University College London shoutout! UCL is unwilling to set up a Mastodon account now, but they say that if there's lots of UCL presence here already it will nudge them in this direction. If you're at UCL or know someone who is, and you're on here, please reply to this to let us know! Current chief plotters: @sellathechemist , me and maybe more)
@sellathechemist THANK YOU to everyone who has replied so far. This is all really helpful (and hopefully you're finding each other through the replies too). I'm not sure what the ethics are of posting full list of all the handles I collected, but if people think that's a good idea maybe I can do that. But the good thing is that there are LOADS of us here! #UCL
@helenczerski@sellathechemist
I'm here! Just one, but I am still here, and would love to see a UCL Mastodon instance. I guess an official UCL Mastodon account would be a start...
But an instance that anyone associated with UCL (Students, Staff, Alummni) could use would be transformative to both the making and communication of scienctific/academic works.
All unis should have their own, TBH, the size of UCL means it can set the example for the UK.
Why do I think that UCL should have its own Mastodon instance, open to anyone connected to UCL (students, staff, alumni)?
Stems from my 10+ years on the Birdsite. I soon stopped counting the number of positive interactions I had, which collectively expanded my interests, allowed me to keep in touch with academic topics I would have otherwise neglected; I found tons of potential collaborators, and so on.
In short, it has been academically extremely useful.
1/7
I moved to Mastodon, and found that the BIGGEST reason for people not to do the same is the complications due to the need to finding/choosing an instance, get an account there, and only to discover afterwards the consequences of the choice made.
I can also see that the federation idea could mean we might get the value mentioned above in a reliable (within limits) way. Simply because no single entity could have the power to obliterate it in a few months.
In all seriousness, we could get ALL* of the academic value that the Birdsite used to deliver, and it's not difficult to see how.
All it takes is for Universities to provide access to their own Mastodon instance to students, staff, alumni. As normal - the same way we all get email addresses.
Would it be perfect? Of course not, nothing is. Unis will need to do some moderation, which is tricky and bad mistakes WILL be made.
I believe it would be. All academic chit chat could automatically happen on the fediverse because the core people would automatically have access to ti (cfr. the "biggest" problem I found) and would be easily discoverable, and in a very concrete manner "verified". Opening the channel towards media people and public engagement.
TBH, I think it would be significantly better than how it was on the Birdsite.
How do we reach this "ideal outcome"? It's not difficult - critical mass needs to be built. And critical mass CAN be built by a big University.
Should UCL instantiate their own instance and make it very obvious for students, staff (and alumni?) to start using it - ta-dah - a considerable proportion of the critical mass will materialise.
Get just a handful of similarly sized unis to do the same, and very soon, all others will need to follow.
And that's that. Universities will be getting a whole lot of value in terms of the academic growth of their students, staff, alumni.
They would also have a discoverable and trustworthy channel for media comms - and unlike ALL OTHER social media channels that unis engage with (for the same reasons) they will know this channel is sustainable in the long term - because they would control it.
Should be a no-brainer, or at least it appears so to me.
(End)
7/7
PS However, yeah. I know it won't happen, because moderation. Universities don't want to touch that particular hot potato. They could, but don't want to - it's both understandable and hopelessly short-sighted, in my opinion.
@GraziosiSergio@sellathechemist I don't think they need to run their own instance, except for "official" accounts. The whole point of academia is that we're the only people paid to speak our minds without any outside influence, and the vision of a university whose employees can only speak through a corporate vehicle isn't a good one. I just want them to have accounts here, and to support people in finding them and each other.
@helenczerski@sellathechemist Well, worked in UCL for 14 years, now made my way south to the other college by the Thames:-) Hopefully, UCL might encourage #KCL to appear here as well!
@WiltClan@sellathechemist Yes, this isn't a department thing - it's a whole-university thing. If they don't mind sharing who they are on Mastodon, that would be great.
@helenczerski@sellathechemist I used to be the Web person at CRAE/IOE, if that's any help? Also, scarred for life after seeing the jar of pickled moles at the Grant Museum...
@helenczerski@sellathechemist On FediScience we have 21 accounts with an ucl.ac.uk email address and there will be even more UCL people using some other email domain.
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