@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
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I don't do the tech side, but we'd be suffering if we didn't have a team with the relevant expertise.
My only experience with the moderation side is on an instance with several thousand active users, so it's hard for me to say much about scaling. I would recommend having a moderation team if your instance is anything close to that size, though. It doesn't require that much in terms of hours, but it does need a commitment to have someone checking your reports and signups at least a few times every day, and keeping an eye on the local feed periodically.
Thanks again. Yeah, completely agree about the importance of getting a team in place on moderation side, and great description of what to think about up front. And these are great suggestions even for a much smaller instance. If I do a post about this, is it okay if I quote you?
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@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
Somebody working with a non-profit that is considering starting up a Mastodon instance to use as part of an activism campaign asked me for a rough estimate of how time consuming it is to administer a mastodon instance. Good question! Is there a good wrteeup of this I can point them to?
Here is the guide from @FediTips. it is very good and clear and has some discussion of moderation requirements.
https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps/
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@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
Somebody working with a non-profit that is considering starting up a Mastodon instance to use as part of an activism campaign asked me for a rough estimate of how time consuming it is to administer a mastodon instance. Good question! Is there a good wrteeup of this I can point them to?
@thenexusofprivacy I think the biggest factor is whether you have open signups or not.
My small instance has closed signups and it takes less than 1 hour a week in maintenance.
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@andypiper (or anybody else ...)
Somebody working with a non-profit that is considering starting up a Mastodon instance to use as part of an activism campaign asked me for a rough estimate of how time consuming it is to administer a mastodon instance. Good question! Is there a good wrteeup of this I can point them to?
If you use a managed hosting service, the hosting company will do all the techy stuff for you behind the scenes. Typical prices on managed hosting are 5-10 euros per month for a small instance including all the actual hosting costs too.
Running a private instance (i.e. not open for signups) is very easy because you don't have to moderate anything.
Running a public instance (where strangers can sign up) is a much bigger commitment because you have to moderate content.
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If you use a managed hosting service, the hosting company will do all the techy stuff for you behind the scenes. Typical prices on managed hosting are 5-10 euros per month for a small instance including all the actual hosting costs too.
Running a private instance (i.e. not open for signups) is very easy because you don't have to moderate anything.
Running a public instance (where strangers can sign up) is a much bigger commitment because you have to moderate content.
thanks. Good point on not having open registration, I don't think they were planning on doing that but I'll stress the importance!
My initial response was that if they don't have an experienced sysadmin they'll almost certainly want to use a hosting service. That said I'm not sure about the costs of going that route if their posts get wide visibility -- I remember Marco Rogers needing a $39/month plan for a single-user instance -- but it still might be worth doing.
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@thenexusofprivacy I think the biggest factor is whether you have open signups or not.
My small instance has closed signups and it takes less than 1 hour a week in maintenance.
@wizard thanks, very good point. I don't think they're planning on having open registrations but I"ll stress the importance of that!
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Here is the guide from @FediTips. it is very good and clear and has some discussion of moderation requirements.
https://growyourown.services/making-your-own-mastodon-server-in-10-steps/
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thanks. Good point on not having open registration, I don't think they were planning on doing that but I'll stress the importance!
My initial response was that if they don't have an experienced sysadmin they'll almost certainly want to use a hosting service. That said I'm not sure about the costs of going that route if their posts get wide visibility -- I remember Marco Rogers needing a $39/month plan for a single-user instance -- but it still might be worth doing.
I don't think you need to pay that much for a single user instance on managed hosting unless you have hundreds of thousands of followers.
I'm not sure exactly what Rogers was doing but it's rare you would need that on here, at least not when you're starting out.
Going by mastohost's estimates that kind of price would be the equivalent of 500 active users: https://masto.host/pricing
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I don't think you need to pay that much for a single user instance on managed hosting unless you have hundreds of thousands of followers.
I'm not sure exactly what Rogers was doing but it's rare you would need that on here, at least not when you're starting out.
Going by mastohost's estimates that kind of price would be the equivalent of 500 active users: https://masto.host/pricing
feditips@social.growyourown.services thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange I think their estimates are on the conservative side.
It's true that a single user instance can be hosted cheaply but regular things you do to fix federation issues will drive up costs.
For example, when I hosted with them I used a relay so that my content reach would expand. That drove up my disk usage costs to the tune of $20+ a month.
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feditips@social.growyourown.services thenexusofprivacy@infosec.exchange I think their estimates are on the conservative side.
It's true that a single user instance can be hosted cheaply but regular things you do to fix federation issues will drive up costs.
For example, when I hosted with them I used a relay so that my content reach would expand. That drove up my disk usage costs to the tune of $20+ a month.
If you're using a general non-topic relay, that will hugely increase how much storage you need, yeah. (You might want to switch to a topic-specific relay instead? Apologies if this is patronising, I don't know how well it is known
)They're doing an activist campaign to reach people rather than populate their own home timelines, so a relay might not be needed? They would mainly be trying to get their posts to other people rather than pull in other people's posts?
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If you're using a general non-topic relay, that will hugely increase how much storage you need, yeah. (You might want to switch to a topic-specific relay instead? Apologies if this is patronising, I don't know how well it is known
)They're doing an activist campaign to reach people rather than populate their own home timelines, so a relay might not be needed? They would mainly be trying to get their posts to other people rather than pull in other people's posts?
Not sure of the details of the specific campaign, but in general it's very valuable to be able to search what the overall discussion is on topics related to your campaign (or, just if you want to use Mastodon in a way that's similar to how most people use Twitter). Activism isn't just broadcasting!
Hashtag-specific relays are useful for some use cases but typically aren't enough for this -- you can't even see who's talking about your campaign name or organization or the issue you're concerned about.
