@feditips Is it a problem that i’m on a big server now? I signed up in 2018 without really understanding how any of this works.

@feditips This was the first point I misunderstood in my one whole day here. Otherwise smooth so far. Small, but smooth.

@feditips A small server like trekkies.social 😎🖖

@feditips or better yet just create your own.

@feditips

@feditips better still take a look at this for an easy way to start your own instance! https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/109289984310745057

@feditips unfortunately while joining a small server might be good for the network, it's not rational for a new joiner to pick one. Unless of course they know someone on that network, and especially if they know the admin. For anyone else who doesn't know anyone on Mastodon before joining, the rational choice is to pick a stable server with good rules and moderation. The easiest way to know a server has that is to see lots of other people using it.

@feditips good info. This isn’t clear when you sign up.

@feditips It’s a bit late for me I think but I kinda wish I understood this before I signed up. Either way I hope the info helps others. :)

@feditips

https://instances.social/ is also still running, I see.

@feditips It was hard for me to figure out the concept of servers. I was lost until I found someone I recognized from twitter.

@feditips Twimmigrant here. When friends from the Bird App tell me they’re on mastodon, I generally fail to find them with the people search here. Is that because they are on different servers? Will there be cross-server searching available? Am I missing something obvious?

@feditips that screaming you hear is from the admins of instances of (formerly) small servers.

@feditips This definitely needs sharing to people -probably to people on Twitter too. When I saw instances, I thought small servers meant your community would only be a couple of hundred people, like with a message board

@feditips Thanks for the tip. As a Mastodon newbie, I wonder if people gain (or think they gain) any status benefit from having an account on a particular server (kinda like a 3-character Twitter handle) or is that not really a thing?

@feditips I think I'm on the "social" server and I don't know if that's a big one or not because I know less than nothing about how all this works. I generally haunt the writers area I guess

@feditips how does it work with usernames? People are flocking to the large servers to “reserve” their name. If serverX becomes the default server, people want to have their username there.

@feditips I joined a larger server because I like to follow who other ppl are following, it I can’t see unless I’m on their server?

@feditips I am thinking I may host an instance - what are the average loads? I have a vpn with space that I've had up for over a decade now (linode, a lot of uptime)

@feditips How do we search for people on here?