Java Mastodon Service: The Feedback

Yesterday we launched this idea: Let’s Start a Java Mastodon Community for Friends of OpenJDK!.

At the same time, we shared this post on Twitter (yes, the irony), Mastodon, and LinkedIn.

Let's see what the community thinks...

TL;DR;

• Yes, a lot of likes and +1, most of the reactions think this would be a good idea.
• No, not everyone is convinced Twitter will disappear and an alternative is needed.
• Nobody volunteered (yet) to assist (pay?) for the server and moderate 😉

Feedback

Some of the confirmations

• Markus Schlichting: I'd appreciate such an instance a lot 🙂
• WhiteWoodCity: Yes, vote from Chinese Vert.x User Groups.
• Jago de Vreede: Interesting idea, one thing that comes to mind is that we already have a #FooJay site/blog/forum/slack, and twitter to get our #java content. There was also some chatter about another java #Mastodon.
• Roy Wasse: Definitely interesting! Happy to investigate how to move my account to a potential Foojay mastodon instance.
• Luca Guadagnini: why not? 🙂
• Ken Fogel: I'd like to see a dedicated server. It would be nice if its URL was something that ended in ".java", such as mastodon.java but that will need Oracle's permission. Any chance of that @Sharat_Chander ?
• Kerfuffle: I'm interested. I'd create a separate account and just focus it on my Java / dev related posts and follows. I pretty much do the same with my art/music account.
• and so on by Kevin Wittek, Supernov, Rodrigo Pio, Patrick Reinhart,...

Cees Bos shared some extra info about the different types of timelines in Mastodon that make a difference compared to how Twitter works:

Like explained on https://mastodon.help there are 3 timelines:

• Home: like on Twitter, it shows all the posts of all the people you follow on all Instances;
• Local: it shows all the posts of the members of your Instance;
• Federated: it shows all the posts of the members of your Instance and also the posts of people on other Instances that are followed by people of your Instance.
  For the second and third timeline it makes a difference on which instance you have your account. On a community instance that will give more messages of interest compared to another instance.

A nice idea by Geert Bevin: The cool thing about Mastodon is that you don't have to just use a single account that represents the entirety of you, it's designed with the intent of being able to join different instances with different local interests, while still being federated to the whole fediverse.

I even learned about a Java Mastodon client project by wakinrufus: I started an #OpenJFX mastodon client a long time ago here: https://github.com/wakingrufus/mastodon-jfx feel free to take anything useful from it. It was very immature, but i was able to login (multi-account) and view feeds.

Ofcourse there are also other ideas and opinions:

• Robert von Burg: Although I would love the idea of a Java Mastodon instance, I'll still use my personal account. But it would be nice if those people on such a server would then be verified, making it easier to know who to follow. You can find me @[email protected]
• Brice Dutheil: There's too many official account or people in other professional disciplines that are on Twitter and will remain there. I don't think leaving Twitter is sensible at least for me, that said some other folks are now mostly on mastodon so I need to be there as well to keep learning
• Carl Dea: ATM, I won't leave Twitter's platform. It's mainly verified folks (popular) who are complaining. I really wish there was a platform that was a mashup of both platforms, where curated (stuff) models are open-sourced so users can opt in or out. Models could be ranked by users.
• Stelian Iancu: I don't think I would join a special Java instance, but I would be interested in following "Java people" no matter what instance they're on. One other interesting thing would be if OpenJDK would have an official instance for the project, with the members having accounts there (like the Internet Archive did).
• Guillaume Laforge: I'm happy with the instance that my friend @gbevin is taking care of, but if a #java instance had existed, I would definitely have joined it back then!

Conclusion

To Mastodon or Not To Mastodon?

Personally, I decided "yes" on the mastodon.social server, but would really like to move to a Java-dedicated-server.

Let's see where this idea leads us further...