Thread by @RachelCleves

Today's #Mastodon pitch: @torstenkathke's open-access spreadsheet of historians who've made the leap now has more than 350 names. There are similar lists of lit scholars, philosophers, astronomers, etc. going around. See next tweets for sign-up tips: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

@torstenkathke First time I looked at Mastodon I found it visually confusing. I'm 46, not an internet native. I needed to go to preferences and adjust the appearance before it made sense. For me that meant: 1)site theme: light, advanced view, and ( vital) SLOW mode so it didn't auto-scroll +

@torstenkathke I was also confused about servers (or instances). Mastodon is decentralized. There are many different independent servers, which are are all linked together (federated). You can join any server and follow people on any other server. I joined the biggest Mastodon.social

@torstenkathke There are new servers being launched all the time. Some that look appealing to me are writing.exchange, zirk.us, masthead.social. The choice of servers is not that big a deal because you will build a timeline of people you follow across the servers.

@torstenkathke I have my Mastodon app set up in advanced view so I can see different columns: my "home" timeline of people I follow, plus additional columns that have bookmarks of hashtags I'm interested in like #histodons (historians on Mastodon) and #foodhistory and #queerhistory

You can also view the timeline of all posts on your server, as well as a timeline of all posts in Mastodon (the Fediverse). If you like, you can change servers after you set up your account, and import your followers to your new account.

It does take work to set up your timeline by following people who you're interested in. I'm now following close to one thousand diverse people - historians, scientists, literary scholars, techies, artists, journalists, writers of fiction, linguists, etc. and my timeline is great.

Another important point: the search function is not great and you need to hashtag your posts to make them easier to find. Give it a couple hours, though, and you should be able to find people and topics to follow that will make the experience interesting to you.

Because Mastodon is open-access, there are numerous free third-party apps you can use to access it. I downloaded the Metatext app, which works great on my ipad, which I use often for reading. I also like Mastodon's own web app. apps.apple.com/us/app/metatex…

I'm a newbie user, and not a techie. Other longtime techie users have authored far more detailed accounts of #Mastodon's design, etiquette, etc. Here are a couple of links blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-11-…

Here's an article on Gizmodo about the ins-and-outs of Mastodon gizmodo.com/how-to-join-ma…