I hope they coordinate on this.
We have Mastodon Migration’s “Follow Packs”: https://mastodonmigration.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/mastodon-follow-pack-directory-nov-20-2024/
Dansup is working on “starter kits” for the fediverse: https://github.com/pixelfed/apska
Now Gagron’s team is working on a similar thing.
Stefan Bohucek is imperimenting with a separate version too. We’ll end up with multiple implementations of this.
The ‘Follow Packs’ are just a web directory. That’s totally different.
I have no idea what dansup is working on there, but it seems destined to be another plate he’s not going to focus on keeping spinning.
Gargon’s team is probably going to end up building something that’s off spec and idiosyncratic to Mastodon, basically guaranteeing that there are totally unrelated implementations across the fediverse.
Maybe they could also fix the “suggested accounts” feature so that the top recommendation for me isn’t an account that posted once 2 years ago.
Hell Yeah
How do starter packs help Mastodon become a better platform?
What Mastodon and any fediware need is a form to choose your instance :
- random general instance btw a mixed of a few middle size instance rotation every now and the
- fully random instance
- a instance rofly matching our liking through a short questionary. Five minutes max to make an account using a unified interface.
I personally prefer hashtags over this. And given how liberally some admins block and defederate other instances I will stick with hashtags in the near future.
Hashtag is only usable for small contained community. Some instance already too big that hashtag is not work.
Especially multi language instance. Some word or phrase on hashtag can have multiple meaning depending on the language.
Well hashtags clearly don’t work quite as well for discovery, which is why there is demand for starter packs. But what happens if other backends don’t implement it? Then people on the other instances, that is not mastodon, doesn’t have a way to opt out.
