I don't think @MastodonEngineering 's proposal of suggesting community run servers at signup is going to work.

Bear with me:

The difference between funneling new users to the foundation-run instance unless the user makes an active choice (personal invite from existing user, selecting from themselves making an informed choice etc) is that two different people both joining "Mastodon" will be subject to completely different community and moderation standards. Sure, we'll require some sort of minimal agreement, but that still leaves lots of room for ... let's say, somewhat power-hungry BOFHs.

It's a well known fact that there are a bunch of people running instances on Mastodon who believe it's their job to "sort out" what's suitable for their users to see or not see. A bit authoritarian, if you wish. Others think it's their job to enable their users to make their own choices, unless there's actual content that violate server rules.

There are servers on joinmastodon today where the admins, completely by themselves, decide to instance block users from other instances that they don't like - without them having broken any server rules whatsoever. Their "own" users on those instances have no say, and no idea why other users on Mastodon never respond to any follow requests.

If you take a step back and look at this from the perspective of random user Z just wanting to "get Mastodon" and sign up for what seems to be a local "Mastodon server" it doesn't matter how many disclaimers we put up - when this happens they're going to get pissed off anyway. And rightfully so.

I think it's better to continue to funnel everyone through the foundation server - and extend the instance move support to move over posts. That way everyone can make informed decisions they can at least understand the effects of.

#MastoAdmin

Update to v4.5.6 is done without any problems or issues.
#mastoadmin

And we'll see here in a minute if I've just borked my instance...

Upgraded elasticsearch to 9.X and node.js to 22... and rebuilding...

If this instance goes splort, at least I'll have something to do this weekend.

#mastodon #nodejs #elasticsearch #upgrade #mastoadmin

Rapidly failing to see the point of QuotePosts when pretty much every single one has 'Post Pending' instead of the post that's been quoted.

Not waiting around for the original poster to authorise a quote (or whatever they have to do).

#MastoAdmin

RE: https://mstdn.social/@stux/116002476574325878

It’s absurd that instance owners have to beg for support like it’s a favor.

If you rely on a service, do the grown-up thing and help pay for it.

Servers, storage, moderation, and uptime aren’t powered by vibes.

Even $5 / €5 helps.

Check your server’s About page. If you can afford a coffee, you can afford to contribute.

Parting shot: if Mastodon really cared about growing the ecosystem, funding tools would already be built in for #Mastoadmin use. Looking at you, @Gargron 👀

Looking for some advice from #MastodonAdmins

What setting do you have WEB_CONCURRENCY and MAX_THREADS for your puma (mastodon-web) service?

I’ve set it 50 and 20 respectively for a pool of 1000 web processes, but I’ve been getting constant overloading with tens of thousands of backlogged connections.

Do I need to adjust the mastodon-streaming service settings also? I increased my database connection limit to 1500 to handle the connections plus extras.

Any ideas?

#mastodonadmin #sysadmin #mastoadmin

High traffic on my vanilla, non-docker, Mastodon instance starting in December with file /packs/assets/compact-NMaGTNYN.json, 81.1 GiB

That file is almost at 2gb tx this month and it's only the 4th day of the logging month. #MastoAdmin #Mastodon

What is this file? It appears to be emoji related.

The high TX started mid-December.

Alt...

Chart: # Hits Visitors Tx. Amount Method Protocol Data 1 1,430,764 (10.18%) 203,261 (26.26%) 81.1 GiB (59.64%) GET HTTP/1.1 /packs/assets/compact-NMaGTNYN.json 2 956,780 (06.81%) 156,147 (20.17%) 6.3 GiB (04.64%) GET HTTP/1.1 /api/v1/custom_emojis 3 65,618 (00.47%) 6,482 (00.84%) 4.7 GiB (03.47%) GET HTTP/2 /packs/assets/compact-NMaGTNYN.json 4 996,188 (07.09%) 160,252 (20.70%) 2.3 GiB (01.67%) GET HTTP/1.1 /api/v2/instance 5 60,993 (00.43%) 57,808 (07.47%) 1.3 GiB (00.99%) GET HTTP/1.1 /users/paul/collections/featured

Updated my test mastodon instance, listodon.com, to v4.5.6 and updated TangerineUI to a nice lagoon theme for the default.

I had some slowness during this upgrade, I'm not sure why. At one point I thought it was completely stalled but it finally completed.

#MastoAdmin

Alt...

The Mastodon Web UI, using the blue Lagoon theme from TangerineUI.

Die Instanz https://
bayerwald.social läuft jetzt mit Softwareversion v4.5.6

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.6

#mastodon #mastoadmin #upgrade

We’re happy to announce that Mastodon 4.5 is now ready for prime time! Quote posts, async fetching of replies, server timeline visibility settings, more moderation tools, and lots and lots of other tweaks and improvements.

Announcement on our blog: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/mastodon-4.5/

Full release notes and update instructions are available on our GitHub release page: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.5.0

#mastoadmin

We have successfully updated to Mastodon v4.5.6

#mastoadmin #burningboard