So! I used the new blog section of #Catodon to do a column type thing. Pretty cool functionality, so many possibilities. I'm interested to hear what others think of the blog section?
I'm giving Catodon.social a go.
Unfortunately Firefish.social has become so broken it doesn't even respect migration requests (let alone post downloads). So a lot of people will miss seeing my move 🫣. I suppose people will find me again over time, but that's a real shame for a server to get that neglected.
I do also have my @ArtBear account which I won't be migrating (it's just offline for DB maintenance for a few hours, don't freak out anyone).
Why Catodon?
I'm sure other projects are interesting too.
I liked how @panos interacted & was committed to community building on #firefish.social. I feel like it's important for any dev team to have in mind Community, not just features, nor just admin, nor just moderation it's all really important but community is the base. I liked how he posted his frustrations with the very large parts of the firefish project that were not a team endeavour that could be picked up & redistributed, but solely resting on only 1 individual. I like the Catodon mission statement about being a team wanting to dev for a lot of servers, and not dev for some mega flagship server (which is a vulnerability of fedi. decentralised & well distributed is good). Also the 1st set of improvement notes were really good at logical cleanup, changes & taking the good parts of stalled firefish forward again, but in a more streamlined direction.
Right away #Catodon feels like an old friend, I really missed:
markdown!
awesome super customisable UI!
properly rendered links so you don't have to click away!
multi links in a single post!
proper quote posts! (really it's users, not features!)
threading display so you actually know if you're in a thread & where!
floating user info cards with actions like follow (not clicking away to a profile)!
custom emoji reactions! (like 😻 or 🥴not just ⭐!)
custom feeds & also lists, are amazingly flexible, you really need to try them!
widgets!
storage with all media for re-use (with editable #altText!!)!
search your contentsearchbox [search]post controls!
blogs (pages)!
forums (channels)!
8000 word limit (be afraid, be very afraid muhahaha!)
and so much more...
Anyway, here's to a new #Fedi adventure! :catodon:💜🐻🎉
We really appreciate all of the excitement about #Catodon! However, we don't want to raise expectations for miracles in a few weeks. Our first release will be fully functional of course, but it won't be everything we want this to be. So, for people who are waiting for our first release to shape an opinion about the software, I'm afraid it will still be very early in a way. This is a long term project and we want to be careful with the changes we're pushing, so please be patient! We'd also love to implement all of our plans in a matter of days but that's not possible. Honestly, I think we'll need at least a few months and a few releases to show the true colors of Catodon. It is what it is.
I've noticed some people refer to me as a dev, although I never claimed to be one. One person even accused me of not having recent commits in Firefish. So... I have to confess I am not a dev.
My role in Firefish was community manager/project coordinator. But isn't it interesting that people assume I'm a dev because I was in the core team? It's so often that community-driven open source projects are run only by devs, that people just assumed I am a dev too. And, with all the respect to the wonderful dev community, I think that's kind of a problem.
You see, an open-source project needs much more than coding. My role in #Catodon will include coordinating development, designing features, testing, communication and feedback from the community, managing issues on the repo, decision making, moderating catodon.social, participating and moderating the matrix channels and I'm sure more will be added to that list. Devs may or may not be good at these things - and this clearly affect some projects. Being a good dev doesn't necessarily mean being good at everything around running an open source project, and that's ok. There's a reason companies hire project managers when developing software. You can add every community request out there - if you don't keep UX on your mind and don't have a consistent vision for your software, it will end up poorly designed and bloated.
So, I have to warn you - I may not be suitable to answer your more technical questions! We have a support channel for that, and our lead dev Namekuji is more knowledgeable about the coding aspect - while other devs, who are interested in our direction, have already reached out and are starting to work with us. So hopefully we will soon have a lively dev and admin community where we can support each other.
I'd say that one of my main goals in Catodon is to offer a safe, inclusive and laid back environment where open source devs will be able to cooperate and contribute in a productive way. Making open source code is a wonderful gesture, you are sharing your work for everyone to freely use. And it deserves to be done in a well organized and self-fulfilling way! Good communication is not always easy, but it's definitely worth trying. We have incredibly talented coders here that can do wonders when working smoothly together. That's the mindset with which we'll be trying to make Catodon a community-driven project.
It is with great sadness, that I am helping share the news, that the Fire Fish (spelled as one word, FireFish) project has seemingly failed. 😞
FireFish was an upcoming alternative to Misskey or Mastodon. That is the wonderful thing about the Fediverse. There is no centralized authority, or platform, and FireFish was such a platform.
The failing of FireFish is the project was led in a centralized manner. 1 person making all the choices.
It is important for the Fediverse, that such projects be community projects for this reason.
If you are a FireFish user or administrator, and you liked or preferred the FireFish layout and features, there is hope. The developers who wanted to work together are creating a fork, Catadon.
From a #sharkey Dev to People On Fedi (pls boost):
While i understand that there's lots of drama around firefish, please do actual research. Sharkey is not and has NEVER been a firefish/#calckey fork, it didn't spring of from firefish. it started off as just an indipendent Misskey soft-fork(updates with misskey), there is no relation at all to firefish, it is incredibly damaging to call it a firefish fork, as the sharkey team actually spends lots of time just implementing features that people wish for (this include some features firefish has), while also spending time on making sure they work decently unlike (firefish some times)
also it's just as damaging to call Iceshrimp an offspring of the whole firefish drama now, Iceshrimp while an actual fork of firefish existed way before the entire recent firefish drama the only recent ofspring of firefish is #catodon and then again catodon is not trying to be firefish, catodon is its own thing it wants to sit inbetween mastodon and *key as a more userfriendly thing with alot of the "fun" misskey stuff removed, and #iceshrimp is doing a full rewrite of firefish in c#, none of these projects are even remotly similar to the firefish way of doing things, some of them aren't even in any relation to #firefish
tldr: stop calling things firefish sucessor, esspecialy don't call sharkey a firefish ofspring it was never in any way related to firefish
#FirefishEnde: >>Meiner Ansicht nach ist das kein Fundament für eine Plattform, die lang und zuverlässig betrieben werden kann, von daher gibt es Gedanken, zu alternativen Plattformen zu migrieren.
Wie einige vielleicht wissen, ist #Firefish keine vollkommen eigene Kreation, sondern eine Abspaltung von Misskey, dem "Hauptprojekt". Mittlerweile gibt es weitere Abspaltungen von Firefish und Misskey, die alle ihre eigenen Ideen umsetzen, wie beispielsweise #Iceshrimp, #Sharkey, #Catodon etc.<< so eine Ankündigung hier.
Ist es möglich, dass der Admin / die Admina einen kompletten
Umzug macht oder muss jedmensch selbst suchen was passen könnte?
Welche deutschsprachigen Instanzen gibt es, die von einem Admin-Team betreut werden, so dass ein ähnliches Problem wie bei Firefish nicht so leicht entsteht?
Gerne #Retroets, da das Thema ja sicher etliche hier betrifft...
Ich habe die Gruppe "FirefishTalk" (umbenannt in "KeyTalk", wobei das leider lediglich den Titel, aber nicht das Handle änderte) geschlossen und eine neue Gruppe"MisskeyTalk" erstellt. Ich hoffe, auch hier entstehen interessante Threads, die Nutzern und Admins ggf. weiterhelfen können:
Eine Gruppe für Nutzer und Administratoren des Fediverse-Dienstes Misskey für Fragen, Diskussionen, Anleitungen, Nutzererfahrungen, Hilfsgesuche, Hilfe und mehr...
In der Gruppe sind auch Nutzer und Admins der Dienste Sharkey, Iceshrimp, Catodon, Firefish und vergleichbare willkommen.
I have closed the group "FirefishTalk" (renamed to "KeyTalk", which unfortunately only changed the title but not the handle) and created a new group "MisskeyTalk". I hope that interesting threads will also be posted here, which may help users and admins:
A group for users and administrators of the Fediverse service Misskey for questions, discussions, instructions, user experiences, help requests, help and more...
Users and admins of the services Sharkey, Iceshrimp, Catodon, Firefish and similar are also welcome in the group.
Im honestly kinda disappointed in all the people jumping on catodon now and calling it firefish successor its kinda very bad as the devs don't intend it to be a firefish successor nor is it trying to be anything like firefish or misskey in general, talking about migrating to catodon while also calling it firefish sucessor is like punching the catodon devs in the face
as they try to create something simple for newer users, not something for existing key users that enjoy fun shit like MFM
please everyone do you research before spreading shit this is also very harmful to the project at least from my POV. if everyone starts hyping the project for something that it is not.
please just give @panos and @catodon some time, and don't put them under pressure for something its not.
If you want a Misskey fork that is unlikely to die as its a softfork (updates with misskey) anytime soon and is community focused and includes #firefish inspired changes go with #sharkey
if you really really want to stick with the firefish sort of thing of doing things try the firefish fork #iceshrimp
and if u want something new more geared towards new users / casual users try looking into #catodon
but don't just jump the gun on things u don't even know fully about
One of my new year's resolutions was to start trimming down the ridiculous amount of fediverse accounts I have. Well, it's not the new year yet, right???
Alright, now that catodon.social is live (welcome new members!), let me explain some of the first changes we've done so far in #Catodon, compared to #Firefish.
We really tried to make the platform easier to understand and less overwhelming for new members. So we changed some icons and also some basic terminology:
Antennas are now Custom feeds
Channels are now Forums
Pages are now Blog posts
Boosts are now Reposts
Local timeline is called "This server" and Global timeline is called "All servers"
We also tried to cut down on menu items. So Lists and Custom feeds are now only accessible from the timelines, Groups are only accessible through Chat (which is the only feature they are used in anyway), Clips are now called Collections and are placed in a tab under Bookmarks. That's four menu items less, without losing any functionality! But we also removed a fifth item, Gallery, which was very half-baked and rarely used in most Firefish servers. Its functionality can more or less be covered by Blog posts.
There is no "Social" timeline: Instead, we have incorporated Social's functionality in Home. Posts from the local server are now displayed by default in Home, so that new users aren't greeted with an empty timeline. You can change that in Settings, so the Home timeline either works as follows only, or as "Social" in Misskey/Firefish.
There are other changes as well and there are more coming as we're preparing for our first official release, but these are some of the most striking ones you will see!
Ugh, I really tried to stay out of #fediverse drama but I guess I have to say a few things. Most of you know me as a #firefish core team member, so I think I owe it to the admins of almost 500 firefish servers out there and to the almost 5000 members of firefish.social.
So, yeah, if you haven't noticed, things aren't looking good for firefish. Its owner, Kainoa, has practically abandoned the project, which had its last stable release out on July. My last message to them was a week ago, and I haven't heard back since. Firefish.social, besides the other severe technical problems it's had due to mismanagement in the last few months, now also has serious federation issues. I hope Kainoa is well irl, but this is irresponsible and unacceptable.
I hear some of you saying "but you're in the core team too, don't try to put the blame elsewhere!". So I have to explain what being a core team member in firefish meant. Kainoa invited me, Namekuji and a few others to be part of the "core team", but kept all decisions and responsibilities. We didn't co-own this. We never shared donations. We were just volunteers, who were honestly trying to make it a great project. This didn't work well due to concentration of power to one person, who didn't keep their promises. I don't mean to be harsh to Kainoa, I mean we knew they were only 19 when they started the project. Still, it's a bummer to anyone who chose to trust and support Firefish. This includes myself.
I don't know if it's early to consider firefish a dead project, but it sure seems like that for a few months now. Maybe it can be resurrected, idk. It's all up to Kainoa.
In the meantime, Namekuji and I are starting #Catodon, which will have some differences with Firefish, and will include many changes I had discussed with Kainoa but were never implemented. If you decide to stick with us, we promise to be serious about this. I strongly believe in the fediverse and its potential, and I want to build a great platform for it. This was my goal when I chose to be involved in Calckey/Firefish. It's still my goal with Catodon, only this time I can stand behind it 100%, as the project will be co-managed by Namekuji and me. If Firefish left you with a bitter aftertaste, we hope we can build a better relationship and prove ourselves worthy of your trust. Catodon will go public in a matter of days, possibly even hours. We'll have more to say about its direction then.
In the meantime, I just wanted to share my apologies for any inconvenience regarding Firefish, as I'm still technically a core team member, whatever that means. But frankly, I tried so hard to make things go differently - but there's only so much you can do when it's someone else's project. I'm really sorry for how things went.
But this is not the end of the fedi journey for me. I'm super excited about the chance to do some things right this time with Catodon. Life goes on, I guess! Hope to see you soon on our #codeberg repo, so we can start a new creative adventure together =)
OK, since this post exploded (which means there is a lot of interest in #Firefish!), and since some people might have misinterpreted some of the things I said, let me point out a few things:
I am NOT saying that Firefish is necessarily dead. I hope that this post works as a wake up call for Kainoa - whenever he sees it. If nothing changes (either Kainoa getting more involved again or sharing responsibilities or whatever), yes, it will be dead. Really hope something changes drastically, a lot of people love this project.
I am also NOT saying that #catodon is a continuation of firefish, but a different project. Honestly, if that's all you're looking for, there are other project which might be more suitable - we don't want to mislead anyone. We will gradually change quite a few things, the goal is to make it a great and easier to understand all-around software for fedi communities, so for example some of the misskey-specific features will go. In a way, it will sit somewhere between Mastodon and Misskey. So our goal is NOT to replace/continue firefish but to find our people, who will be interested in what we -and not firefish- are trying to do with the platform, and maybe do it together.