Goals of Daoine.eu
The short version
The people behind Mastodon.ie are going to broaden the goals of the organisation out beyond one piece of software, and instead define our goals as something we use software to achieve. Standards of moderation will be as expected on mastodon.ie for any project that needs moderation. More volunteers have joined - and more are welcome.
We have a new server for Mobilizon and other projects we may pursue.
What Daoine.eu is For
Daoine.eu is a new group name for the community which has grown out of Mastodon.ie. The purpose of this change is to accommodate new projects which complement the values upon which Mastodon.ie was established.
By “the values”, if you’re not sure what that means, you could take them as:
- respect for all community members
- no tolerance for bigotry
- privacy, no tracking, no advertising
- a not for profit approach
- community funding from those who can
- the same experience for all
- an enthusiasm for free and open source software
The short version is that we have funds to spare, willing volunteers, and we believe this should be combined to pursue projects meeting these values.
The Story So Far
Mastodon.ie was established in 2019 as an experiment. It was a fairly quiet server, being populated by people who are already into the idea of Mastodon and wanted to try something connected to Ireland. In late 2022 a lot of people joined as changes at Twitter got a lot more people interested in alternative approaches. Mastodon is resource intensive to run, and we needed to ask for funds, and people were generous. Having money to pay the server bills hasn’t been an issue since then. We have over two years of server costs for the Mastodon instance in reserve. This is why you don’t hear us shouting for more donations much.
Current Goals
Grow the Team
We need more people to volunteer, as moderators, as admins, as domain experts who can help with writing compliance documents, and more besides. You don’t have to be some kind of expert to volunteer, just being a willing pair of hands is valuable, and you can still be part of decision making. The more people are on the committee, the less scary it is to join. Volunteers at every level should be safe in the knowledge that they can tag out when they want to focus on something else.
As a guideline, if you think you would be available to look at things or be part of discussions (nearly always text) for about two hours a week, that’s valuable. Do what you can, when you can, when you have the energy.
Run New Things
While mastodon.ie is still our primary concern, there’s a lot more software out there which can complement what we already have. If there’s interest from the community, and enough volunteers on board, any technology we deem appropriate can be used. Mobilizon is being prepared for event listing and groups.
There are Mastodon forks like Glitch Edition and Hometown for people who want a slightly different Mastodon experience, or something more different like Sharkey or GoToSocial. There’s also things like Peertube, WriteFreely, Funkwhale, all sorts of stuff that gets easier to run if, for example, we set up a common storage system to back them up.
Anything is possible with enough volunteers to keep things stable and safe.
Keep our Standards High
The moderation practices used on mastodon.ie to date will be the minimum standard of moderation on anything else we run. Software designed to be moderation-proof will not be run. Software which is more difficult to moderate will be considered carefully, and if run, this fact will be heavily flagged. Prototypes for experimentation and testing may be run but would not be promoted as safe, rather being used for testing. For example, if some promising software is very early in its life cycle, we might run it in order to help evaluate or even improve it, but it might not be fit for promotion to the general community.
Continue with Mastodon.ie as Always
The Mastodon server will continue to be the backbone of operations. None of this is a move away from Mastodon in general, new projects will not be intended to replace things that people already like.
Communicate More
Operations should be less of a black box. We’re going to try and let you know what’s happening more. This is especially important when it comes to doing new things.
Each new project may stand on its own, but will be intended for the same community. It’s vitally important that community members, especially donors, feel that projects are compatible with what they came here to support. To that end, we will publicise significant projects before they happen, allowing enough time for people to ask questions and make their points.
The New Server
Mastodon is quite resource intensive, and we have always used masto.host as our service provider. For other software, especially open-source, ActivityPub driven software, there aren’t many such service providers dedicated to them, nor is necessarily a good use of resources. So we’d be looking at a new server for other software. We can get one server, run desired software on it, and potentially have it upgraded should it ever be needed.
We have signed up to Hetzner for a dedicated server, which will be used for Mobilizon first, and other new projects as they arise. The cost of this server will be about €44 per month. For reference, Mastodon hosting is currently €440 per month.
Thank You
We hope this has been worth reading and as always, don’t be afraid to ask questions by the usual channels. @mastodonie@mastodon.ie or info@mastodon.ie