I had funny thought today, and this is more like a statement of intention and less a plan: if it were very easy, I’d run an ActivityPub endpoint (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc) on sub-domains for talkgroup.xyz.
I was thinking this because I want to keep a Mastodon account for an inbox; I don’t want to follow people there anymore. Hmmm, not quite. I currently follow lots of folks, but I don’t read it, I only respond to other people, and then search for tags. So I don’t actually need to follow anyone for that.
And then I realized I do sometimes read the local timeline, which is SDF for me, and that’s okay, but it isn’t like I’m particularly attached. I think if I read you folks locally, I’d never have to follow anyone, and interact with that portion of the net on terms that I already do.
One bonus would be I could give an AP address that wasn’t on SDF; as I control talkgroup, I can ensure I am never embarrassed by putting it on a business card. At this point it isn’t that SDF is bad or every worrisome, it’s just that the way that community protects itself is by a pervasive apathy field of governance. I like that about SDF, but I don’t want to put that on a biz card or spread it around; I’d prefer if folks found SDF on their own, it is almost a grail-like thing that reveals itself to those that need it when they do. That’s how weird shell communities are.
Of course the big big big thing that would be awesome would be a plugin for Discourse so folks can @maiki@talkgroup.xyz and then we are frickin’ golden! In the meantime, if we get an easy way to host an AP-enabled app, I am open to expanding the talkgroup service (slowly) in that direction.
Im struggling to have coherent thoughts that I also want to share on this topic, but you invited me, so im guessing your after input.
I get your desire to merge talkgroup and the fediverse. I however wanna chime in that I think their is virtue in keeping them distinct. I personally like a lot of what Talkgroup is now and some of it’s longer term goals; but the Fediverse doesn’t have a favorable signal to noise ratio imho for a lot of the longterm plans. The social tenor of Talkgroup also feels a bit different and I think it would unavoidably change.
I’ve found the local timeline kind of the main attraction to Mastodon. When you click with it it’s great; when you don’t it sucks. But its kind of nice to have access to that larger community in my experience.
I’ve got a lot of feelings about this as you know. I just felt like chiming in on this for those who don’t find apathy or even antagonism to governance a virtue; and their are parts of SDF which bias towards the later. There are definitely some bigots who get shielded by this culture and thrive there which can make some otherwise froody and SDF type people feel unwelcome. It also has a very high lack of transparency making admin and mod decisions feel like whims.
I’d very much like to have access to a wierd shell community as active as the SDF’s with even some lightweight civility enforced.
For the record this is more about their other comms outside of mastodon. Though the bits about inconsistent moderation and administration applies to their mastodon instance too.
