On one of my infrequent trips back to the other platform I saw two posts that were disappointing. One was slightly more disappointing than the other, someone tried to join Mastodon, got a server not accepting new joins message, stopped trying and went back to make fun of it. The other is more understandably bad, the server they joined up with has been down for 3 days. We really need to do something to address stuff like this. It’s not easy, but it’s a major roadblock to adoption
@jonn_blanchard it is difficult with a decentralised platform like this as there's no central control of how servers are set up. One server might have redundancy and another might be a RaspberryPi in a small apartment.
The other problem is the users who are coming from the other site, they might not appreciate how to use a service like this and that they have to work differently and even do a little due diligence before choosing a server to be their permanent home.
@gpowerf The first problem is, at least partially, solvable. We don't need central control to have a dynamic directory that can poll servers to check they're responding and I imagine the API has a way to see if a server is allowing registration. The other is more of an education issue, for that we need better constructed web pages and videos