Notices by QOTO Announcements & Polls (qoto@qoto.org)

While we wait for the system administrator to start flipping the bits and begin the upgrade I wanted to update everyone on what this new QOTO update will be bringing us.

* Fixes character limit when using mobile apps. On compliant mobile apps it should now be possible to make full size posts of 65,535 characters just as you always could in the web interface.

* Local-only / non-federated toots will now be possible. This lets you make toots that show up int he Local feed but not in the Federated feed.

* The link to the source code on our about page will now correctly post to the QOTO source code

* Plus all the great features QOTO is already known for like in-line math latext is still available.

* And of course we also pull in all the great features added in the core Mastodon 3.0.1 releases such as trending hashtags, better media support, better user migration capabilities, and better management over live-refreshing fast-moving feeds.

#QOTO

@mngrif is officially a new moderator on #QOTO. Everyone welcome him to the team!

#mastoadmin

We have an election for the next #QOTO Moderator. Everyone is welcome to nominate exactly one person, including themselves.

Do so here: https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nomination-for-moderator-nov-2019/92

:nes_fire: Server Update :nes_fire:

The #QOTO #funkwhale instance experienced a some downtime lately, not sure for how long. It has recently been fixed and the service should be back up and running.

The instance can be found here: https://audio.qoto.org

Please dont forget to nominate yourself or someone else in the ongoing #QOtO moderator election.

https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nomination-for-moderator-nov-2019/92

Server Info

After an upgrade to the QOTO services all services are now up and running again. Downtime was ~5 minutes.

The following qoto services were updated:

NextCloud - https://cloud.qoto.org

GitLab - https://git.qoto.org

GitLab pages (including user hosted pages) - https://*.qoto.io

FunkWhale - https://audio.qoto.org

PeerTube - https://video.qoto.org

Discourse - https://discourse.qoto.org

Server Info

All services except for the main qoto mastodon instance will expiernce some brief downtime in about an hour as i upgrade the servers.

Shouldnt be more than 5 minutes but there will likely be a DNS update that may take a bit longer to refresh for some people locally.

:nes_fire: Important Announcement :nes_fire:

Today we are beginning a nomination for #QOTOs next moderator 🎉

Basically it works like this, any one of you can nominate someone from QOTO. The only restriction is the person you nominate must be active for at least the last month. You can even nominate yourself, but it usually looks better if you can get one or more people to nominate you, symbolically speaking.

The moderators will then select the finalists which if there is more than one person then the community can vote on them.

So for the next 2 weeks I will be taking nominations for the moderator position, and they can discuss their views as a potential moderator. Then we can pick who lines u with QOTO Ideals,

**Want to nominate simeone?**

Follow this link and pst your nomination: https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nomination-for-moderator-nov-2019/92

:nes_fire: Important Announcement :nes_fire:

Today we are beginning a nomination for #QOTOs next moderator 🎉

Basically it works like this, any one of you can nominate someone from QOTO. The only restriction is the person you nominate must be an n posting account, active for at least the last month. You can even nominate yourself, but it usually looks better if you can get one or more people to nominate you, symbolically speaking.

The moderators will then select the finalists which if there is a tie the community can vote on.

So for the next 2 weeks I will be taking nominations for the moderator position, and they can discuss their views as a potential moderator. Then we can pick who lines u with QOTO Ideals,

**Want to nominate simeone?**

Follow this link and pst your nomination: https://discourse.qoto.org/t/nomination-for-moderator-nov-2019/92

For those of you who missed the announcement from the @freemo account just wanted to reiterate it here.

In honor of our new Indian friends we added two new emoji to the server.

:india: :thiruvalluvar:

Also if anyone has any emoji they want added, even if its just for personal use (like a monogram of your name or a picture of your own face, anything) we can add it. Just send a 50kb or less PNG image to @freemo and it can be added.

All my new Indian :india: friends who found their way here this week (and others).

Dont forget to do two things to help you get some followers:

1) write a post about yourself, include as many hashtags as you ca think of along with the #introductions tag and a paragraph or two. I will reboost these

2) Go into your profile settings and opt-in to the proile directory. This ensures people can find you. It also helps if you add the same tags from your introduction post to your description in your profile. These tags help index you in the profile directory

3) Stay active and post interesting stuff (and some stuff relevant to STEM). If you do then on friday I will share your account in Follow Friday and help get you more followers as well.

Should we make the arXiv bots unlisted (so they don't show in the Local Timeline).

Keep in mind this will cause the bot to not federate and thus wont be enjoyed by the rest of the Fediverse.

[ ] Unlisted
[ ] Listed
[ ] Listed, I will mute
[ ] Don't care

The #QOTO bots should be live again. With that said they may be a bit noisy over the next 24 hours as we tweak them. A few are all set to go off in the middle of the night so they tend to publish all in a row. We will keep an eye on it and potentially unlist them as needed.

The #QOTO suite of services, including git, had some temporary downtime today as we addressed a bug in the system.

All services should be back up and running, no data loss occurred.

Cool tip, you can see a few of #QOTO's neighbors in this really cool fediverse graph. The closer two servers are to each other in the graph the more often the users talk to each other. The graph at this link shows all the servers #QOTO interacts with most.

https://www.fediverse.space/instance/qoto.org

What feature would you like to see the Admin's at #QOTO add to our mastodon instance next?

If you don't see what you'd want in the poll just comment it down below instead.

[ ] More than 4 poll options
[ ] >4 search results
[ ] Local-only toots
[ ] Federated-only toots

According to Instances.social QOTO currently federates with 5,532 other instances in the fediverse. You might ask how it is possible that that number is larger than the total number of instances known (108% of all instances, 5,114 instances total).

Thats because not only do we federate with all instances and have one of the largest views of the entire fediverse, but we have been doing this so long we even have old connections with instances that have since shutdown.

Furthermore #QOTO invests a lot on infrastructure to ensure that we retain a cache of **all** toots from around the fediverse and we enable full-text search. This means our users are able to search more of the fediverse, even servers that have since shutdown still have their toots in our archives.

It costs us a lot in hosting costs but thanks to generous donators and a large fund we can provide these services long into the future. We think it is worth it, and we hope you will too!

#fediverse #mastodon

https://instances.social/qoto.org

By popular demand the #QOTO user bot now reports on both all-time instance graphs and weekly graphs.

In case you didnt know, #QOTO is a non-profit organization. Not only that no one who works for #QOTO is paid, not even the founder.

Despite that we have a very generous donation fund. We can currently afford to host all QOTO services, give each user a TB quota, run on production level load balanced redundant server architecture, and still have enough in our donation fund to operate for at least a decade.

This is all due to the hard work of our volunteers and the generous nature of our donators. We do this with a pledge to no advertising and never selling your data..

So don't feel guilty, claim your free accounts and enjoy. We love to see how the members of our community enrich us all. It is why the volunteers like myself and the whole team do this!

WOW according to our new user bot #QOTO has 34 new users this week and its barely half way through Monday. So exciting, we cant wait to get to know the new additions to our family!

#introductions #fediverse