The reality is, you always take a chance when contributing to an open source development or projects. Just because you made a contribution, does not mean you own the project or can decide the path that project takes. Those of us who donated understood the risk (or at least, I hope most people did).
That said, when someone takes a proactive driving stance claiming they will deliver, you kind of hope you can take them for their word. And expecting the main website to be online is not a big ask, especially when that serves as a gateway for people to learn about and use the project you are funding. That, after all, was the reason I donated.
Join Sharkey dot Org has been OFFLINE for over 2 months. The reason given was hosting issues, and this was before the whole Hetzner drama. Join Sharkey dot Org is supposed to be the gateway for people to learn about Sharkey and how they can join.
The Documentation Page (Wiki) is still up, using the subdomain, Doc dot Join Sharkey dot Org, but the URLs are broken. I have repeatedly reported the broken URLs for over 2 months (both in the Git and on their Discord Server). No one seems to want to address that.
They have a private copy of GitLab located at ActivityPub dot Software, that you cannot find via a search looking for Sharkey (DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google). That is where you can report code changes and fixes, but you would likely not know that unless you stumbled upon the URL somewhere (or someone gave you that URL).
Sharkey raised a lot of money so they can host their own content, safely, and securely. They now own their own physical server and lease the space to have that server housed (hosted) remotely. And while the lead developer promotes that server partially as a minecraft server, Join Sharkey dot Org still remains, OFFLINE.
I have pulled funding from Sharkey and will not be supporting it further until they get their act together. It is a good software, and it is my preferred method to use the Fediverse, but you would assume they would want their website working.
No matter, how you connect to the Fediverse, be if, for example, Misskey, Sharkey, Ice Shrimp, Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Kbin, or by other means, the Fediverse instance you're using cost money. In the real world, web hosting, bandwidth, and storage space cost, money. And the more members who use and join your Fediverse instance (server), the more resources and the most it cost.
I earned by badge, by reaching out to my administrator, and helping them by donating. And while if it was not required to make a donation or regular contribution, I like using the Fediverse. It is ad-free and decentralized, meaning, someone like Elon Musk, cannot change things for everyone, everywhere, solely on their latest mood swing. So I made the choice to help fund my corner of the collective social media network, known as the Fediverse.
My theory is some people are used to how things worked on Twitter and their algorithm.
If you re-Tweeted a post it bumped up its noticeability. But the secret was if you un-Tweeted, you could dramatically harm its rating and chance to get noticed. The system would assume something was wrong and reconsider your placement.
The Fediverse, has no such algorithm, and things do not work that way (thankfully). But I do notice this happens more frequently when I post my dislike for Donald Trump and it got me thinking. 🤔
Special shoutout to our administrator @chikorita157 who has been doing a good job keeping our Sharkey instance (server) running smoothly.
Being a system admin is can seem like a thankless job sometimes, and sometimes it means tracking down minor issues, going over logs, and occasionally dealing with user drama too (I do that for a living, it's not fun).
A friendly reminder that the Fediverse instance (server) is run by a volunteer who does not get paid, does not host ads, and is often paying things out of their own pocket. - All so complete strangers can share their random thoughts, views, beliefs, rants, or sometimes just sh*tpost.