Category Archives: oa.mastodon

Mastodon over Mammon: towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge | Royal Society Open Science

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Abstract:  Twitter is in turmoil and the scholarly community on the platform is once again starting to migrate. As with the early internet, scholarly organizations are at the forefront of developing and implementing a decentralized alternative to Twitter, Mastodon. Both historically and conceptually, this is not a new situation for the scholarly community. Historically, scholars were forced to leave social media platform FriendFeed after it was bought by Facebook in 2006. Conceptually, the problems associated with public scholarly discourse subjected to the whims of corporate owners are not unlike those of scholarly journals owned by monopolistic corporations: in both cases the perils associated with a public good in private hands are palpable. For both short form (Twitter/Mastodon) and longer form (journals) scholarly discourse, decentralized solutions exist, some of which are already enjoying some institutional support. Here we argue that scholarly organizations, in particular learned societies, are now facing a golden opportunity to rethink their hesitations towards such alternatives and support the migration of the scholarly community from Twitter to Mastodon by hosting Mastodon instances. Demonstrating that the scholarly community is capable of creating a truly public square for scholarly discourse, impervious to private takeover, might renew confidence and inspire the community to focus on analogous solutions for the remaining scholarly record—encompassing text, data and code—to safeguard all publicly owned scholarly knowledge.

 

Mastodon over Mammon – Towards publicly owned scholarly knowledge | Zenodo

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Abstract:  Twitter is in turmoil and the scholarly community on the platform is once again starting to migrate. As with the early internet, scholarly organizations are at the forefront of developing and implementing a decentralized alternative to Twitter, Mastodon. Both historically and conceptually, this is not a new situation for the scholarly community. Historically, scholars were forced to leave social media platform FriendFeed after it was bought by Facebook in 2006. Conceptually, the problems associated with public scholarly discourse subjected to the whims of corporate owners are not unlike those of scholarly journals owned by monopolistic corporations: in both cases the perils associated with a public good in private hands are palpable. For both short form (Twitter/Mastodon) and longer form (journals) scholarly discourse, decentralized solutions exist, some of which are already enjoying some institutional support. Here we argue that scholarly organizations, in particular learned societies, are now facing a golden opportunity to rethink their hesitations towards such alternatives and support the migration of the scholarly community from Twitter to Mastodon by hosting Mastodon instances. Demonstrating that the scholarly community is capable of creating a truly public square for scholarly discourse, impervious to private takeover, might renew confidence and inspire the community to focus on analogous solutions for the remaining scholarly record – encompassing text, data and code – to safeguard all publicly owned scholarly knowledge.

 

A Federated Commons | Building the Commons

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by Mike Thicke

Twitter’s recent troubles have catalyzed unprecedented attention on Mastodon as an alternative. In turn, this has introduced many to the Fediverse—a loose collection of services that, like Mastdodon, use the ActivityPub protocol to communicate with each other.

At Humanities Commons, we have long considered ActivityPub to be the most promising way to expand from our current, single-site, structure to a network of associated Commonses. We have taken Mastodon as an inspiration and model for a new, federated Commons network.

I hope to use this blog both to keep users at Humanities Commons informed of our plans and progress toward this goal of a renewed Commons and Commons network, but to also have conversations with all of you about our direction, about how we can best serve your needs, and about how you can contribute to our journey.

In this post, I want to describe in general terms how the Commons functions as a pseudo-network now, some of the challenges we’ve experienced with that structure, and how a federated or decentralized Commons might address those problems. In future posts I will go into more detail about how different components of the site—such as profiles, groups, sites, and the repository—might function in a federated Commons, as well as discussions of how we plan to implement all of this.

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Should #SciTwitter Migrate Elsewhere? | Technology Networks

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” “The Twitter model has been enormously helpful for me to share my work widely and rapidly, to get very useful feedback and discussion about my work and for me to discover the work of others that I would not have seen otherwise,” says Professor Brian Nosek, social-cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science.

Beyond communicating research, Twitter has also enabled researchers from across the globe to connect, form new friendships and even discover job opportunities. Previously, this might have only been possible through attending scientific conferences, which are not always accessible or affordable, particularly for early-career researchers. “Among scientists, it [#SciTwitter] has become one of the primary tools to announce new research findings, job openings and upcoming conferences. As a tool of public outreach, the platform has enabled direct dialogue with the public, particularly on crucial topics such as COVID-19 or climate change,” says Dr. David Brückner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria who became involved in #SciTwitter during his PhD studies.

However, the future of #SciTwitter looks increasingly uncertain right now, as calls for its “migration” to an alternative online platform increase….

In publishing, community-based non-profits such as the preprint servers arXiv, bioRxiv or the journal eLife have been key drivers of positive change. Since #SciTwitter has become such an integral tool of our work, we should consider if there are possibilities for community-based open-source alternatives,” he says….”

Should #SciTwitter Migrate Elsewhere? | Technology Networks

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” “The Twitter model has been enormously helpful for me to share my work widely and rapidly, to get very useful feedback and discussion about my work and for me to discover the work of others that I would not have seen otherwise,” says Professor Brian Nosek, social-cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science.

Beyond communicating research, Twitter has also enabled researchers from across the globe to connect, form new friendships and even discover job opportunities. Previously, this might have only been possible through attending scientific conferences, which are not always accessible or affordable, particularly for early-career researchers. “Among scientists, it [#SciTwitter] has become one of the primary tools to announce new research findings, job openings and upcoming conferences. As a tool of public outreach, the platform has enabled direct dialogue with the public, particularly on crucial topics such as COVID-19 or climate change,” says Dr. David Brückner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria who became involved in #SciTwitter during his PhD studies.

However, the future of #SciTwitter looks increasingly uncertain right now, as calls for its “migration” to an alternative online platform increase….

In publishing, community-based non-profits such as the preprint servers arXiv, bioRxiv or the journal eLife have been key drivers of positive change. Since #SciTwitter has become such an integral tool of our work, we should consider if there are possibilities for community-based open-source alternatives,” he says….”

Humanities Commons Launches Mastodon Server Open to Scholars | Platypus, the Humanities Commons blog

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Anyone using or observing Twitter will be well aware of the recent purchase of the company, which throws the future of the platform into, at best, uncertainty, and at worst, turmoil.

In response, many scholars have been considering a move to Mastodon, a non-profit, federated alternative social network. Being federated, Mastodon requires access to a server (here’s more on how Mastodon works), which is where we come in.

In response to community requests and our own recognition of the potential in this moment, we are launching hcommons.social, a Mastodon server open to all scholars (which we take to include: researchers, librarians, instructors, students, staff and anyone else with an active interest in research and education.) While we expect this space to lean Humanities-heavy, we leave it up to users whether it feels like the place they want to be. To start, there will be no limit on sign-ups, though we will review that policy over time as we learn more about the costs and overhead of managing the server.

We’ve moved quickly to get this up and running, and are doing so in the spirit of experimentation. We’ve never done this before. Many of the people who use it will probably not have either. So we’re going to have to figure things out together!

To start, we are putting in place:

Server rules that prioritize harm reduction and will be enforced via…
A clear moderation policy,

And if you’re new to Mastodon, a wonderful HC user has created an excellent guide to getting started.

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