Roll Up! Take Your First Steps Into... Mastodon!

[AgentPete]

Everyone is talking about Mastodon at the moment – the free and open-source alternative to Twitter.

Although at first glance it looks very similar to Twitter, it works in a very different way. Twitter is a highly-centralized system. Should you dare to tweet anything that offends whoever the boss happens to be - then you may find your presence on his platform is… limited. Or shadow-banned. Or something equally oubliette-ish.

That’s not possible with Mastodon, because it's a network of independently-run servers. There is no Mr. Big: therefore there’s no possibility of being banned from the platform. It’s not corporate-controlled social media – it’s user-controlled.

Mastodon has been around for seven years but has only recently seen a surge in growth and media attention.

Litopia has always been at the forefront of tech innovation (think about all the early podcasts we did) and so yes, we’ve just set up our own Mastodon server, which is now a constituent part of the 5000-strong network of Mastodon servers collectively known as the “fediverse”.

The hard part has already been done, i.e. setting it up.

Now it's over to you to experiment with! Will Mastodon overthrow Twitter - and could it become a valuable new way to discover authors and their works?

Sign up on Litopia's Mastodon server now and kick the tyres a bit!

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[Bloo]

This is why I chose a geometric background

 

[Jonny]

Hi @Eva Ulian

Your banner is better but for me it still has the Take reality out of fiction line missing.

Carol's seems perfect I can read it all and is not cut off on the right side as per your pic above.

I'm still missing the top line (checked again just now) but wouldn't know why, I'm afraid.

 

[Hannah F]

@Carol MS I'm viewing with Microsoft Edge and I see your complete banner.
@Eva Ulian Your banner looks chopped top and bottom.

 

[Eva Ulian]

Thank you @Bloo✒️ and @Hannah F @Jonny I think it's probably a question of inches and centimetres. My Mastodon is serviced to me here in Italy and they use cms- back in the UK and US they use inches.

 

[Eva Ulian]

I've had another go and this time I've left more space at the top and side- hoping to compensate for the discrepancies in measurements.

 

[Peyton Stafford]

On my Mac running Chrome, both banners appear correctly.

 

[CarolMS]

I wonder why that is. Any ideas? I wonder if anyone else sees it without the first line?

As I said last night, I don't see that first line in your banner, and the second is right at the edge of the top, plus your name at the bottom is partly cut off.

 

[Hannah F]

I see all of yours now @Eva Ulian (microsoft edge)

 

[CarolMS]

I've had another go and this time I've left more space at the top and side- hoping to compensate for the discrepancies in measurements.

I found it was caused by the size of my image and font, and when I created a completely new image sized differently with much smaller font, it worked fine. I described this in a note last night. You might want to try the pixels measurement I used for the final one: 628 x 128.

I noticed the picture you sent of yours fitting was on your Edit Profile page, and on that page, mine ALWAYS worked as well. It's when you go to the pubic view of the banner that it gets cut off, so looking at the page where you are creating your banner and inserting the image is misleading. When you go to the actual finished profile, the banner has changed, with the image somehow having been enlarged. No idea why, but that's what kept happening and it is happening to yours, too. You need to create a much smaller image overall so that when it's published as the final profile banner it works. Hope that helps.

 

[CarolMS]

Thank you @Bloo✒️ and @Hannah F @Jonny I think it's probably a question of inches and centimetres. My Mastodon is serviced to me here in Italy and they use cms- back in the UK and US they use inches.

,I don't use measurements of inches or centimeters, but rather measurements in pixels, which should be the same everywhere.

 

[CarolMS]

@Eva Ulian (cc: @Jonny @Peyton Stafford @Hannah F @Bloo✒️ )

YAY! I noticed Peyton and Hannah said they could see both of our banners in full now and so I checked again as well, and HURRAY! I can see all of yours, too, Eva. We did it! Too bad we can't get together and click glasses for a toast!

THANKS EVERYBODY!

 

[Peyton Stafford]

,I don't use measurements of inches or centimeters, but rather measurements in pixels, which should be the same everywhere.

yes. though pixels can vary according to the resolution of the monitor. bottom line: well-made websites automatically recalculate between various measurement systems and across all displays.

As we used to say in Japan, "Mo ipon." One more bottle. Wonder how websites adjust for that...

 

[CarolMS]

yes. though pixels can vary according to the resolution of the monitor. bottom line: well-made websites automatically recalculate between various measurement systems and across all displays.

As we used to say in Japan, "Mo ipon." One more bottle. Wonder how websites adjust for that...

That makes sense.

 

[Eva Ulian]

I'm sorry @Carol MS @Bloo✒️ @Jonny @Hannah F @Peyton Stafford but I still see Carol's picture truncated and I suspect the rest of you can see my picture "correctly" (i.e. the words) because, like I said above, I have made allowances to compensate for the discrepancies in measurements from an Italian Mastodon to a UK or US one, namely, I left wide margins all around which are eaten up by US or UK Mastodon servers and vice-versa.

 

[CarolMS]

I'm sorry @Carol MS @Bloo✒️ @Jonny @Hannah F @Peyton Stafford but I still see Carol's picture truncated and I suspect the rest of you can see my picture "correctly" (i.e. the words) because, like I said above, I have made allowances to compensate for the discrepancies in measurements from an Italian Mastodon to a UK or US one, namely, I left wide margins all around which are eaten up by US or UK Mastodon servers and vice-versa.

So weird. Peyton, Hannah, Jonny and I all seem to be able to see both your and my banner in full now and only you are still having this problem. Have you tried refreshing your browser when you are on my profile page? Maybe that will help. It appears you are still getting an older version of my banner image, rather than the completely new one I created from scratch and uploaded in a correct size. I think previous images have actually been too small, so Mastodon has automatically adjusted them to be much larger. My new image wasn't adjusted by Mastodon at all. Don't know what else to say.

 

[Barbara]

I can only see one solution: A white banner with white writing. Although the message will be lost somewhat....

I get my coat.

 

[CarolMS]

Two questions for @AgentPete and anyone in the know about Mastodon.
1. How do we find people on other servers (instances?) to follow and interact with. I only find a limited few in the Federated feed of most recent posts, most of which I've no interest in. A few yes, maybe, but a very few. Can I search for writers, writing organizations, editors to follow? Etc.
2. How do I boost a post I've found on another server--in this case, on PDX.social on Mastodon--and thus show it amount my posts, and do I then need to also boost that post from my thread, or has the boosting already occurred. And what does it DO when the boost happens? Where does it get shared? Only with my limited followers? I tried to do this with a post by someone, and while I found instructions to copy a link and paste it with the litopia link, I couldn't figure out where or how to do that. Totally confused.

 

[Eva Ulian]

I suspect the rest of you can see my picture "correctly" (i.e. the words) because, like I said above, I have made allowances to compensate for the discrepancies in measurements from an Italian Mastodon to a UK or US one, namely, I left wide margins all around which are eaten up by US or UK Mastodon servers and vice-versa.

Like I said above Carol this is why I see things differently. @Carol MS But don't worry- it's only a tech matter which does not depend on me or you.

 

[CarolMS]

Like I said above Carol this is why I see things differently. @Carol MS But don't worry- it's only a tech matter which does not depend on me or you.

I'm not worried, Eva. My problem was resolved, except for how my banner appears on your computer, when I uploaded my newest image and everyone else said they could see it in full as I do. Now I'm just focused on trying to figure out how to connect with people beyond Litopia, or in Mastodon's "fediverse." I asked a few questions about that, but I'm in no hurry for answers. More important things to do--like my novel revision--Duh!--which tends to get neglected with all this social media stuff.

Hope you have a nice weekend. I'll see you tomorrow at the Huddle.

 

[CarolMS]

Like I said above Carol this is why I see things differently. @Carol MS But don't worry- it's only a tech matter which does not depend on me or you.

I'm glad you found an approach to a solution that worked for your banner. Seems we took slightly different approaches to arrive at the same end. Works for me! Your banner looks great!

 

[AgentPete]

Two questions for @AgentPete and anyone in the know about Mastodon.
1. How do we find people on other servers (instances?) to follow and interact with. I only find a limited few in the Federated feed of most recent posts, most of which I've no interest in. A few yes, maybe, but a very few. Can I search for writers, writing organizations, editors to follow? Etc.

Carol, both of these questions are important, but I have no definitive answers to them at the moment, I'm not a mastodon expert Could others please help here? We need a FAQ that includes these issues.

 

[CarolMS]

Carol, both of these questions are important, but I have no definitive answers to them at the moment, I'm not a mastodon expert Could others please help here? We need a FAQ that includes these issues.

Thanks, @AgentPete. No problem. I'm beginning to think it's maybe just premature for a non-techy like me to switch my Twitter account to Mastodon. While it looks a lot like Twitter and in some ways functions similarly, my sense is that those creating it don't seem to have arrived yet at ways to easily do other functions people commonly do on Twitter (like networking beyond one's own community). Folks like me need things to be one-click easy without a bunch of vocabulary that we don't begin to understand. (Speaking of Mastodon vocabulary, who on earth decided a weird word choice like "instance" was a good one??)

It's been fun to interact with other Litopians on it, but I'm not sure it adds anything we don't already have on the Litopia site, which I've no doubt you are making even better. It's quite remarkable the way you've created and nurtured Litopia. I watched Pop-Up Submissions on YouTube for a year, maybe even two, most Sundays, doing so to learn and because I always found the show thoroughly entertaining. Then one curious day I sought to learn more about the Colony,, andI was blown away by all that was going on. It has just gotten better through participation and getting to know so many delightful people writing around the world! Thank you!