The Wikimedia Foundation has joined the fediverse by setting up their own Mastodon server!

i think people underestimate the impact having access to wikipedia has had on the world. really an amazingly important part of the internet and the sharing of knowledge
- Going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole is worse than going down a Street View rabbit hole. Ahh I can spend an entire day doing it!
  
  Good old wiki walking, you never realize what you're doing until a few hours in, and even then you can't stop.
- You're right, although if you ever get the chance to browse a real physical encyclopedia, it's a unique experience.
  Not practical, but it's a bit like playing a record or playing a game on a real NES. It's a unique experience.
  I have a full 2007 set of Encyclopedia Brittanica in the same room as my vintage computer collection. I browse it occasionally.
  
  Oof, felt this right in the geriatric millennials.
  Mfer I was doing assignments where I had to scroll through index cards to find the encyclopaedia, then hand write out the essay.
  It’s weird when you go from being the disruptor demographic to realising that when your 5 yo kid jokes about the 80s it’s as far away in time to him as the 1940s we’re to me - for him it’s a 2d, pre-Alexa, analog dystopia.
  And I’m only 42.
  
  I bought several physical encyclopedias as a a result of my Wikipedia addiction. Having physical encyclopedias to fall back on is a plus, as their information can't be taken down by deletionists. I also got the Encarta isos off archive.org running in 86box.
- I just love the fact that Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia using the money he made in softcore internet porn.
  
  Jimmy Wales does sound like a porn name.

I really enjoy Mastodon so much more than twitter
- The quality of the discussion is miles away from Twitter. People are nice and a lot less of toxicity. Mastodon is amazing as Lemmy.
  
  There was a scientific paper I read semi recently that showed that researchers who post on Mastodon get much higher quality interaction than on Twitter (and I think a few other social-media type places, but it was mainly Mastodon vs Twitter). There was overall less interaction on Mastodon (unsurprisingly), but also that this difference has been diminishing as Mastodon grows. My takeaway is that if you want engagement, go Mastodon.
- Unpopular opinion? Mastodon is a better Twitter than Lemmy is a better Reddit.
  So many duplicated communities in Lemmy makes managing subscription impossible.
  
  Reddits quality main appeal also is its past threads whereas on Twitter is rarely about what was tweeted but rather what’s the latest thing that’s happening.
  Lemmy will need time and it might never replace reddit. But I look forward to the quality interactions with everyone here!
  
  Unpopular opinion? Mastodon is a better Twitter than Lemmy is a better Reddit.
  That's not unpopular, that's just fact. I enjoy Lemmy but it's fairly new. Mastodon has been around for a while longer and is a much more mature platform with more QOL features because of that. Comparing them on that basis doesn't really prove or mean anything at this point. Of course the teenager is more developed than the toddler, that's how it works. Lemmy will get to the same place with time.
  
  From a product perspective, I really disagree.
  Twitter’s value is/was that it was ubiquitous. Everyone (important) was there and it was the only Twitter-like thing that there was. Even the Pope tweets. I guarantee you the Pope will never be on Mastodon. Not that any of us necessarily care about updates from the Pope or Lebron James or whoever, but your favorite journalist was, and the developers of all your favorite indie iOS apps were, and if you live in a city, your local public transit authority was likely there as well. Twitter was really the only place for microblogging type of content.
  On the other hand, Reddit is, by nature, just a centralized collection of forums, which I think is far more easily recreated in a decentralized way. You already have posts organized into communities, now with Lemmy we’re just adding another layer of organization on top of that. As another commenter said, much of Reddit’s value is that it was the place where someone asked the same question you now have and so you can read those answers, but Twitter’s value really is for real time communications.
  The issue I see with both frankly is search. It can be kinda hard with either to find the community/discussions that are interesting and relevant to you, but hopefully that will improve.
  
  They are not duplicated (just the same name) and it's not impossible to subscribe to them all with a few clicks.
  Use https://lemmyverse.net/communities and simply search for communities and subscribe to them.
  
  I read somewhere this is an upcoming feature. Let's say you subscribe "memes" then you got shown all communities named "memes" from federated servers combined.
- What server would you recommend starting? I joined mastodon.world and I have trouble looking for things I'm interested in to follow.
  
  It's not the server on Mastodon but the hashtags. Put in an area of interest and you can follow that entire hash tag. For instance, put in #cars and see what comes up.
  
  Use hashtags and search across all instances. Follow people who interest you.
- How do you find good people to follow? There aren’t all too many meme or comedy accounts and that really all I’m looking for. It seems pretty serious on there unless I’m just being dumb. I’m on mastadon.social
  I’m also seeing a bunch of posts not in English, sometimes nearly half so that gets annoying
  
  You need to follow hashtags and groups related to your interest. Groups will boost the toots and make them visible. When you follow a group, it's like following hundreds of people at once.
  When tooting, you have to mention groups and not only hashtags. The groups will boost the toot for visibility.
  It's a vit of practice with groups and hashtags.
  
  It requires a bit of work, since there isn't an algorithm to do that for you.
  I've been following hashtags for things I enjoy. #gaming, #videogames, #steamdeck, #android, etc.
  
  You should try changing instance. I started on mastodon.social and had the same problem as you. Find an instance that meets your interests and sign in. Then you can transfer your followers (only your followers, that's not really good 🫤)

This is great to see. I love when big players make moves into the fediverse, because it educates the masses. I'm a nobody on the internet advocating for privacy, security, and ethical social media... and I can advocate til my fingers bleed.
But when companies, publications, celebrities, and others of influence do this, it creates awareness and opens their mind up a bit into the platforms, why they're important, etc. And even if they don't understand federation at first, at least it's a touchpoint. A bit of exposure into how we can have a better, open, and private web.

I'm just going to take the opportunity to talk about that Wikipedia is free, it doesn't have advertisement, all the data is freely accesible and your privacy is respected, is just maintained by donations and the community. Just looking around other platforms I think they do an amazing job, so consider to donate today to keep it that way.
- they have more than enough money to keep the server running for decades. not to say you don't need to donate, but you don't need to impulse donate every time the big header appears.
  
  To be fully transparent I donate 1 dollar a day, I just appreciate what they do, and I would like to have more services that are able to keep it that way, sadly that is not the case.
  
  I donate about 100 USD a year, give or take. I figured it's worth it for as much as I use Wikipedia
  
  When I get their email every year asking me to repeat my donation it seems like they are a bit in trouble. They are not?

This adds a lot of legitimacy to the fediverse

I think all big orgs, NGOs, news agencies should do this.
- Yes! Also Governmemt agencies.
  
  The Dutch government had created a mastodon server

that's excellent! I wonder if they'll keep their WT Social network going. Does anyone use it?
- I don't really use it, but I noticed that they just launched a new version. https://wts2.wt.social
- I was wondering if they might port it to an ActivityPub instance

- iirc they haven't connected to anything yet, and nobody is actually quite sure what it'll look like when they do. A few instances have defederated from threads already, but they're totally just guessing because nobody actually knows what url they should be defederating from
  
  threads.net is the domain. You can get a head start and block any IP addresses associated with it using the firewall of your choice.
  
  When you say, "a few", I'll note that at last mention it was 60% prefer defederation of threads.

Great news!

Ooooh!! This is exciting!

I just realized it’s fediverse, I’ve been reading it as frediverse.
- There should be an instance of just Freds that's called the Frediverse. You have to send them ID to prove your name is actually Fred and only Freds are allowed on the instance. I'd follow those communities as a non-Fred.
  
  Would they be Frederated?

I have a Mastodon account since May 2022 but didn't really use it.
I recently tried to see if I find interesting accounts to follow but didn't find much that fit my interests.
Any advice on how to find good accounts to follow?
- Search for hashtags first, like #TopicOfInterestToMe. Follow those. Then, look for people who post interesting stuff in the hashtags you follow. Follow them. The trick to Mastodon is to follow, follow, follow. This may also be a good starting point to find interesting people to follow: https://fedi.directory/
- Curating your follows does take a minute in the beginning. This is a good starting point: https://discover.fedified.com/
  
  That's honestly kind of a short list of accounts, considering that most of the accounts listed there exist in multiple categories on the menu. And maybe this is just me being out of touch, but I didn't recognize a single person in any of the lists.
  Mastodon really needs some help getting popular figures onto the platform. Hopefully Threads at least starts to open some opportunities in that regard once they begin federating.
- You follow the people that share the same interests than you. What are you interested in? What do you expect people suggest you? It is totally depended on what you have for hobbies or the topics you are interested in. If I tell you to follow a Football-Player, a local politician or a niche PCB Designer, what would that give you? Find out what things you are interested in and then find the people connected to those interests.
- Good tips here:
  https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends/

Beautiful to see Wikipedia throwing their weight into it! Just beautiful to see this spiraling.

I hope custom algorithms become an option. I like chronological feeds but would love to have chronological feeds that show me a post based on my likes after 3 posts or so. It would make it much easier to discover new blender artists like is possible on twitter
- Heck I would settle for just seeing a post from a person once I my feed, instead of seeing the last reply, then other posts, then the second-to-last reply, then after a lot more scrolling finally seeing the original post.
  The problem with chronological feeds is that prolific posters in your timezone just take it over and you never see stuff from people in other timezones or infrequent posters.
- I came up with an idea (on my alt account .) to improve discoverability... it's more focused on instance or group discovery, though it may be doable for users with a probabalistic reverse index for efficiency. See: https://infosec.pub/post/429743

That Facebook better stay away from the whole fediverse but I have a feeling zuck will try to fuck it up.

- Best analogue I've heard is to think of it like email. Google can run Gmail, Microsoft can run Hotmail, and countless others can run their own email setups and everyone talks to each other just fine.
  The fediverse is the same. Lemmy is made from a bunch of randos running their own Lemmy servers, but we all interact like it's one big Reddit-clone.