@darius This is why dosgame.club is invite-only. We're a very small crew and can't guarantee to be online 24/7. Our server capacity is limited and tbh we don't want random weirdos who we don't even know.

@darius I actually want more people as opposed to less right now, especially after I learned that sadly boost/favorite counts aren't federated (so no explore page 😢)

I guess the fact that it is a silly vegan instance doesn't help

@darius

yyyyyyyyyep

@chad thoughts on this? I know mstdn.ca has had incredible growth over the last week. Is it becoming problematic so far?

@darius yes. We have been closed since the start. Right now the issue is storage. Do you have any recommendations there? Other than add more storage :)

@darius I know I’m playing with fire keeping registrations open for now, but plan on shutting the door quickly as soon as I see any of those three things happening. And switching to invite/review only after 1000 users no matter what. But this post is definitely making me rethink that approach!

@darius

#mastoadmin This is good advice. If your local timeline feed is overwhelming for people, you got too big.

@darius

I think a long-term solution would also require a moderation option that forces an instance's public posts to be unlisted from the federated timeline, to make the firehose more manageable. Not quite like the "neighborhood timeline" you had in mind, but close. Apparently silence and no-media go a lot further than that. #mastoadmin

@darius agreed. I tried open for a while and at some point had to delete blocks of spam accounts every day. Really badly done so easy to spot but annoying nevertheless. Then I switched to invite only. No problems ever since.

@darius I have been trying to figure out ways to do this within discord as well. Even though discord is generally centralized there are many features within that allows server owners to create a 'review' process before allowing entry within a server. Things such as , accept these rules , write an introduction, and include a special character within your intro are a few examples of what I have seen. How in-depth do you believe a review process should be? It really depends on the goal of the group

@darius Thank you for reassuring me that my rolling admissions model is workable.

@darius joke on you my instance is still full of computing nerds

@cbrown good tip here.

@darius 100% agree. I've been vetting accounts since I started this instance in 2018 and the amount of robots I've seen is scary. to think that all those robots and strange accounts just walk right in on the larger instances is kinda scary.

and we've already had mastodon.social blacklisted by some AV vendor because someone used their profile for C&C. so it's just a ticking time bomb.

@darius yup - I'm relieved we have this on 3 of the 4 servers I maintain.

@darius I've never tried running #Mastodon. I once tried running #MediaWiki and was absolutely swamped with #spam account creation. The server side is a dark art.

@darius Wise advice here. #MastoAdmin

@darius It's going to be fascinating to see what happens to instances like @toot.community which in 24 hours went from 0 to 15k users. An mid-sized town of people who have nothing in common apart from having woken up to the news of Mastodon on that day, and found it as the only option in the official signup process.

#CommunityMayNotScale