I thought I would try out firefish/calckey but found a few issues.
I should say I am in my 50s and have been around since I used 1970s BBS so have a reasonable understanding of the Fediverse etc.
But, joinfirefish.org seems to have gone for style over substance. It also doesn’t render properly on Safari (iOS)
Choosing a server to join seems unnecessarily difficult. At the top of the list is firefish.social marked as verified but when you click or tap to find out more you are presented with a coming soon page (not seen one of those since the 90s when everything was Under Construction).
The choice of servers seems limited with a need for more general servers.
It looks like I’m going to need to host my own. But a quick glance seems their’s poor documentation.
What do people think? Can anyone recommend a good general server in English?
I read about their name change and wondered what it was. I had a similar experience. Really bad UX. When you click join it asks you if you want to create a new server or join an existing server. I picked “join existing” but the first button on the page is to “submit your server”.
I clicked the “verified” server which was down (and is still down… who goes down for days for a domain change?)
I clicked another server and hit Explore and it showed me a list of pinned users that supposedly had many posts each, however I clicked on various elements such as the post count trying to view them and couldn’t. At that point I just closed my browser tab.
I assume this thing is some sort of Mastodon-like social network but coming in blind it’s hard to tell.
I’ve been enjoying Calckey but yes, stability is a problem, as is federation.
Indeed, thought I’d try again after a couple of days. Now getting 502 Bad Gateway errors from the joinfirefish site.
Also, some very strange reposting by firefish on mastodon. (possibly meant to do it from a personal account?) Some sort of unseemly personal argument between two people connected with the project that seem to have mental health issues.
The madness continues: the list of servers now shows calckey.social instead of firefish.social. When you click the button to chose it, you’re then invited to sign up to firefish.social. But as soon as you tap it there’s a message that signups are disabled.
You couldn’t make this up.
I read about their name change and wondered what it was. I had a similar experience. Really bad UX. When you click join it asks you if you want to create a new server or join an existing server. I picked “join existing” but the first button on the page is to “submit your server”.
UI seems to be a big, general problem for some of the other federated services. kbin’s is atrocious for federation, for example, and we’ve repeatedly observed its users not seemingly knowing where they are just because of how their feed of content is presented to them.
I dunno, I was up and running in five minutes. You pick an instance, you sign up, you verify the email, and you’re good to go. What server doesn’t matter much, barring it closing unexpectedly and without warning. There’s not enough users to need more than a handful.
If you don’t mind about the local timeline, or that the main language is different or that other users might get it defederated then your approach will work.
I feel like finding a good instance in the fediverse (that’s accepting users) is always a nightmare.
That being said, I’ve been happy with the vibes on lemmy.blahaj.zone and they have a calckey/firefish instance (that’s the main blahaj.zone). But it’s not strictly general-purpose.
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They are marked as general but when you click or tap through it’s obvious most of them aren’t
Edit: Also, I thought this was a domain change not migrating the users. If they really are migrating users then that would explain why it’s taking so long. But why show the server as verified and available during the process.
I think someone not used to these things would see ‘Coming Soon’ and just leave it as not launched yet.
I think Calckey/firefish, because of it history and characteristics, tends to have more themed instances. Many of the so called “general” instances, are multi-topic or multi-fandom themed instances rather than actual general purpose ones.
I think someone not used to these things would see ‘Coming Soon’ and just leave it as not launched yet.
It’s probably not launched yet. The main instance hasn’t open (or rather moved from calckey) and other intances are moving from either old Calckey or foundkey.
Firefish has already set up a new site and infrastructure under their new name. The flagship instance of Calckey.social is in the process of moving over to Firefish.social. The migration effort is intended to retain users, posts, credentials, and data. The move is expected to officially happen over the course of the next few days.
I would say to wait at least a week to check the official instance.
I agree, the instances marked General are not really. I think you might also be correct about waiting a week. The lead developer seems to be fighting some other battles on Mastodon at the moment.
Yeah, the dust is still settling (in the middle of a rebrand/namespace migration). I like it as it feels like Mastodon++ and it last links with Lemmy/Kbin.
I’m using calckey.world and it was a bit crunchy at first but is working well now. The userbase at this point is small compared to the mastodon servers we’re used to seeing.
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I can’t blame free software for not working correctly in Apple’s special browser that only exists on their platform. Years ago they were really focused on having a good and standards compliant browser but it’s started to become the new Internet Explorer for iPhone. At least on Mac computers you can install a different browser.
That doesn’t make much sense. If firefish want iOS users then they are going to have to make it work on Safari
