We are always looking for Talent.

A transcription of a Long Form Toot earlier this morning, fully composed on the fly, in my toot Editor at my main Mastodon instance.

Very lightly edited for Blog publishing, adding links and references only, content was ready. The views in the post are my own, but I believe they reflect the values which make our instance a vibrant and pleasant place to be in. <!—more—>

Leadership :

We at Qoto are always scouting for new Talent, and open to suggestions, comments.

Adding new Staff members is good for all communities — it's a labour of love, we do it for the fun, the pleasure of seeing things growing up, a nice social climate growing.

I would like to invite any Active user here at Qoto (or in the Fediverse at large, if you decided to join us) to consider if they would like to help.

• Collaborators are one of the levels I see as important in user's participation in any community. While not in a formal administrative role, Collaborators are recognized for the quality of their posts, interactions.

All communities depend on users participation — otherwise you would be building static web pages and publishing your own content, like a Blog for example.

The Role of Moderators :

• Moderation staff, in my opinion, should be active members, who personally produce content and interact with the local membership to enhance a positive climate.

It's not a Cop on the Beat job, although sometimes we have to perform the duties of judging content and deciding what action if could require, or not.

iv. What makes a good Moderator? Ideally a stable and pondered person, capable of communicating clearly and actively present in the community.

The job of a Moderator is, in my personal view, more than simply keeping an eye out for unacceptable behaviour or content. But any Staff member in a site should be interested in it, a content producer and community builder him/herself.”

Any user can contribute to the site

...through their posts and added content, thru their interaction with others. I find the size of the community ideal, we don't have a huge crowd or overwhelming numbers of new posts.

We all can help:

• say hello to a new user, when they post that first toot. I remember it, mine was just a month ago, this mastodon thing totally new to me. And I also remember receiving a welcome message from the administrator, which is not something you see in many larger places.
• keep an eye out for unwanted posts (for example, as per site rules, porn, open advertising, any spamming, etc). Use the Report button at the bottom of the post, and send in a report to Staff.
• respond to other user threads, even a small comment is encouraging. It's sad to see someone put the effort to create a nice post, well written, with additional info link(s), maybe image(s) —– and see that post sit, ignored. It's disheartening but sadly common.
• make the place feel like a collegial, friendly place to be, which we enjoy spending our time in.

Additional Reflections :

I wrote my own personal reflections back in late November, 2019, about the role of an active user and aspiring leadership candidate. At the time, I was being nominated to the December 2019 Moderator Nominations at Qoto.org.

It's a Long Form page, of course; (1,023 words 6,374 characters). I don't post bare URLs or video links much, Words are my passion.

If interested, take a look at :

Moderator Nomination – My Personal Views

#rgxJournal #QotoJournal #Qoto #Leadership

Page banner image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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@rgx@write.tedomum.net

This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page

Pinafore Client deserves a Discussion and Support Forum

A new Pinafore client discussions Forum is now online at Qoto's Discourse Forums

We now have a new sub-forum, dedicated to the powerful and fast Pinafore client for Fediverse instances — Mastodon, Glitch-Social, Pleroma are all supported.

I am a big fan of Pinafore, since first trying it. It is a popular client with power users, as it is FAST and Light, plus has elegant design, clean UI and many nice features. <!—more—>

Why a Forum ?

Forums are wonderful in how they can organize information (by Topics, sub-forums, etc), allow easy retrieval (unlike most Social Media), and Advanced formatting. At the modern Discouse Forums :

• Enhanced text MarkDown is fully enabled.
• Images can be easily copy/pasted or uploaded into any topic or comment.
• And images can be placed in-line — along the text, where they refer to.
• Unlike Mastodon, which only attaches them at the very bottom of any post.

They are un-matched in these features, and a pleasure for users who have experienced the presentation and discussions they allow. Plus :

• As an experienced moderator, a staff person can split any Topic if it goes into a tangent.
• This keeps the original topic focused, while exposing the new idea for it's own.
• Posts can be edited and enhanced, anytime. Unlike the frozen state of masto toots.

Meet the Author

Nolan Lawson is the author of Pinafore, and I have told him many times how I enjoy it. Never heard about Pinafore? See the author's word here.

As part of Fandom, I thought we could do more to support Great Software, and requested a new Project Forum for Pinafore at Qoto's Discourse Forum. The Qoto.org admin graciously agreed and created it, it's now opening for business.

An Introductory post was needed, so here we are. 🙂

#Pinafore #Discourse #Forum #NewUsers #Fediclient #Qoto

First Topic, in a brand new Forum.

Not only we have the new forum, but I have just collected a topic we discussed in our local feed — and made it into a prettier, formatted and in-line illustrated page.

The way a good manual page could be; and there's a need, the documentation available is very limited; so I plan to add to it.

Assigning Colour Themes to Allow easy Multi-Instances use in Pinafore Client

Please visit the Topic here.

Reading is Open to All. Register to comment, etc.

The Forum is publicly Visible (anyone can read) and open to new user registrations if you want to comment, ask questions about Pinafore or have any suggestions to the Author.

We will be sure to pass those along, and Nolan is very good with support, promptly responding when I had something to ask.

Many Thanks to Nolan Lawson (@nolan) and Dr. Freeman (@freemo).

Thank you to Coralie who inspired the toots discussion and now this post. Merci, mon amie.

#Pinafore #Discourse #Forum #NewUsers #Fediclient #Qoto

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This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page

I have been thinking about a new and better Instance.

And a small snapshot of my busy Tabs list in #Waterfox browser shows that I really was looking for some good GlitchSocial instances.

Found a nice one, here. Muensterland.social came up in my search, from one of those tabs in the header banner.

Thank you, 🐘nipos@muensterland.social ! 😺

#MarkDown love for me. #xp #glitchsocial <!—more—>

How did I find it ?

One of the search tabs I had open (quite hard to locate a List of GlitchSocial instances, when you need one), showed a page which is Nick's Blog and mentioned this new mastodon service he was bringing online.

This whole page is based on a conversation yesterday at Qoto's timeline. Lightly edited for clarity and formatting, adding links, etc.

Crossposting — Gone Wild...

The Funniest part of this — for me anyways, was HOW did this end up here, at Qoto, OMG ??

Not intentional, at all; post was created at a remote new instance, a brand new account. But for good in the end; I am REALLY committed to leaving Mastodon behind and moving to better platforms.

GlitchSocial is one, Pleroma is another, I have accounts in BOTH types of instances, and love their added features, design improvements, and many, many new things.

The Pleroma FE (front end, or user interface — Intro Guide here) is a bit unusual for a mastodon user – but it HAS a second choice of Client; many pleroma instances have the GlitchSocial Web client as an option, sometimes as a link in their Front pages even.

For those of us who like to Read The Friendly Manual, there's a detailed Pleroma FE Guide here.

These notes now appear in a polished Web Magazine here. I developed various pages as extensions of toots and conversations had in various instances; one of the reasons I love having various accounts and always looking for interesting ones to try. #FediReporter I am...

So How did this post end up here, unexpectedly ?

The real screenshot snippet in OP above is just part of the Tabs Overload in my current browser (#Waterfox Current always).

And I HAD been intensively searching for a list (non-existant, afaik) of GlitchSocial instances. They tend to be blended in with generic mastodon ones (no thanks), so it was quite a chore.

[ parenthesis : I will provide that as soon as possible, there is a need ]

And then, what happened ?

My search went into late last night.

• By that time I had found a nice one, created an account and started trying things out.
• Looking good, the basics taken care or, some notes and screenshots saved.
• off to bed, near 3 am.
• Hello again, coffee and we get into it. Configuring a crossposter for the new account, next...

Crossposting ?

Yep. As in, moving posts and content from one network to another. I do enjoy that, there's no denying that there's GOOD stuff in every one. Some are plagued by bad actors, arses and other undesirables.

But, there's The Economist, BBC News, Scientific American, The Guardian and NY Times —– full feeds with quality content I love. Plus, Cats. Lots. of. Cats...

All of those I can chose to share with #fedi friends; easy, with a crossposter.

• for this, my Qoto.org account, I use Moa Bridge, as it is agnostic and doesn't mind my instance name. Recommended for #qoto people. Simple and barebones, functional, a little less explained than the other options.
  

And another, better alternative ;

• if your instance is NOT objected by the hosting instance, a BETTER and EASIER to configure tool is available – the awesome Crossposter, created by Renato Lond at his Brazilian instance.

Rightfully seen as a top notch tool, it has all the controls, works magnificently, fast and has PRETTIER output. Yep. I love it, and use it if the account is acceptable.

There are possibly others, and I welcome suggestions and reports from their users, if desired.

And HOW did it get here ?

...that OP above ? Yeah, you see, you can configure your crossposter of choice to use a Keyword.

• Moa defaults to '#moa' and '#xp'. The shorter one is easy-peasy to remember and only takes 3 chars on the freaking limited Twitter char count. So, I of course use it.

• Renato's tool allows your choice of keywords (yeay for user friendliness!). Since I am always busy, '#xp' is a nice one. Ooops.

...that explains, the surprise appearance of this OP above, here at Qoto.

Woot ?

...was my first response on getting a reply notification to it — I hadn't posted it at Qoto.org, or intended to.

• but the original post at Muensterland.social , had the #xp tag. Intended to bring it into Twitter, which I intended to.
• regardless of my forgetting, Moa is watching for that tag too, and bam! wham! off to Qoto it goes, when it shows in my Twitter stream.

Moral of the Story – be careful with your keywords, as unexpected results do occur.

A revision is in order, after which I will copy and make this into Today's Web Magazine post.

At your friendly #FediReporter home at TeDomum

#QotoJournal #webstories #Fediverse #Culture

#WordCount : 958 words, 7,051 characters used. Thank you qoto.org for a HIGH limit allowance.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@rgx@write.tedomum.net

This page created entirely in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment about this post – reach me at my Writer's Lounge.

R.G. @rgx@muensterland.social ^—top of page