Hi people of Qoto! Nice to meet you, my name is Evan.
I LOVE the innovations on this Mastodon instance. It is truly inspiring, especially the group service you developed on groups.qoto.org!
I was wondering, I noticed that the domain public.group is around $2000 USD on Namecheap first year only, (a mere 13$/year after that !! !!) .
I personally would be willing to contribute 200 $ to the devs of Qoto to purchase that domain name and host a federated group service on it.
Having @mygroup@public.group as an available asset would be a huge service to the Fediverse! A dream come true!
Would anybody else be willing to contribute funds towards a fundraiser to make this happen?
Please let me know and I can set up a liberapay, get in contact with the owners to make this a reality!
High hopes for the future,
Evan
🇳🇱
@evanb great to have you here. If you get enough people interested I'd be happy to host our group server there, or a clone of it.
Curious though, is the domain name that important? Wouldnt 2K be better spent paying developers to add new features?
@freemo Hi, and thank you! Great question, I really do think so! Accessibility is really important, and I feel often overlooked in the tech community.
Groups is one of the key obstacles in popularizing the fediverse as a fb alternative.
It is easier to tell a newcomer "just tag @public.group," than "@groups.qoto.org " --although it is a small detail, I think attention to it has high payoff.
Plus the scale, since this improved UX would affect every single mastodon instance, makes this seem like a valuable use of resources.
What do you think? And thanks again for your kind regards :)
@evanb If there is interest in it im willing to support it. It certainly gives the impression of a more universal service rather than one specific to QOTO. Perhaps we can find a good domain name that is actually free?
@evanb int he meantime you might also want to take a peek at our integration with groups (works with any groups server not just the QOTO one. When you open the menu for the timelines (getting started) you will see our group directory which lists and orders groups based on their activity on the fediverse. It includes other group servers too (though there arent many)
@freemo Yes, it is really impressive!
Do you add the group servers to check manually?
And do you think this sort of integration would be possible on Pleroma as well?
@evanb it isnt checked manually it is discovered through federation, the same way the federated timeline gets populated with user accounts.
I see no reason it wouldnt be possible on pleroma, I know they are working on group servers too and from what I hear they are following the same activityPub standard that QOTO groups is based on.
@evanb I just checked and there is at least one friendica group listed in our group directory. So it would appear that friendica groups are compatible.
@evanb yes it will detect gup.pe groups and any activity pub endpoint that is a group actor and federating with us.
I am not sure how friendica implements groups so im not sure.