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Sometimes when communities die or are killed, they don't come back. Nobody knows where to go to re-convene.

voakbasda 4y ago
This should part of a plan for online organizational continuity. Any community that uses big tech’s services should probably have one.
remram 4y ago
This is different because mastodon.technology will keep operating until December 1st. This leaves them plenty of time to organize a move by discussing it on the platform like they always have. They might move to different Mastodon instances (via the built-in migration system) or find a new network, but they are not getting killed with no way to find each other afterwards.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  One of the huge problems with on-platform discussions is ... that the discussion itself dies with the platform, and any decisions or announcements disappear with it. At the same time, based on my own personal experience, it is absolutely impossible to get people to move to another platform or service even for the purpose of discussing future plans. My exceedingly strong advice is to have multiple points of presence defined as a matter of course, one of which should be a simple email list (which provides persistent contact information), regardless of any awareness of an impending platform shutdown.
  - remram 4y ago
    As I said, mastodon.technology announced shutdown in advance, they haven't yet shut down. So people can discuss future plans there, they don't have to move to do it. I agree it is difficult in the situation you describe, which is not mastodon.technology's situation.
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Having gone through this multiple times on both Mastodon and other social networks (Google+), not having a readily-accessible discussion record is a problem. I'd created both a subreddit (https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus) and wiki (https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Main_Page https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Main_Page) to memorialise at least some of that discussion, as well as the on-platform discussion. That last is of course now unobtainable, though there were over 700 snapshots of the community homepage saved to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, see: <https://web.archive.org/web/20190401071102/https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 https://web.archive.org/web/20190401071102/https://plus.goog...> Because of the mechanics of both G+ and IAWBM, actually navigating to articles from that archive ... mostly does not work. The G+ community had over 4,000 members (pretty good for late-stage G+). The subreddit ... a hair over 300. People. Will. Not. Go. Off. Platform. Even. If. That. Completely. Fucks. Them. Over. It's a really perverse dynamic.

This should part of a plan for online organizational continuity. Any community that uses big tech’s services should probably have one.

remram 4y ago

This is different because mastodon.technology will keep operating until December 1st. This leaves them plenty of time to organize a move by discussing it on the platform like they always have. They might move to different Mastodon instances (via the built-in migration system) or find a new network, but they are not getting killed with no way to find each other afterwards.

dredmorbius 4y ago
One of the huge problems with on-platform discussions is ... that the discussion itself dies with the platform, and any decisions or announcements disappear with it. At the same time, based on my own personal experience, it is absolutely impossible to get people to move to another platform or service even for the purpose of discussing future plans. My exceedingly strong advice is to have multiple points of presence defined as a matter of course, one of which should be a simple email list (which provides persistent contact information), regardless of any awareness of an impending platform shutdown.
- remram 4y ago
  As I said, mastodon.technology announced shutdown in advance, they haven't yet shut down. So people can discuss future plans there, they don't have to move to do it. I agree it is difficult in the situation you describe, which is not mastodon.technology's situation.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Having gone through this multiple times on both Mastodon and other social networks (Google+), not having a readily-accessible discussion record is a problem. I'd created both a subreddit (https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus) and wiki (https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Main_Page https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Main_Page) to memorialise at least some of that discussion, as well as the on-platform discussion. That last is of course now unobtainable, though there were over 700 snapshots of the community homepage saved to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, see: <https://web.archive.org/web/20190401071102/https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 https://web.archive.org/web/20190401071102/https://plus.goog...> Because of the mechanics of both G+ and IAWBM, actually navigating to articles from that archive ... mostly does not work. The G+ community had over 4,000 members (pretty good for late-stage G+). The subreddit ... a hair over 300. People. Will. Not. Go. Off. Platform. Even. If. That. Completely. Fucks. Them. Over. It's a really perverse dynamic.