hey you know what would be a very interesting way to scale large instances
literally make a second mastodon.social
and redirect all new users there, the two hosted independently and maybe even managed differently or organized in regions
and potentially some addition that help the two share the local timeline efficiently
i mean that's how the network is *designed* to scale
@CobaltVelvet yeah but the issue here is that a lot of blogs/articles/new users who don't know better link directly to mastodon.social. so yeah i could open another instance but it wouldn't like, help much? unless we sneakily redirect from our frontpage to the other one, but that would mess with people who want to login
@kurisu @CobaltVelvet a prominent banner is the only option to do this but i don't know how effective it would really be. in the past when we closed sign ups new people thought "mastodon is closed", not "mastodon.social is closed", despite all the text explaining otherwise.
@kurisu @CobaltVelvet also - which instance to link to? (linking to the picker is not suuuuper effective tbh, too much choice). if you want *me* to host another instance, well, it's got its benefits (my reputation, track record) but also downsides (centralization on me as a person)
@kurisu @CobaltVelvet @zatnosk this is why switter is great for the fediverse, they get their own press and act as a completely separate "entrypoint" to the idea of the fediverse
pawoo, friends.nico and social.coop are like that too. a lot of the other servers don't have resources or interest in attracting an outside public and rely on inter-fediverse movements, e.g. people who are already into the idea.
@kurisu @gargron @zatnosk i mostly wonder if that way of advertising other instances instead of mastodon.social isn't going to be even more important later
maybe mastodon.social being popular is only because it's the beginning, and soon a few other specific instances will be more popular than m.s for most people
and we'll get some sweet optimizations contributed back 😎
@CobaltVelvet @kurisu @Gargron @zatnosk but many people will just want a "default" option that just works. it's like signing up for Gmail because you just want working email, or using the stock messaging app that came with your phone. That's what a "flagship" is supposed to be, in most people's minds: the one canonical thing they can point to. maybe the biggest, but definitely the most "official". the reasonable confidence that it won't go away suddenly.
@gargron yeah more like that, i was thinking about leaving the log in as is, but redirecting registrations to the new instance(s)
@CobaltVelvet yes but the form is embedded on the page and you can't post to another website because of CSRF
@gargron well since you'd own both we can always imagine ways around that
i mean it's really a long-term solution to a very hard future problem (scaling vertically pg)
@CobaltVelvet @Gargron maybe something based on BDR (multi-master) (coming soonish for pg10 as a plugin) would be cool, but there's of course some gotchas (specially if you modify objects from two locations at the same time)
Tsatnosk
@CobaltVelvet @gargron what happens when people return to m.s to log in on those new registrations?
Multiplex login that redirect to different subdomains? O.o
