selector, so that you can define your post's language. Once timeline filters are implemented, you'll be able to filter posts by language(s)!
A handy little new feature in #Catodon, implemented by @linca - thank you!
You know how Mastodon and Misskey show only the number of direct replies under each post? This doesn't provide enough information, as a post might have just one direct reply, but it might be a thread with twenty more comments nested - yet you only see "1" reply.
In Catodon, you still see the number of direct replies in your timeline, but when you click on a post and see the detailed view, next to the number of direct replies you can also see the number of sub-replies under them! So in this case we have 55 direct replies, nesting 118 sub-replies. This way you can easily see how deep the discussion under a post goes at any time, without having to go through every thread! Does this sound useful to you?
After #Catodon (and the situation with #Firefish) went public, we've certainly had a lot of support and positive feedback. However, there were also people who shared irony and negativity. There were people who seemed happy to see Firefish's state, and who would be happy if Catodon failed. Some didn't like our name. Some found it unacceptable that the name resembles Mastodon, whereas we start as a Misskey fork. It's sort of a tribute, people. We're in a way a Mastodon alternative where you can be a cat. And we'll improve our Mastodon API support so you can use Catodon with Mastodon apps. No need to take things so seriously and with a hostile stance, if what we're doing doesn't click with you that's fine, we never asked you to like us. There are certainly better things to define and present youself than by your dislike towards an open source project. We're not hurting anyone, we're trying to build a free tool that people may find useful. Lose the hate, it's only a burden.
One feature I miss from #Twitter is explanations for ongoing trends on the platform. It saved me the research step to know what chronically online quirk is now “it” and avoids misunderstanding one thing for another.
It was nice for quickly getting an overview of a currently discussed topic before going through a wall of posts and not understanding anything which really helped with my #ADHD.
I’m kinda playing with the idea of switching instances, but I’m holding back because I don’t wanna lose my posts here.
I wish #Mastodon supported #NomadicIdentity like #Firefish (and maybe #Catodon as well?), but those two supporting it wouldn’t help much in my case as I’m not sure they would work with @ivory and don’t seem to offer any mobile clients besides Feditext which is in beta.
Firefish did claim to support the Mastodon API so it should work with Ivory, right?
I'm giving Catodon.social a go.
Unfortunately Firefish.social has become so broken it doesn't even respect migration requests (let alone post downloads). So a lot of people will miss seeing my move 🫣. I suppose people will find me again over time, but that's a real shame for a server to get that neglected.
I do also have my @ArtBear account which I won't be migrating (it's just offline for DB maintenance for a few hours, don't freak out anyone).
Why Catodon?
I'm sure other projects are interesting too.
I liked how @panos interacted & was committed to community building on #firefish.social. I feel like it's important for any dev team to have in mind Community, not just features, nor just admin, nor just moderation it's all really important but community is the base. I liked how he posted his frustrations with the very large parts of the firefish project that were not a team endeavour that could be picked up & redistributed, but solely resting on only 1 individual. I like the Catodon mission statement about being a team wanting to dev for a lot of servers, and not dev for some mega flagship server (which is a vulnerability of fedi. decentralised & well distributed is good). Also the 1st set of improvement notes were really good at logical cleanup, changes & taking the good parts of stalled firefish forward again, but in a more streamlined direction.
Right away #Catodon feels like an old friend, I really missed:
markdown!
awesome super customisable UI!
properly rendered links so you don't have to click away!
multi links in a single post!
proper quote posts! (really it's users, not features!)
threading display so you actually know if you're in a thread & where!
floating user info cards with actions like follow (not clicking away to a profile)!
custom emoji reactions! (like 😻 or 🥴not just ⭐!)
custom feeds & also lists, are amazingly flexible, you really need to try them!
widgets!
storage with all media for re-use (with editable #altText!!)!
search your contentsearchbox [search]post controls!
blogs (pages)!
forums (channels)!
8000 word limit (be afraid, be very afraid muhahaha!)
and so much more...
Anyway, here's to a new #Fedi adventure! :catodon:💜🐻🎉
@reflex@ArtBear@panos
I was quite excited to read, #Catodon is planning to work with the #Mastodon front end apps I believe, which would be pretty cool.