Introduction: JoinFediverseWiki & PaulaToThePeople

Hi,
I think it’s time to introduce myself.
I’m Paula (she/her), known in the Fediverse mostly as PaulaToThePeople @PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social.
I was invited here by @strypey and created this account representing https://joinfediverse.wiki a wiki about the Fediverse I created more than 3 years ago.

JoinFediverseWiki

The wiki is supposed to be a first contact point to the Fediverse for people who don’t know much or anything about it yet. The aim is to give a good overview to answer the most common questions for people new to the subject. But there is also space to dump all your nerd knowledge about fringe Fediverse aspects as well as guides for developing your own Fediverse software, if that’s what you want to share.

I’m not consistent in my activity on the wiki and neither are other editors and translators. Right now we’re in a rather long phase of low activity and we should find new editors and translators to update and add info. So if anyone wants to join, please do so!

I’ve also started a process of overhauling the general structure, but haven’t found the time to finish it yet.

I’m thinking of using this forum for discussing things about the wiki, which direction it should go and how to improve the design, overview and accessibility as well as ways to collaborate with other Fediverse information resources like https://fediverse.info, https://fedi.tips, https://fedi.garden, https://joinfediverse.net, https://fediverse.party, https://fedi.db, https://fediverse.observer, https://fedi.guide, https://the-federation.info, https://instances.social, https://fedi.directory, https://fedi-search.com, https://whomtofollow.com, and all the others.

Me

I’m 35 years old, non-binary, white and Austrian, living in Vienna.
I am studying to become a specialist for animal-assisted work (education, intervention, coaching, therapy) and am looking forward to working in that field with my dog Platon.
My biggest passion besides the Fediverse is climatejustice. I’ve been an activist since 2019 and now I’m about to start my own project, where I’m trying to go away from activism, demands and even talking about “climate”, but rather see how we can reach people who get angry just hearing the word “climate” and get them to change even a little bit.

I joined the Fediverse in 2018 and am now hosting a few instances together with the Fediverse Foundation (Fediverse Foundation).
We have a lot of free space on our server and filling it with more instances wouldn’t increase the expenses for power and traffic, so if you know of any instance looking for a new host, you can direct them to us. So far our tech team is experienced with Mastodon and Lemmy.

I’m happy to be here and looking forward to interesting discussions and collaboration opportunities.

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Welcome @JoinFediverseWiki! I’m not very active on this forum but I have seen you around on the Fediverse. Those are interesting projects that you’re involved in that I wasn’t fully aware of, and I look forward to interacting more :slightly_smiling_face:

A few of us were thinking of starting an instance for India—something that seems to be sorely missing from the Fediverse (at least last I checked). We’re trying to tie up with other projects within the Free Software Community of India, but if that doesn’t work I wonder if it’d be a good fit for hosting under the Fediverse Foundation? We are all new to instance administration though, so it’s going to be very experimental for a while.

The wiki is something I might have stumbled upon accidentally, but now I’m properly aware of its existence! I’m not sure I know enough about the various Fediverse projects to contribute, but I’ll start browsing it and see if I have anything to add. What’s your policy on additions—does it need to have references (like Wikipedia)? And does simply copying information from the project blog or home page also work for starters (somewhat unlike Wikipedia, which wants to also have third-party sources)?

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Hi. :slight_smile:

Sure, we could host an instance for you. We could take over the technical administration in fully, so you only have to cover moderation if that’s what you prefer. Or we can offer space on our server and you get access to administer your instance yourselves. Or something in between. If it comes to it I’ll direct you to our tech team to talk about the details.

If you could translate some articles of the wiki that would be cool too. There is a translation feature that is quite easy to understand once you get the hang of it. For writing new articles or editing: References are not necessary. If by copying information you mean actually copy-pasting text, then I guess that’s not cool, but if you just mean using the official channels as a source, that’s cool. And the text shouldn’t sound like promotional text advertising a product (not that I’ve seen any Fediverse project use such a tone on their website yet).

Personally I’m not a fan of Wikipedia’s third party source obsession. In some cases like gender identity that is absolutely problematic. Only a person themselves can tell you, who they are and how they identify. Not a doctor and not a journalist.

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That would be great! I’ll get back to you on this though, because we are thinking of offering a bundle of related services (eg. Pixelfed, Akkoma, and Mobilizon with a common login) which would be better hosted on an independent server. The current proposal is to collaborate with durare.org (run by the FSCI community), so I’ll get back again if that doesn’t work out. It’s good to know the option exists though (and I hope others find it useful)!

Okay, good to know! Yeah, I meant taking information from there, not copy-pasting directly. Unfortunately I’m not proficient enough with other languages to perform translations (we speak English at home) but I will keep it in mind when talking to people who are multilingual.

I agree that requiring third-party sources is problematic in some cases—gender identity, like you said, but also situations where there simply aren’t many first-party sources available, or all the third-party sources happen to be themselves written with some bias. It’s a good position to start with but every rule needs exceptions.

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Welcome PaulaToThePeople, this is great to have you here!

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