User Tools

Site Tools


start

Welcome!

Hi there and welcome to mstdn.games! We're striving to host a healthy community and offer a safe and friendly space for gamers, developers, streamers, and content creators from all walks of life. So first of all: Thanks for choosing us and contributing to these goals!

This guide is aimed at people who just joined mstdn.games and to help them find their way around.

What are Mastodon and the Fediverse?

If you're completely new to Mastodon or the Fediverse in general, we recommend these general guides:

However, if you used Twitter before, you might be able to get along on your own just fine, as most concepts are somewhat similar.

In the following, we'll mostly focus on how to get started at mstdn.games and point out a few major difference where appropriate.

How to Build a Network and Find Interesting Content

The question that comes up the most is: “How do I find people to connect with?”

While you can use tools like Movetodon to find some of your old Twitter contacts, we also encourage you to use the chance to connect with new and interesting people.

Your Introduction

The best way to start out is by customizing your own profile with a picture and some text about yourself. Next, you might want to post an introduction. This helps with two things:

  1. If you follow people, they can easily see more about who followed them and might be interested in following you back right away.
  2. Your introduction can be seen and reposted (“boosted”) by others. This helps in finding some connections right away about topics you're both interested in.

Your introduction should include the things you deem most important to tell. As a general guideline, geography and interests (hobbies, location, etc) are a good way to start. It helps to include the hashtag #Introduction and some other hashtags of your interests in your post (see here, here or here for examples). See below for information and recommendations about hashtags.

You can also “pin” up to 6 posts to the top of your profile! Many people pin their introduction post so people can quickly read more about them. Of course, starting out with an introduction is not mandatory. If you just want to check everything out and get a feeling for the server first, that's totally understandable. In this case, you might want to have a look at the:

Local Timeline

One of the best ways to connect with others from your server is by browsing the Local Timeline. This timeline only features public posts from people in our community at mstdn.games. It's a second feed separate from your Home Feed that focuses exclusively on the posts from people on the server. It's super cool!

As we're hosting a niche instance, there is a high chance that you will find like-minded people that share your interest for gaming. Feel free to follow everyone who seems interesting – if you later find out that you don't want to see them in your personal feed, you can unfollow them again, so there is no harm in just following everyone who seems interesting at first glance and to see whom's posts you actually enjoy reading regularly.

Hashtags

Hashtags are the primary search mechanism on Mastodon, as there is no full-text search. We already mentioned that it is a good idea to include a few hashtags in your introduction and even for other posts, and it is a good idea to include a few of them for the best reach.

For example, you could simply browse the hashtag #VideoGames and use it like the local timeline: to find like-minded people that post interesting stuff about topics that interest you. You can also use hashtags in your posts for specific games (#FFXIV, #Destiny, etc) or other topics that are close to your heart (#GameDev, #Cats, #Movies) so other people can find your content.

Mastodon is awesome for customizing your own Feeds. No ads, no algorithm: your account is yours to curate! Depending on how you want to organize your feeds, you can also decide to follow an entire hashtag or simply browse the hashtag regularly. Using hashtags in your own posts allows others to connect with you more easily and allows others to easily filter these topics out of their own feeds if they don't have an interest in them. Win-win. :)

Meaningful Connections

So now that you have found people that are interesting to follow, feel free to connect with them. “Boosts” are the best way to increase engagement and are used liberally on Mastodon. “Favorites” are mainly appreciation for the post/author and does generally not help with discoverability for the post. Also, there are no quote postings. While it can occasionally be inconvenient, the general consensus is to talk with rather than about each other.

Be yourself as far as you feel comfortable, but always be kind. We urge all our users to be excellent to each other. This way, you'll be able to make real connections with real people.

Of course, if you just want to observe quietly and just stick your head out of the water occasionally, that's fine as well. :)

General Guidelines, Best Practices and Rules

So now that you know how to navigate your network and have found accounts and posts of your interest, let's have a brief look at how we expect our users to post and interact with others. (The formal rules are always available on our About page.)

As a general rule of thumb, we ask our users to be respectful to each other. Please remember that almost every account and post has been created by an actual human being. One aspect of being respectful is to make our space as inclusive as possible, so we ask anyone to maintain descriptions for images and media where appropriate.

Mastodon offers a lot of tools to make users' lives easier when it comes to a choice of what information to consume. Therefore, please use content warnings (CWs) liberally. They are especially encouraged for topics that are potentially disturbing or controversial, that include spoilers, not safe for work (NSFW) content, or posts that could be triggering for other users. Given that we are a global community, they should also be used for posts about local politics.

Discussions in general are great and very much encouraged, but please keep them respectful and in good faith. Please refrain from escalating and insulting others. As we thrive to be a safe place for all our users, uninvited comments about another user’s personal choices, lifestyle or family are strongly discouraged and may be considered harassment.

Enjoying Mastodon on Your Phone

If you're looking for a more native option to use Mastodon on your mobile phone, there are of course the official apps that might give you a basic experience: Mastodon for Android & iOS

If you're looking for a more advanced feature set, these seem to be the community favorites at the moment:

If you want to dive into it more, check out these comparison charts:

Closing Remarks & Feedback

This guide is our approach to improve the experience of people starting out on our instance. So if that's you, we'd especially love to hear from you. For inquires regarding this page (info.mstdn.games), please reach out to Sven (typos, suggestions, corrections, etc). For specific questions or concerns regarding the Mastodon instance, feel free to reach out to anyone from the Mod Crew listed under the 'Staff' section on our About page.

If you made it this far: Now is the time to go out and have fun!

Thanks for reading,

Britt, CraftyKraken and Sven

start.txt · Last modified: 2023/07/27 11:53 by Sven