I did a short piece for Founding Fuel on this

The first thing that will strike you about Mastodon is how extraordinarily polite it is. Most of these people who are so incredibly nice and helpful, are also there on the ‘hellsite’. So, what changed? What changed is a zero-tolerance policy on bullying. One of the earlier posts I encountered was on why an entire instance was barred from the fediverse (the universe of interconnected servers that talk to each other).

Mastodon is not driven by algorithms. It is driven by people. To find things you use hashtags. To help people you use alt text. To warn people about disturbing content you use content warnings.  Incidentally, it is recommended that Toots around politics come with a CW (content warning). The idea is that not everyone wants to face the brunt of your rage or your bile. Respect that. 

Academics, the first community on the internet, has begun moving to the fediverse. I follow a fair few academics on Twitter, but the quality of conversations on Mastodon are on a different plane. You can, depending on your area of interest, join on different servers/instances. I am part of mastodon.social. But there are other more specific servers. Here are a few examples:

• Hci.social — that is inhabited by people who talk about human computer interactions 
• genomic.social — people from the Genomic Science Community
• journa.host — primarily journalists
• mathstodon.xyz — for maths people
• med-mastodon.com — primarily the medical community 

Beyond this, there are groups—I am part of a book lovers group, and the academic chatter group—and you can find a limited list of them at Guppe Groups.

And, yes, you can edit your posts on Mastodon. 

Don’t join Mastodon, expecting it to be Twitter. And don’t try and convert Mastodon to Twitter. It is a different experience. A different community—even if it has the same people. It is about our shared humanity, and how we can leverage that. Instead of our minute differences and fighting around that. 

Other resources

(Via Harini)

astrodon.social – for astronomy

indieweb.social – independent web

infosec.exchange – infosec.exchange

mastodon.sdf.org – general purpose/art

med-mastodon.com – med community on mastodon

newsie.social – journalists

masthead.social – news

disabled.social – chronically ill, mentally ill, disabled

social.coop – for co-operative projects

fosstodon.org – tech. free

motmot.cx – bird lovers

universeodon.com – exploring the universe and the world we share

writing.exchange – for writers

mstdn.jp – japanese instance

nagoyadon.jp – another japanese instance

peoplemaking.games – people making games

genomic.social – Genomic Science Community

Mastodon.ART – well art

kolektiva.social – anarchists and anti-colonialists, for the social movements and for liberation

mathstodon.xyz – for maths people 

mastodon.online – general

mas.to – general fun

journa.host – working journalists, retired journalists, academics, and others who are clearly journalism-related.

fediscience.org – the social network for scientists

mastodon.me.uk – UK-specific instance

Bildung.social – German instance

hci.social – human computer interaction researchers & practitioners

scholar.social – microblogging for academics