On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 8:54 AM Anusha A aalikhan@wikimedia.org wrote:
I wanted to update you that the Wikimedia Foundation has launched a Mastodon instance. You can follow us at: wikimedia.social/@wikimediafoundation.
This is wonderful news. I imagine it took quite a bit of behind the scenes work to get to this point, under a dedicated wikimedia.social domain name no less. Thanks to all who helped make it happen. Congratulations and welcome to the fediverse!
In addition, we’ll experiment with posting broader content about the Wikimedia movement and projects that might be appealing to tech enthusiasts and fans of open-source platforms.
There are definitely a lot of tech enthusiasts on the fediverse who will appreciate such content. But I would generally encourage a broad view of the network. I know you're saying it'll be a bit of both -- this is also in response to the Wikimedia account cover image being a bunch of servers ;-) (I don't know if that's just a temporary placeholder, or if it was an intentional "know your audience" kind of choice). [1]
Much like Wikipedia, the fediverse has barriers to entry, and those certainly skew the community more technical. Folks who are very comfortable with technology will not be _as_ frustrated or confused by stuff like "how do I choose a server" or "how do I follow someone on another server". Similarly, more technical folks contributing to Wikipedia may be less likely to be turned away by wiki syntax or the, er, magic of talk pages.
But in both cases, people join not necessarily because of some technical appeal, but because of other goals (improving an encyclopedia, joining a community). The technology is often a means to an end, not an end in itself. And many less technical users _do_ overcome friction and frustration, in both cases (I'd wager many fediverse users are Wikimedians in waiting).
There are many, many communities in the fediverse that are not "techie" in nature. For example:
https://mastodon.art/ - thousands of artists in many different media https://union.place/ - labor organizing, with official accounts for many unions https://newsie.social/ - news and journalism, with many official media organization accounts https://fediscience.org/ - science and scholarship across many disciplines https://lgbtqia.space/ - one of several servers building safe spaces for the LGBTQIA community https://polyglot.city/ - a community of language learners https://veganism.social - a space for the vegan community
(It's fun to visit the "local timelines" on these servers to see what the people who just signed up there are talking about.)
With thousands of interconnected servers, even that's just a tiny slice of the diversity of topics represented today. And of course the big general purpose servers are home to users with a large variety of interests.
Much like Wikimedia, the fediverse is a fundamentally mission-oriented endeavor. I personally would describe that mission like so: to create connected, self-governing social spaces for all of humanity.
Wikimedia is not in the business of hosting general purpose social networks, and you're rightfully wary of going too far in that direction -- but the Wikimedia movement _will_ be better off if online social spaces become more open, inclusive, decentralized and self-governing.
My concrete suggestion to any movement org would be to dedicate at least 50% of all effort that goes towards social media towards the fediverse. That would be placing a bet on the future, not just the present. Some of that effort could be in the form of lending expertise to making the fediverse more open, inclusive, and welcoming.
A thriving fediverse will help Wikimedia in its policy struggles (because it will create new opportunities for alliances with nonprofit communities impacted by bad policies). It will help it in its outreach (because it will make Wikimedia less subject to algorithms skewed towards anything that makes Musk or Zuck money). It will help it to build community (because all participants will be able to more actively shape the many ways in which we construct community).
In short, I would suggest not thinking of the fediverse as the place where the techies are, but as a space to expand our collective future possibilities.
Warmly, Erik
[1] As of this writing, https://cdn.masto.host/wikimediasocial/accounts/headers/110/708/857/481/231/... (granted, it's a cool image, though images of servers always make me feel a bit claustrophobic :)