joindiaspora crisis

Might be interesting to add the geolocation to poduptime and have it suggest a close to home pod?

I can't imagine the funds will be unlimited for the jd.com heroku platform, seems like closing registration and making the network more distributed a good thing.

@maxsamael I see 4 others have added pods this week, so I know its working. Feel free to use the link on there to contact me.

I've started a topic about a D* login portal some time ago. I'd also like to refer to that: https://pod.orkz.net/posts/518121

In it I named pumpity as an example. You'll see when reading the comments. I'd like a better central login portal, where people are immediately directed in the right direction.
They can get directions there, but also get directed to their own pod maybe.
I believe the simplest and most user-friendly option is not to let people entirely 'understand' Diaspora (and make them read much text), but give them a front-end solution where they can make their considered decision about what pod to choose or where to get directed when you've forgotten your pod URL ;)

It would be really great if registrations were at least temporarily closed at joindiaspora.com with a very informative message about federation and availability of other pods to register.

The problem is, joindiaspora or elsewhere, we don't really want people to register, we'd prefer to see them set up a pod... diasp.org and geraspora.de are too big too. (don't know what you think @davidmorley ?)

You know the idea day 1 was everyone would install on their home computer and it would be the p2p social network. That did not pan out and so came pods, a lot like mine were "alpha preview" pods that were a short term thing until everyone had Diaspora on their home computers. Things have changed, the dream of everyone running Diaspora is gone. The dream a ton of pods is the new one, is that realistic? I don't know, all you get with running a pod for others is the risk of DCMA take down notices, threats from your ISP to disconnect you etc. Not sure why anyone would start a pod for others. Maybe that's the gap, why? If the why start a pod is a good story then its compelling, right now its nerds whom want a cool toy.

I have no solutions except to suggest the idea's we had are no longer probably valid ones and new ideas and thoughts on how to grow this thing are needed.

Main idea of the pod for others is convenience. Installing Diaspora is still way beyond capabilities of common users.

Maybe we could develop a function for podmins in Diaspora: When a pod closes registrations, users are given a message stating that the pod is closed for registrations, with a message like:

Sorry

This Diaspora pod is closed for registrations, either check Pod Uptime for a place to join, or set up your own pod to be a part of the network!

@davidmorley This is something I've also been exploring. I think one kind of pod that can be particularly compelling are pods themed around a locality. For example, I'm thinking of starting a Diaspora pod of my own to serve the Peoria area where I live. This could be a particularly useful social utility for:

• local businesses
  
• local news
  
• local artists / musicians that want to connect
  
• local activist organizations or causes
  

Peoria is a relatively small city, and happens to be used as a test market quite often in the United States. It has a local culture that exists independently in a vacuum, and a recurring joke here is that everyone somehow indirectly knows one another through someone else.

Most of these people are on Facebook, but from a user's standpoint, Facebook provides little sense of locality. Sure, you can like some local social media pages and make friends, but it all gets blended together among the endless pile of other pages a user follows. Local events and pages have less reach here, because it could be argued that they are drowned out by brand and meme pages that have drastically higher users following them.

@davidmorley Thank you, i will try and when error occured i will contact you.

Maybe that’s the gap, why? If the why start a pod is a good story then its compelling, right now its nerds whom want a cool toy.

So what about set up the blog on diasporafoundation and regularly put interview of podmins to explain why they set up a pod, where is it, how does it work... To share their experience!

About joindiaspora, I don't think it's a long term solution / a good idea to close registration. But we can probably do better on the main page, by indicating that "joindiaspora is a demonstration pod for people who wants to know how diaspora* looks like. There are hundreds of thousands of people here, so we use heroku powered by amazon to host this service. If you really care about privacy, you probably should set up your own pod or pick another one on podupti.me"

Because at the moment, it's written nowhere that joindiaspora is using amazon. I'm sure a single explanation sentence like this one would greatly improve the situation. @maxwellsalzberg do you agree to put that?

@flaburgan It's only a small minority that have the Amazon scare thing. I'm surprised people who care actually don't take care to find out - I mean it's kinda simple to check. The persons who don't know how and are afraid of Amazon are probably afraid of Amazon for totally wrong reasons they don't even understand :)

To me putting text "this pod is hosted on Amazon" is just pointless. Might as well put "this pod is on the internet".

If someone really hates Amazon that much they should really take better care not to use Amazon servers. Might have difficult time doing so though...