*banned 4 MarkDown love* @design_RG@qoto.org

@Simplyswapy Thanks for the post. Wonderful images. 😃

@inditoot @freemo @arteteco @Surasanji @Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay

Indeed, Qoto.org deserves Kudos and sets an example. Excelent work.

@inditoot @freemo @Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay

That is disgusting, and this kind of thing is why people tend to not want to even be in the same room with someone with different or opposing views. 😞

It's a question of decency, no matter what politics you favour. A decent human being wouldn't be doing that just to spite someone else.

I am left wing and very happy with our conversation here, but I do find places like gab.com really annoying. 😔

@freemo @Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay

I found a copy of BBS The Documentary on Youtube. DVDs are no longer available, for now.

https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI

We have just been talking, and discovered many of us started up in the old days - when BBSes were the only networking connection most people could have. Internet at the time was for Academics and large Business users, all the software used was command line only (shell, ftp, gopher at best).

BBSes were wonderful experiences. I think many people never lived thru that, but there's a great documentary you can watch and see how it was like, very well done.

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

DVDs are no longer for sale. But a fellow has it on YouTube for now:

https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI

@freemo

Yes, I did play some of the games. Sometimes you had to be waiting to be able to connect, as in most cases there was only one phone line. People had fun running a BBS in a spare computer, and we could get software galore, when there was no Internet access to the public, which only came later (about 1995 or so here in my region, Ontario, Canada).

Watching the dialing, the link negotiation between the modems, seeing the ASCII art load, it was so much fun. 😃

@Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay

@freemo You are very welcome. 😃

I have been seeing and feeling many similarities between the fediverse and my first experience with networking, way back in the early 90s.

Back then, all we had were BBSes, phone lines and 2400 bps modems, but there was an international network linking many of them already - FidoNet.

FidoNet had as one of its core principles something similar to your approach here:

- Thou Shall not be Annoying.

immediately followed by the corolary:

- Thou Shall not be Easily Annoyed. 😃

Words of wisdom to live by!

@Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay

@Full_marx @Karthikdeva @iakshay @freemo Yes, I think it was a knee jerk reaction to the image. Too bad they never engaged you to request removal, or give you a chance to explain that the swastika is an ancient symbol in India, with deep and spiritual significance. Was coopted by the Nazis, but had been and is still around with other meanings.

@freemo @Karthikdeva @Full_marx @iakshay Wonderful post and initiative! Thank you!

@Full_marx @iakshay You are welcome, Karl.

Yes, instances can chose to not connect to other instances if they deem their content abusive or obnoxious.

Qoto is pretty unique in having a policy of not banning any other instances, and still keeps a very civilized atmosphere.

The banned instances list at mastodon.social has quite a number of instances listed:

https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon.social-misc

@mngrif Great photo!

@Sphinx here's the original post by Willem :

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156965870707400&set=a.10151663082982400&type=3&theater

And here's is my dear Touring bike, in Aveiro, Portugal two years ago. Two months on the road with her, loaded with a lot more gear (all in the tent back at the campsite at the time this photo was taken).

@iakshay @Full_marx Oh, you can always move to another instance, Akshay, if you feel your opinions might offend your current host or users. Your followers list can be copied over, I believe.

Mastodon.social is the mothership, the largest mastodon instance, and was closed to new members for some time.

If you haven't had any problems so far, maybe it's ok, but it will depend on what you post and if there's a reaction from their users.

Regarding "birdsite", no, there's no rule that I know of; I think it's more of a tongue in cheek way to refer to the bigger site only, not mandatory.

@Sphinx That's a good question. 😃

This photo was taken by a Dutch friend and posted in FB, I believe the Masi sports bike belongs to a friend of his. I do have a number of vintage road bikes, and like them.

The other one is a Dutch cargo bike, interesting and practical. A bit heavy but not bad for urban use, they seem to be very popular in the Netherlands.

My favourite bikes are practical, go anywhere ones. My Touring bike is heavy, compared to the Masi, but can carry me and all my gear for a long tour. It won't break easily either, and has gearing that assures me I can climb almost any hills that come my way. That would be my choice, although it's kind of in between those two. 😃

@iakshay @Full_marx I think the fediverse network is at about that 1% size of birdsite. There are instances that are right wing, including some that allow posts that get them blacklisted by others. Qoto is very open and does not block any instances, but expects decent and civilized behaviour from its users.

I think that is a good posture. I read a page today with a list of instances that are blocked by the mastodon.social instance that Karl got banned from.

I also saw posts at another place (included on that ban list) that will show up here, in the federated list, and some are appalling.

@bhaskarrijal LOL, depending on time of the day, it can be a looong scroll for the next understandable post. When our friends in East Asia wake up and have their morning tea, it's a sea of Japanese and Chinese ideograms posts. 😏

I think this solves the problem!

Mastodon does have some nice, fine control settings in the "Preferences" menus.

I had been lost with some foreign language posts which, without the Google Translate available on birdsite are completely obscure. Mastodon allow Filtering posts by Language.

Select the ones you know or even have a passing familiarity with, all others will be removed from your feed. Very useful for the Federated Feed area.