N.b., this was posted last Saturday, the 8th of November 2022. Please go to the bottom of the page to see a follow-up. Thanks.
So, you've found yourself trying out Mastodon for one reason or another. This page is not about Mastodon or the Fediverse. There are other pages out there that explain those. At this time, you've got at least a vague idea about how those things work. This page is about SDF and this particular instance, because somehow, some way, you have found yourself here. You've found the instance either by searching via search engine or by using some site that lists instances by type, features, etc. and you're considering joining or you've already joined because you're not even entirely sure how to pick an instance.
SDF is short for Super Dimension Fortress. The name goes way back, and it isn't really important, but it comes from a 1982 Japanese anime series. Don't worry, the connection is not strong. It's just part of our history. We aren't really a role-playing group or even all anime fans. At this point, it's just a name.
What is it the name of? It's a club (a nonprofit 501(c)(7)) that runs a number of Unix-based servers that you can log into and use shell accounts to interact with other members using a command-line interface. There is a computer bulletin board that allows people to have group conversations and leave public messages on various topics. There's also an instant chat called "com" that allows members to have a group chat. Then of course, because it is a shell account, there is all the stuff that comes with that. You can host your web site, write programs, and a host of other things. For more on SDF, read up here or just go to the SDF home page and look around. Basically, though, SDF is an online community of computer folks who have been around since before the world-wide web was even a thing and definitely before the GUI was a part of how we see the Internet. We've seen it grow up around us.
Because of the history of how SDF came to be, its focus on the intersection of computers, art, and music, it has a certain culture. Cultures can be difficult do define, and others will have different perspectives about SDF and its Mastodon culture, but for the most part much of that already-existing online culture came along with us to the www and Mastodon. There are some key topics that are frequently discussed on SDF's Mastodon instance.
There's a strong connection to open-source and FOSS. You'll find a lot of posts on Unix, GNU/Linux, and other open-source software and operating systems. By extension, it also leads into discussion of open-source in general, including hardware. That also means there is a good number of members who are interested in "free" (as in both beer and speech) art, music, writing. You'll find artists, musicians, and more, exploring how we make, do, and share creative works.
While most of us haven't been here since the beginning of SDF, many of us have been on the Internet and later the WWW for a long time. As a result, there is a strong sense of nostalgia for how things used to be. We are heavily weighted towards Gen-X. We aren't all grizzled programmers who remember the old days (although there might be a few of us here), but many of us grew up with the early days of 8-bit home computers and video games. You'll find a lot of posts here on retro-computing and retro-gaming. There are lots of historians of computers here. They may not have grown up with a PDP-11 in the home, but they've got one in the basement now. This also means we've got a culture of text-based interaction, and you'll find many of us have connections to the simple web, the tildeverse (that opens a whole can of worms). Many of us were around when the Internet became dominated by Gopher right as the WWW became a thing and left it behind. So you'll find more than enough discussion of the text-based Internet. Believe it or not, some just like the aesthetic.
Remember, however, this is largely a generic, open, non-thematic instance. You don't have to talk about these topics. I'm just letting you know that these are the topics many of the hardcore, long-term locals will gravitate to. It's in our local DNA. It's how we got here and created this space. It's what brought us together in community. Culture is dynamic. It's not superorganic. We make it. This all may change as we welcome newcomers that don't share our history, but at this point this is where you find yourself.
Most of us aren't rigidly dogmatic, but we have opinions about stuff. We tend to be friendly, and only get grumpy when others aren't. We set the rules. We hope you feel welcome, but don't come in here and mess things up. I don't run this thing, but I guarantee you that there are "sysops" that have 30 years of moderating experience that know how to administer a cluebat if you mess with our cultural norms.
~cs/cseiler
2022-11-05
This was originally written on the 4th of November 2022. At that time, it was obvious we were seeing a large influx of new users from Twitter. We had grown since the instance was created in 2017 to about 2,000-3,000 Mastodon accounts. Only a few hundred were really active. I may have made it sound like all of these were SDF shell account members. That's certainly not the case, and I knew that. There were also a good number of people who started off on SDF and had migrated to SDF Mastodon, but were clearly using Mastodon as their primary means of socializing rather than their shell account. That was something I knew to be true on some level, but SMJ kinda confirmed in com. So, the folks who are moving between SDF (shell) and SDF Mastodon were now a small number. There were also a good number of SDF (shell) members that started their own servers or migrated to other ones in the tildeverse. That all said, it is clear as of a few weeks ago that SDF Mastodon had its own little identity that grew out of SDF. As I metioned in my original post, SDF doesn't really require you to share in our identity on Mastodon, and it seemed unlikely at that time as we surpasted 14,000 members and on our way to 21,000 that we would be able to maintain that anyway. Who knows what it will become. Sure, we have this history. Sure, there are plenty of us around. Yes, I suspect we will attract a certain number of people who sort of share our quirkiness and therefore passions. I also suspect we'll have a large number of new users who aren't aware at all of this. That's just the way it will be. We've decided to open it up because SDF sees the growth of the Fediverse as part of SDF's mission.
So, what about feedback received about this? Generally, it's been support, but there were a few nitpicks which I will attempt to share. One thing is that I indicated that we, SDF members, moderate based on our own consensus. And I think that's pretty much how we comported ourselves over the last five years or so. If you have been on SDF for any length of time, you sense what will fly and what won't. A running club leader here in Denton is fond of saying before each social run, "Don't be an ass." Well, what does that mean? In his case, he doesn't want you run out in the road and get hit by a pickup. In our case, because I knew we had active moderators who weren't afraid to step in, I thought that was how things were kind of working. We may not know exactly what it takes to piss off a moderator, but you'll find out soon enough.
There are a few issues with this. One, we know that our "benevolent dictator" SMJ will ulimately step in when things get out of hand...sort of classical anarchy with a monarch if things deteriorate. I cannot explain how this works. I've been on SDF (shell) for 17 years, and never really hugely active. I've been on Mastodon for four. Some people have thought that I was a Mastodon admin or even a moderator. I am neither. Nor do I have any insights to SDF (the 401(c)(7)) that anyone else might not be able to glean from being around a few months. Two, as part of getting listed on Join Mastodon, we apparently had to agree to the Covenant that is given there. It's pretty brief, and you can read it there. Bottom line, though, this means we don't make the rules as I mentioned above. SMJ may make the ultimate choice about SDF, and SDF has chosen to defer to the Covenant that appears on Join Mastodon. Three, it has been pointed out to me that we have some very new moderators. I certainly didn't mean to indicate that all moderators had 30+ years of moderating experience.