#museumdocumentation — Public Fediverse posts

Keine Toaster und Haartrockner – Registrar Trek in GB

Es ist schon eine Weile her, aber jetzt schnappe ich mir wieder meine Reiseschuhe und ziehe los, um Kolleg*innen, Kund*innen und Freund*innen zu sehen. Nicht unbedingt in dieser Reihenfolge.

Dieses Mal sind es zwei Wochen in London und nochmal anderthalb Wochen weiter im Norden, in Walsall, Sheffield und Leeds. Also widme ich meinen Oktober England. Wenn Sie in der Nähe sind und Lust haben, sich über einem Tässchen Kaffee oder einem Pint zusammenzusetzen, lassen Sie es mich wissen.

Ich schwöre auch feierlich, dass ich dem Drang, meinen Toaster in die Steckdose im Zug einzustöpseln nicht nachgeben werde. Meine Haare trockne ich auch vorher. Aber mal ernsthaft, wie oft muss sowas passiert sein, damit man das auf einem Schild erwähnen muss? Doch sicherlich mehr als zwei Mal….

Angela

#Leads #London #MuseumDocumentation #Sheffield

Keine Toaster und Haartrockner – Registrar Trek in GB

Es ist schon eine Weile her, aber jetzt schnappe ich mir wieder meine Reiseschuhe und ziehe los, um Kolleg*innen, Kund*innen und Freund*innen zu sehen. Nicht unbedingt in dieser Reihenfolge.

Dieses Mal sind es zwei Wochen in London und nochmal anderthalb Wochen weiter im Norden, in Walsall, Sheffield und Leeds. Also widme ich meinen Oktober England. Wenn Sie in der Nähe sind und Lust haben, sich über einem Tässchen Kaffee oder einem Pint zusammenzusetzen, lassen Sie es mich wissen.

Ich schwöre auch feierlich, dass ich dem Drang, meinen Toaster in die Steckdose im Zug einzustöpseln nicht nachgeben werde. Meine Haare trockne ich auch vorher. Aber mal ernsthaft, wie oft muss sowas passiert sein, damit man das auf einem Schild erwähnen muss? Doch sicherlich mehr als zwei Mal….

Angela

#Leads #London #MuseumDocumentation #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

No Toasters Or Hairdryers – Registrar Trek Goes UK

It has been a while, but now I’ll grab my traveling boots again and go to see colleagues, clients, friends. Not necessarily in that order.

This time it will be two weeks in London, another one and a half week further North in Walsall, Sheffield, and Leeds. So, my October is dedicated to England. If you are in that area and like to catch up over a cup of coffee or a pint, just drop me a line.

I also solemnly swear that I will suppress my urge to bring my toaster and plug it into the power outlet of a train. I will also dry my hair before I come on board. Seriously, though, how often does it have to happen to warrant a sign? I would reckon more than twice…

Angela

#Leeds #London #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #Sheffield

Managing Previously Unmanged Databases - what to do when you inherited a mess of a #database from your predecessor or want a new one. The article was originally written for the Registrars Committee Western Region and is now available on Registrar Trek in English https://world.museumsprojekte.de/managing-previously-unmanaged-databases/, Spanish https://world.museumsprojekte.de/como-organizar-bases-de-datos-desorganizadas/?lang=es and German https://world.museumsprojekte.de/chaotische-datenbanken-in-den-griff-bekommen/?lang=de
#MuseumDocumentation #Museums #Heritage #datacleanup #databases #CMS #CollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagementSystem #datamanagement

Managing Previously Unmanged Databases - what to do when you inherited a mess of a #database from your predecessor or want a new one. The article was originally written for the Registrars Committee Western Region and is now available on Registrar Trek in English https://world.museumsprojekte.de/managing-previously-unmanaged-databases/, Spanish https://world.museumsprojekte.de/como-organizar-bases-de-datos-desorganizadas/?lang=es and German https://world.museumsprojekte.de/chaotische-datenbanken-in-den-griff-bekommen/?lang=de
#MuseumDocumentation #Museums #Heritage #datacleanup #databases #CMS #CollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagementSystem #datamanagement

Managing Previously Unmanged Databases - what to do when you inherited a mess of a #database from your predecessor or want a new one. The article was originally written for the Registrars Committee Western Region and is now available on Registrar Trek in English https://world.museumsprojekte.de/managing-previously-unmanaged-databases/, Spanish https://world.museumsprojekte.de/como-organizar-bases-de-datos-desorganizadas/?lang=es and German https://world.museumsprojekte.de/chaotische-datenbanken-in-den-griff-bekommen/?lang=de
#MuseumDocumentation #Museums #Heritage #datacleanup #databases #CMS #CollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagementSystem #datamanagement

Managing Previously Unmanged Databases - what to do when you inherited a mess of a #database from your predecessor or want a new one. The article was originally written for the Registrars Committee Western Region and is now available on Registrar Trek in English https://world.museumsprojekte.de/managing-previously-unmanaged-databases/, Spanish https://world.museumsprojekte.de/como-organizar-bases-de-datos-desorganizadas/?lang=es and German https://world.museumsprojekte.de/chaotische-datenbanken-in-den-griff-bekommen/?lang=de
#MuseumDocumentation #Museums #Heritage #datacleanup #databases #CMS #CollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagementSystem #datamanagement

Managing Previously Unmanged Databases - what to do when you inherited a mess of a #database from your predecessor or want a new one. The article was originally written for the Registrars Committee Western Region and is now available on Registrar Trek in English https://world.museumsprojekte.de/managing-previously-unmanaged-databases/, Spanish https://world.museumsprojekte.de/como-organizar-bases-de-datos-desorganizadas/?lang=es and German https://world.museumsprojekte.de/chaotische-datenbanken-in-den-griff-bekommen/?lang=de
#MuseumDocumentation #Museums #Heritage #datacleanup #databases #CMS #CollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagementSystem #datamanagement

What does a jet have to do with managing previously unmanaged collections?

Simple answer:

Nothing.

More complex answer:

I am in the process of translating the book into German and sometimes there are hiccups. In chapter 4, I talk about the difficulties of enforcing access policies to your storage area. A process which, as we all know, comes with all sorts of difficulties, the problem of taking the key from someone being a humiliating gesture in our Western culture not being the least of it.

In the English original, there is the sentence:

“Enforce the access policy with the three ps: persistence, patience, and politeness.”

Needless to say, such sentences don’t translate well. Usually you just rephrase them and let go of the idea that you can find three words starting with the same letter in the other language. However, I think I did find a way this morning:

“Halten Sie mit „Drei G“ an Ihren Zugangsbeschränkungen fest: mit Geradlinigkeit, Geduld und Gutem Benehmen.”

Finding three words starting with the letter G with the same meaning like the original (although the third one is cheating a bit, using two words) was already a big win. But the even bigger win was that this way I now have the double meaning of 3 G in it, alluding to the g-forces in physics.

I could of course take that analogy and run with it, saying that when we change longstanding processes and habits like we inevitably do when we start improving things in our collections, it means that we accelerate things and take people out of where they are used to go and expecting to go. And as we know from physics, if we accelerate things, a force is applied to the one being accelerated, which can have unpleasant side effects.

But I don’t want to overburden that little sentence. Instead, just imagine me giggling slightly when you come across it reading the book. 🙂

Angela

#AccessControl #collectionsManagement #documentation #museum #MuseumDocumentation #registrar

What does a jet have to do with managing previously unmanaged collections?

Simple answer:

Nothing.

More complex answer:

I am in the process of translating the book into German and sometimes there are hiccups. In chapter 4, I talk about the difficulties of enforcing access policies for your storage area. A process which, as we all know, comes with all sorts of difficulties, the problem of taking the key from someone being a humiliating gesture in our Western culture being not the least of it.

In the English original, there is the sentence:

“Enforce the access policy with the three ps: persistence, patience, and politeness.”

Needless to say, such sentences don’t translate well. Usually you just rephrase them and let go of the idea that you can find three words starting with the same letter in the other language. However, I think I did find a way this morning:

“Halten Sie mit „Drei G“ an Ihren Zugangsbeschränkungen fest: mit Geradlinigkeit, Geduld und Gutem Benehmen.”

Finding three words starting with the letter G with the same meaning like the original (although the third one is cheating a bit, using two words) was already a big win. But the even bigger win was that this way I now have the double meaning of 3 G in it, alluding to the g-forces in physics.

I could of course take that analogy and run with it, saying that when we change longstanding processes and habits like we inevitably do when we start improving things in our collections, it means that we accelerate things and take people out of where they are used to go and expecting to go. And as we know from physics, if we accelerate things, a force is applied to the one being accelerated, which can have unpleasant side effects.

But I don’t want to overburden that little sentence. Instead, just imagine me giggling slightly when you come across it reading the book. 🙂

Angela

#AccessControl #collectionsManagement #documentation #museum #MuseumDocumentation #registrar

What does a jet have to do with managing previously unmanaged collections?

Simple answer:

Nothing.

More complex answer:

I am in the process of translating the book into German and sometimes there are hiccups. In chapter 4, I talk about the difficulties of enforcing access policies for your storage area. A process which, as we all know, comes with all sorts of difficulties, the problem of taking the key from someone being a humiliating gesture in our Western culture being not the least of it.

In the English original, there is the sentence:

“Enforce the access policy with the three ps: persistence, patience, and politeness.”

Needless to say, such sentences don’t translate well. Usually you just rephrase them and let go of the idea that you can find three words starting with the same letter in the other language. However, I think I did find a way this morning:

“Halten Sie mit „Drei G“ an Ihren Zugangsbeschränkungen fest: mit Geradlinigkeit, Geduld und Gutem Benehmen.”

Finding three words starting with the letter G with the same meaning like the original (although the third one is cheating a bit, using two words) was already a big win. But the even bigger win was that this way I now have the double meaning of 3 G in it, alluding to the g-forces in physics.

I could of course take that analogy and run with it, saying that when we change longstanding processes and habits like we inevitably do when we start improving things in our collections, it means that we accelerate things and take people out of where they are used to go and expecting to go. And as we know from physics, if we accelerate things, a force is applied to the one being accelerated, which can have unpleasant side effects.

But I don’t want to overburden that little sentence. Instead, just imagine me giggling slightly when you come across it reading the book. 🙂

Angela

#AccessControl #collectionsManagement #documentation #museum #MuseumDocumentation #registrar

What does a jet have to do with managing previously unmanaged collections?

Simple answer:

Nothing.

More complex answer:

I am in the process of translating the book into German and sometimes there are hiccups. In chapter 4, I talk about the difficulties of enforcing access policies to your storage area. A process which, as we all know, comes with all sorts of difficulties, the problem of taking the key from someone being a humiliating gesture in our Western culture not being the least of it.

In the English original, there is the sentence:

“Enforce the access policy with the three ps: persistence, patience, and politeness.”

Needless to say, such sentences don’t translate well. Usually you just rephrase them and let go of the idea that you can find three words starting with the same letter in the other language. However, I think I did find a way this morning:

“Halten Sie mit „Drei G“ an Ihren Zugangsbeschränkungen fest: mit Geradlinigkeit, Geduld und Gutem Benehmen.”

Finding three words starting with the letter G with the same meaning like the original (although the third one is cheating a bit, using two words) was already a big win. But the even bigger win was that this way I now have the double meaning of 3 G in it, alluding to the g-forces in physics.

I could of course take that analogy and run with it, saying that when we change longstanding processes and habits like we inevitably do when we start improving things in our collections, it means that we accelerate things and take people out of where they are used to go and expecting to go. And as we know from physics, if we accelerate things, a force is applied to the one being accelerated, which can have unpleasant side effects.

But I don’t want to overburden that little sentence. Instead, just imagine me giggling slightly when you come across it reading the book. 🙂

Angela

#AccessControl #collectionsManagement #documentation #museum #MuseumDocumentation #registrar

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

*Reads statement that museums are the last segment of woke*

*raises mug to U.S. museums*

Mug design by the great @HeliaXyana

#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #resistance #museums

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

A #backup is only good if you can restore it. D'oh!
Part three of our series on #datasecurity shows you how to restore your #TMS database.
Should be a routine but also necessary knowledge if you have to bring your database to a safe space where nobody can force you to delete some information that might not fit the worldview of your current government but will be valuable in the future.

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-restoring-a-tms-database/
#museum #MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement

Let’s talk about data security: Restoring a TMS database

So, yesterday we took a backup of our TMS database. Today, we learn how to restore it. This is also a check you should be doing after having taken your first backup and also regularly after you have taken backups because like I have mentioned here otherwise you can’t be sure you have backed up anything. Or, like a friend of mine who deals with a lot of IT messes put it:

“I bought a book!”
“Are there words inside it?”
“Huh? Of course. I didn’t check, but there are always words inside a book, right?”

Before you haven’t checked, you just assume, you aren’t sure. And if there is one rule every collections professional knows by heart it is this: Never assume, always make sure!

Step 1: Again, log into the server you want the database to restore to and open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

You already know how to do that by now. If not, re-read step 1 in this article.

Step 2: Navigate to the Restore menu

Go to the folder “Databases”, right-click on it and select “Restore Database…”

Step 3: Chose your backup file

Up comes a rather bleak screen:

Go to “Device” and click on the three dots …

You get another rather bleak screen from which you choose “Add…”

You are getting a look at your file system from which you select the backup file you want to restore from. You might remember I cautioned you to store it in a place you can easily find it in Step 6 in in the previous article, right?

When you have found the right file, you click “OK”.

On the next screen you also click “OK”.

Step 4: Restore your database

Now you are on this screen again, but now it is populated with your chosen backup, including the date and time it would restore to:

You can see how my database “Leer” (yours might be called “TMS” or something else) is showing up both as the source and as the destination. If you really want to overwrite your current database this is fine, for example because something went horribly wrong with your current database and you want to restore it to an older version.

But if you just want to test if our backup file is okay, you don’t want to do that! Imagine something went wrong with the backup. We would be overwriting our totally fine current database with a corrupted backup! Big mistake!

So, for testing, instead of the “Leer” as destination I simply typed another name. I chose “TMSTEST”:

Then I clicked “OK”.

The database will now be restored to a new destination. If the backup file is okay and you have enough storage space you will get this screen after a while:

You can now click “OK”.

Step 5: Test your database

You should now see an additional database in your databases folder (mine shows up, of course, as “TMSTEST” because I called it that way):

If that worked fine, your backup file is okay. But just because I am a bit anal about my data, just to check, just to make sure, I run the mother of all TMS queries: “Select * From Objects”.

Only when it runs smoothly and the number of objects I get back matches my expectations, I am satisfied.

Housekeeping

Backup files are rather large. Which is logical, because they contain all your valuable data, right? So, after testing to make sure my backup is okay, I deleted that new database again by right-clicking on TMSTEST and choosing “Delete” so it doesn’t clog my server:

Also, because the backup files are so large, I tend to compress them before I move them to a different server. I use the software 7-Zip for it since it proved to be rather reliable (https://www.7-zip.org/). If you don’t have it on your server, you need to install it, first.

Go to your Windows Explorer and find your backup file. Right-click on it, choose “7-Zip” and select the option “Add to [whatever your backup is called].7z”.

You can now see how the backup is compressed. Wait until it is done (fetch a coffee or a tea, this might take a while, depending on the size of your database).

After it is finished, you will see a second file on your file system:

You will notice how much smaller the compressed file is. This is much easier to move to another server, unpack, and restore there, right?

Because I am paranoid I will move the .7z file to a cloud storage that I trust now and try if I can unpack it there without issues. If that is the case I can go back and delete the .bak file and just retain the smaller .7z file.

Take your backups, take them to a safe location, and take good care!

Angela

#collectionCare #collectionsManagement #dataBase #dataSecurity #database #documentation #MuseumDocumentation

Let’s talk about data security: Restoring a TMS database

So, yesterday we took a backup of our TMS database. Today, we learn how to restore it. This is also a check you should be doing after having taken your first backup and also regularly after you have taken backups because like I have mentioned here otherwise you can’t be sure you have backed up anything. Or, like a friend of mine who deals with a lot of IT messes put it:

“I bought a book!”
“Are there words inside it?”
“Huh? Of course. I didn’t check, but there are always words inside a book, right?”

Before you haven’t checked, you just assume, you aren’t sure. And if there is one rule every collections professional knows by heart it is this: Never assume, always make sure!

Step 1: Again, log into the server you want the database to restore to and open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

You already know how to do that by now. If not, re-read step 1 in this article.

Step 2: Navigate to the Restore menu

Go to the folder “Databases”, right-click on it and select “Restore Database…”

Step 3: Chose your backup file

Up comes a rather bleak screen:

Go to “Device” and click on the three dots …

You get another rather bleak screen from which you choose “Add…”

You are getting a look at your file system from which you select the backup file you want to restore from. You might remember I cautioned you to store it in a place you can easily find it in Step 6 in in the previous article, right?

When you have found the right file, you click “OK”.

On the next screen you also click “OK”.

Step 4: Restore your database

Now you are on this screen again, but now it is populated with your chosen backup, including the date and time it would restore to:

You can see how my database “Leer” (yours might be called “TMS” or something else) is showing up both as the source and as the destination. If you really want to overwrite your current database this is fine, for example because something went horribly wrong with your current database and you want to restore it to an older version.

But if you just want to test if our backup file is okay, you don’t want to do that! Imagine something went wrong with the backup. We would be overwriting our totally fine current database with a corrupted backup! Big mistake!

So, for testing, instead of the “Leer” as destination I simply typed another name. I chose “TMSTEST”:

Then I clicked “OK”.

The database will now be restored to a new destination. If the backup file is okay and you have enough storage space you will get this screen after a while:

You can now click “OK”.

Step 5: Test your database

You should now see an additional database in your databases folder (mine shows up, of course, as “TMSTEST” because I called it that way):

If that worked fine, your backup file is okay. But just because I am a bit anal about my data, just to check, just to make sure, I run the mother of all TMS queries: “Select * From Objects”.

Only when it runs smoothly and the number of objects I get back matches my expectations, I am satisfied.

Housekeeping

Backup files are rather large. Which is logical, because they contain all your valuable data, right? So, after testing to make sure my backup is okay, I deleted that new database again by right-clicking on TMSTEST and choosing “Delete” so it doesn’t clog my server:

Also, because the backup files are so large, I tend to compress them before I move them to a different server. I use the software 7-Zip for it since it proved to be rather reliable (https://www.7-zip.org/). If you don’t have it on your server, you need to install it, first.

Go to your Windows Explorer and find your backup file. Right-click on it, choose “7-Zip” and select the option “Add to [whatever your backup is called].7z”.

You can now see how the backup is compressed. Wait until it is done (fetch a coffee or a tea, this might take a while, depending on the size of your database).

After it is finished, you will see a second file on your file system:

You will notice how much smaller the compressed file is. This is much easier to move to another server, unpack, and restore there, right?

Because I am paranoid I will move the .7z file to a cloud storage that I trust now and try if I can unpack it there without issues. If that is the case I can go back and delete the .bak file and just retain the smaller .7z file.

Take your backups, take them to a safe location, and take good care!

Angela

#collectionCare #collectionsManagement #dataBase #dataSecurity #database #documentation #MuseumDocumentation

This is a follow-up of the more generalized post
Let's Talk About Data Security - Backups
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museum #museums #databases #data #MuseumDocumentation #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagement #Documentation #RegistrarLife

This is a follow-up of the more generalized post
Let's Talk About Data Security - Backups
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museum #museums #databases #data #MuseumDocumentation #DataSecurityIsCollectionsManagement #CollectionsManagement #Documentation #RegistrarLife

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Taking a backup of your #museum #database can be crucial in the current political climate. You don't know when you will be forced to delete what you once knew about the objects in your museum and the people who made them. They might be too queer or don't have the right skin color. Better rescue what you have NOW and store it in a secure place.
Today's blog post is about how to do that if you are using The Museum System (TMS).

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-how-to-back-up-your-tms-database/

#RegistrarLife #MuseumDocumentation

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe

Data security isn't sexy, I'll give you that. But in this climate, knowing how to do a backup of your database and storing it somewhere safe might be crucial to make sure what you know about your collection is preserved for future generations.

Start of a new series on #RegistrarTrek: Let's talk about Data Security

https://world.museumsprojekte.de/lets-talk-about-data-security-backups/

#museums #museum #databases #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #KeepYourDataSafe

Reasons to leave Twitter, why Bluesky isn't an alternative and stuff I learned about Mastodon:

Registrar Trek Goes Mastodon
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/registrar-trek-goes-mastodon/

#Museums #Museum #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #SocialMedia #RegistrarLife #NieWiederIstJetzt #Mastodon

Reasons to leave Twitter, why Bluesky isn't an alternative and stuff I learned about Mastodon:

Registrar Trek Goes Mastodon
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/registrar-trek-goes-mastodon/

#Museums #Museum #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #SocialMedia #RegistrarLife #NieWiederIstJetzt #Mastodon

Reasons to leave Twitter, why Bluesky isn't an alternative and stuff I learned about Mastodon:

Registrar Trek Goes Mastodon
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/registrar-trek-goes-mastodon/

#Museums #Museum #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #SocialMedia #RegistrarLife #NieWiederIstJetzt #Mastodon

Reasons to leave Twitter, why Bluesky isn't an alternative and stuff I learned about Mastodon:

Registrar Trek Goes Mastodon
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/registrar-trek-goes-mastodon/

#Museums #Museum #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #SocialMedia #RegistrarLife #NieWiederIstJetzt #Mastodon

Reasons to leave Twitter, why Bluesky isn't an alternative and stuff I learned about Mastodon:

Registrar Trek Goes Mastodon
https://world.museumsprojekte.de/registrar-trek-goes-mastodon/

#Museums #Museum #MuseumDocumentation #CollectionsManagement #SocialMedia #RegistrarLife #NieWiederIstJetzt #Mastodon

Registrar Trek geht zu Mastodon

Normalerweise vermeide ich es hier, politisch zu werden aber ich glaube an Demokratie, den Gleichbehandlungsgrundsatz und daran, dass alle Menschen die Freiheit haben sollten, so zu leben, wie es ihnen passt, solang sie nicht etwas tun, was andere daran hindert, das gleiche zu tun. Ich glaube auch an die Bedeutung von Ehrlichkeit, an die Wissenschaft als den richtigen Weg, unsere Welt zu verstehen, und daran, dass es wichtig ist, alle Lebewesen, Menschen eingeschlossen, anständig zu behandeln.

Nachdem ich das gesagt habe, dürfte es klar sein, warum ich nicht auf Twitter bleiben kann ganz egal wie viele Verbindungen ich verliere, wenn ich den Account dort schließe. Und, ja, ich werde das Ding so lange Twitter nennen bis sein Inhaber den Namenswechsel seiner eigenen Tochter anerkennt.

Ich weiß, dass viele Bluesky als neue Alternative sehen, aber ich denke nicht, dass das eine nachhaltige Option ist, denn obwohl es theoretisch dezentral aufgestellt ist, bleibt es praktisch doch in der Hand von einem Unternehmen und damit im Endeffekt in der Hand von einer Person und wir sehen ja gerade am Beispiel von Twitter und Meta wo das hin führt. Statt dessen gehe ich zu Mastodon, wo ich schon 2022 einen Account eröffnet habe, als Musk Twitter übernommen hat.

Sie finden mich unter @[email protected]

Falls manche von ihnen ähnliches vorhaben aber nicht wissen, wie und wo sie anfangen sollen, hier sind ein paar Dinge, die ich gelernt habe (ich bin dort auch seit 2022 mit einem persönlichen Account aktiv):

Es beginnt alles damit, sich einen Server auszusuchen und das scheint bei weitem die größte Hürde für die meisten Menschen zu sein. Sie finden eine Liste mit Servern hier: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers oder Sie können im restlichen Internet nach einem Server Ausschau halten, der Ihnen zusagt und dort einen Account eröffnen. Wenn Sie zum Beispiel zu https://glammr.us/@registrartrek gehen, dann sehen Sie eine Auflistung mit meinen Beiträgen in der Mitte (ich war dort bislang nicht sehr aktiv aber das gilt für meine professionellen Social Media Auftritte ganz allgemein). Auf der linken Seite sehen Sie meinen Server und auf was er sich spezialisiert hat.

Mastodon ist eine Stadt

Das Konzept von „Servern“ klingt vielleicht etwas fremd und viele Menschen befürchten, dass sie ihre Möglichkeiten einschränken wenn sie sich für einen bestimmten Server entscheiden, also lassen Sie uns das Ganze etwas anders angehen. Sagen wir einfach Mastodon ist eine Stadt, in die sie umziehen möchten. Sie sehen sich verschiedene Straßen an, was da für Leute leben, was es an Einkaufsmöglichkeiten gibt und wie ganz generell die Atmosphäre dort ist. Das ist ihre neue Nachbarschaft, also möchten Sie sicher gehen, dass sie sich dort auch wohl und sicher fühlen.

Wie erfahren Sie etwas über diese neue Nachbarschaft? Eine gute Ausgangsbasis sind die Serverregeln. Diese finden Sie, wenn Sie auf den „about“ Abschnitt in der linken Spalte klicken (ich habe darauf verzichtet, meinen Account auf deutsch umzustellen, Sie mögen mir das nachsehen):

Sie sehen die Regeln, die für ihre Straße gelten und Sie können sich überlegen, ob das nach einem Ort klingt in dem Sie gerne leben möchten. Und natürlich kennen Sie vielleicht andere Leute, die bereits in diese Straße gezogen sind und können sich mit denen darüber austauschen, wie es ihnen dort gefällt.

Wenn Sie eine Straße gefunden haben, die ihnen gefällt, dann ziehen dort in ein Haus, indem Sie einen Account anlegen. Und Sie bekommen natürlich eine Adresse, damit andere Sie finden können. Meine Adresse lautet @[email protected] weil ich registrartrek heiße und in der glammr.us Straße lebe.

Viele Leute befürchten, dass Sie keinen anderen Leuten mehr folgen können, wenn sie sich einmal für einen Server entschieden haben. Das stimmt nicht. Natürlich können Sie Menschen in anderen Straßen besuchen, wenn Sie in diese Stadt gezogen sind! Straßen sind mit anderen Straßen verbunden, und sie können sich in der Stadt frei bewegen. Eine Einschränkung gibt es allerdings: Ihre Straße hat sich vielleicht entschieden, keine Brücke in eine schlechte Nachbarschaft zu bauen, weil sich deren Einwohner unmöglich aufführen und sich so verhalten, dass es den Regeln Ihrer Straße widerspricht. Vielleicht wurde auch eine Brücke zerstört, weil zu viele Leute aus dieser Nachbarschaft herüberkamen und angefangen haben, in ihrer Straße Leute anzupöbeln und zu bedrohen. Um es in der Mastodon-Sprache zu sagen: Die eigentliche Idee ist, dass Server sich mit anderen Servern verbinden (federate). Auf der anderen Seite gibt es aber eine schon lange etablierte Kultur, sich um die Einwohner zu kümmern, also entscheidet jede Straße für sich, ob sie nun mit einer anderen Straße verbunden sein will oder nicht und ob sie sich ggf. von einer solchen Verbindung auch wieder löst (defederate), wenn die andere Straße ein Verhalten an den Tag legt, das sie nicht akzeptabel findet.

Ihr neues Zuhause einrichten

Mit diesem Hintergrundwissen klicken Sie jetzt auf “create an account” und folgen den weiteren Schritten, genau so wie sie das auf jeder anderen Social-Media-Plattform tun würden. Es gibt Server, die komplett offen sind und auf denen Sie sofort Zugang haben. Viele andere Server sind so eingerichtet, dass Sie entweder von der administrierenden Person zugelassen werden müssen oder eine Einladung brauchen von einer Person, die bereits auf diesem Server ist. Das ist eine kleine Hürde, aber sie hilft, Spammer und bekannte Rowdys von Servern fern zu halten. Falls Sie eine Einladung zu meiner „Straße“ glammr.us haben möchten, dann schreiben Sie mir einfach unter [email protected] und ich schicke Ihnen eine (allerdings weiß ich nicht, ob ich aufgrund von Arbeit und Alltag wirklich schneller bin als die Admins).

Übrigens können Sie auch später noch in eine andere Straße umziehen. Wenn Sie herausfinden, dass Ihnen eine andere Straße besser gefällt, dann können Sie ihre Sachen packen und dahin umsiedeln, es gibt eine Import/Export-Funktion. Dies gilt allerdings nur für ihre Follower, nicht für Ihre Beiträge.

Lernen Sie die Nachbarschaft kennen

Wenn Sie in Ihr neues Zuhause eingezogen sind und die Vorhänge aufgehangen haben… ich muss Ihnen nun wirklich nicht erklären, wie man ein Social-Media-Profil einrichtet, das machen Sie schon ihr ganzes Leben, oder? Aber wir schauen uns jetzt mal die Umgebung an.

Rechts sehen Sie die Option “Live Feeds”, wenn Sie da drauf klicken, gibt es das Tab „This server“ das Ihnen die Beiträge von allen Leuten auf Ihrem Server zeigt. Das heißt, je mehr die Leute, Themen und Kultur auf Ihrem Server mit ihren eigenen Interessen übereinstimmt, desto mehr interessante Beiträge und Leute, denen Sie gerne folgen möchten werden Sie hier finden. Wenn Sie mehr entdecken möchten, dann klicken Sie auf “Other Servers”, das zeigt Ihnen dann alle Beiträge von allen Servern, die mit Ihrem verbunden sind, also das Gequassel auf allen Straßen in der Stadt, abzüglich der Straßenzüge, zu denen die Verbindung abgebrochen wurde. Und wenn Ihnen das immer noch nicht genug ist, gibt es auch noch „All“ das Ihnen ALLE Beiträge von allen Leuten auf Mastodon zeigt. Uff, das ist zu viel, lassen Sie uns schnell zu ihrer eigenen Zeitleiste wechseln, die Sie sehen, sobald Sie auf “Home” klicken.

Wenn Sie gerade erst eingezogen sind, dann wird Ihre Zeitleiste natürlich leer sein. Sie wird sich aber bald füllen, sobald Sie Leuten und Hashtags folgen.

Nachbarn treffen

Also, Sie sind jetzt in diese Straße gezogen, aber die Leute kennen Sie nicht und Sie kennen die Leute nicht. Wenn Sie Glück haben, dann kennen Sie zumindest schon mal eine Person in der gleichen Straße oder zumindest der gleichen Stadt. Fangen Sie am besten damit an, dass Sie meine Adresse @[email protected] in das Suchfeld kopieren und auf den „follow“ Knopf klicken. Hi! Jetzt erscheinen meine Beiträge in Ihrer Zeitleiste. Das können Sie jetzt auch nochmal mit @[email protected] machen, dann erscheinen auch alle aktuellen Blogbeiträge von Registrar Trek in Ihrer Zeitleiste.

Das ist ja ganz nett, aber mich kennen Sie ja schon. Sie können auf mein Profil gehen und sich ansehen, wem ich folge und wer mir folgt. Vielleicht sind da ja auch Leute dabei, denen Sie gerne folgen möchten.

Aber das war jetzt das gleiche, als hätten Sie mich zu Ihrer Einweihungsparty eingeladen und ich hätte ein paar Freunde mitgebracht. Die kennen Sie nun auch, aber das ist ja nicht die ganze Nachbarschaft. Sie wissen immer noch nicht welche Bäckerei die besten Croissants macht und in welcher Bar man brauchbare Margaritas serviert bekommt, sozusagen.

Als nächstes folgen Sie Hashtags über Dinge, die Sie interessieren. Ich hoffe immer noch, dass wir #MuseumDocumentation zu seiner alten Stärke zurück bringen, zum Beispiel. Also geben wir das in das Suchfeld ein und Sie sehen sowohl Leute, die den Hashtag in ihrem Profil haben, als auch den Tab „Hashtag“. Wenn Sie da drauf klicken, sehen Sie eine Liste mit Hashtags wenn es mehrere mit dem Begriff gibt und wenn Sie auf einen davon klicken, gibt es einen Knopf „Follow Hashtag“ mit dem Sie ab Klick jeder Beitrag, der #MuseumDocumentation enthält in Ihrer Zeitleiste sehen können. Es gibt z.B. auch #croissants und #SilentSunday oder was auch immer Ihr Herz begehrt. Hashtags sorgen dafür, dass sich die Mastodon-Welt dreht, also nutzen Sie sie in Ihren Beiträgen und scheuen Sie sich nicht, vielen zu folgen. Sie können immer noch später Begriffe entfolgen, wenn Ihre Zeitleiste zu unübersichtlich wird.

Sagen Sie “hallo”

Als nächstes möchten Sie allen sagen, dass Sie hierher gezogen sind und wer Sie sind. Dafür möchten Sie vielleicht einen Beitrag schreiben, in dem Sie sich kurz vorstellen und in dem Sie den Hashtag #introduction verwenden. Vergessen Sie nicht Hashtags mit Ihren Interessen zu verwenden, auf diesem Wege entdecken Sie vielleicht Gleichgesinnte, die Sie sonst nie kennen gelernt hätten.

Und da Leute sicherlich auf Ihr Profil schauen, um Sie besser kennen zu lernen und Sie sich ja nicht andauernd wiederholen möchten, heften Sie diesen Beitrag einfach an Ihr Profil an. Auf den meisten Servern können Sie mehr als einen Beitrag anheften, auf glammr.us bis zu fünf.

Oh, und scheuen Sie sich auch nicht, einfach mal einen Beitrag von jemandem zu kommentieren, der Ihnen gefallen hat. Mastodon lebt viel mehr davon, dass Leute sich einfach miteinander unterhalten als andere Plattformen (mehr dazu im nächsten Abschnitt). Also keine Angst vorm Quasseln mit Leuten.

Dezentralisiert und kein
Algorithmus – was heißt das eigentlich?

Sie haben vielleicht schon gehört, dass Mastodon ein dezentrales Netzwerk ist und keine Algorithmen verwendet, aber es ist vielleicht etwas nebulös was das denn nun wirklich im täglichen Umgang bedeutet. Hier sind meine Erkenntnisse kurz zusammengefasst:

• Die Server werden von einzelnen Leuten oder Gruppen betrieben, die das aus dem eigenen Geldbeutel und ohne kommerzielle Hintergedanken tun. Deshalb gibt es auf den meisten Servern auch keine Werbung. Das ist ziemlich einmalig in einem Zeitalter, in dem oft schon das eigene Betriebssystem einem Dinge aufschwätzen will.
• Punkt eins mag Sie dazu bewegen, dass Sie ab und an mal was an Ihre Serveradmin spenden, um ihnen mit den Serverkosten zu helfen.
• Twitter und andere von Unternehmen betriebene Plattformen arbeiten mit Algorithmen um manche Beiträge vor anderen zu priorisieren. Fragen Sie sich, warum Sie Musks Gesicht so oft auf Twitter sehen? Ja, genau, daran liegt das. Sie analysieren auch, wie oft ein Beitrag gemocht wird und Beiträge mit mehr Likes werden als wichtiger eingestuft als solche mit weniger Likes. Das ist auf Mastodon nicht der Fall. Hier sehen Sie nur die Beiträge von Leuten und Hashtags denen Sie folgen in chronologischer Reihenfolge, nichts weiter. Niemand ist wichtiger als der andere.
• Davon ausgehend: Wenn Sie auf Mastodon einem Beitrag ein Like geben, dann sagen Sie den Beitragsschreibenden, dass Ihnen gefallen hat, was sie gesagt haben. Nicht mehr, aber auch nicht weniger. Diejenigen, die Ihnen folgen bekommen davon nichts mit.
• Wenn Sie möchten, dass diejenigen, die Ihnen folgen auch einen Beitrag sehen, der Ihnen gefallen hat, dann müssen Sie ihn boosten. Auf Twitter hieß das retweeten, boosten ist nichts anderes. Es transportiert den Beitrag in die Zeitleiste derjenigen, die ihnen folgen. Wieder der einzige Unterschied: kein Algorithmus zählt wie oft etwas geboostet wurde und schiebt ihn irgendjemandem ins Gesicht, der den gar nicht sehen wollte.
• Oh, übrigens, Sie können Beiträge auch im Nachhinein bearbeiten, also wenn Sie nach dem posten schlauer sind, zum Beispiel, weil Sie jemand in einem Kommentar auf einen Fehler hingewiesen hat, dann können Sie einfach zu ihrem ursprünglichen Beitrag gehen und das korrigieren. Diejenigen, die davor mit Ihrem Beitrag interagiert haben, werden über der Änderung informiert (wenn sie diese Funktion nicht ausgeschaltet haben, um ihre Mitteilungen zu entlasten).

Kultur

Die Atmosphäre auf Mastodon kann variieren, je nachdem welchen Server Sie gewählt haben und welchen Leuten Sie folgen. Generell finde ich es viel angenehmer als Twitter. Allerdings sind bislang nur sehr wenige Museumsleute vertreten, daher vermisse ich die aktiven Gespräche, die sich an anderer Stelle oft ergeben haben. Aber das ist mehr eine Frage wie viele hier wie oft aktiv sind, es hat mit der Plattform an sich nichts zu tun.

Generell gibt es eine Kultur der Inklusion und das bedeutet auch, dass es ein ungeschriebenes Gesetz ist, dass Bilder und Gifs mit Alternativtext versehen werden, damit seheingeschränkte Personen auch mitbekommen, um was es Ihnen ging, als Sie das Medium gepostet haben.

Wenn Sie über sensible Inhalte schreiben – oder auch einfach einen Spoiler zu einer aktuellen Fernsehepisode oder Film – können und sollten Sie die sogenannten Content Warnings (CW) nutzen. Das sorgt dafür, dass in der Zeitleiste zunächst nur angezeigt wird, was Sie als Warnung geschrieben haben und erst, wenn man auf den Post klickt sieht man den eigentlichen Inhalt. Es kann sein, dass Ihr Server Inhaltswarnungen für bestimmte Inhalte vorschreibt. Schauen Sie sich auf der „About“ Seite an, was für Sie gilt.

Falls Sie von einem anderen Menschen auf Mastodon beleidigt werden, dann melden Sie den verletzenden Beitrag, damit die Server-Administration sich das ansehen und geeignete Maßnahmen ergreifen kann. Wie damit umgegangen wird unterscheidet sich wieder von Server zu Server, wenn die Instanz nur von einer Person betrieben wird dauert es in der Regel länger als wenn es ein Moderatorenteam gibt. Aber im Großen und Ganzen fand ich die Reaktionszeiten und Reaktionen viel angemessener als an anderen Orten, besonders da andere Plattformen nun wieder Hassparolen, Sexismus, Rassismus, Homophobie, Transphobie und Lügen als akzeptables Verhalten betrachten.

Zum Schluß

Obwohl ich bislang nicht sehr aktiv auf dem Mastodon-Account von Registrar Trek war, plane ich das zukünftig mehr zu sein. Aber das hängt natürlich sehr davon ab, ob auch andere Leute mitmachen. Sind Sie dabei?

Angela

Mehr dazu

Fedi.Tips gibt einen guten Überblick wie das Ganze funktioniert.

https://fedi.tips/

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon von Tamilore Oladipo ist ziemlich gut und gibt etwas Kontext.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

Das hier sagt so ziemlich das, was ich auch gesagt habe, nur besser und mit weniger Wörtern, inklusive einiger Bereiche, zu denen ich nix gesagt habe wie z.B. private Nachrichten.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

#MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #Mastodon #SocialMedia #Twitter #X

Registrar Trek goes Mastodon

I avoid becoming political on here but I believe in democracy, equality, and that everybody should have the freedom to live their own life the way they please as long as they are not doing something that keeps others from doing the same. I also believe in the importance of honesty, science as a way to understand what is going on in our world and decency in treating our fellow living beings, including humans.

That said, it is obvious why I can’t stay on Twitter anymore, no matter how many connections I lose by shutting down the account. And yes, I will continue to call it Twitter as long as its owner refuses to acknowledge the name change of his own daughter.

I know that many see Bluesky as the new alternative but I don’t think that’s a viable option because while theoretically decentralized, practically it is still defined by one company and, in effect, one person, and we just see with Twitter and Meta where that leads to. Instead, I will go to Mastodon, where I already created an account in 2022 when Musk took over.

You will find me as @[email protected]

If some of you consider the same but don’t know how to start, here are some things I learned (I am also there with another personal account since 2022):

It all starts with picking a server and this seems to be the biggest hurdle for most. You will find a list of servers here: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers or you can look up servers that seem to suit you and create an account there. For example, if you navigate to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek you will see my feed (I wasn’t very active so far but that’s true for my professional social media in general). On the left side you see my server and what it is it about.

Mastodon is a city

The concept of “servers” sounds a bit foreign perhaps, and many people fear they will narrow their options by deciding for a server, so, let’s think of it a bit differently. Let’s say Mastodon is the city you want to move to. The servers are all the streets in this city. You look at several streets, at what other people live there, what shops are in there, what the general “atmosphere” of it is. This will be your new neighborhood so you want to make sure you will feel at home and safe there.

How can you learn about your new neighborhood? A good place to start is looking at the server rules. Those you find in the “about” section in the left hand column here:

You will see if the rules of your street and see if this looks like a description of a place you would like to live in. And of course, you might know other people who already moved into a street and talk to them about how they like it.

Once you find a street that suits you, you will move into a house there by creating an account. And you will get an address so people can reach you. My address is @[email protected] because I am called registrartrek and I live in glammr.us street.

Many people fear that once they picked a server, they won’t be able to follow people on another server. This isn’t true. Of course you can visit people in other streets once you moved into a city! Streets are connected to other streets so you can move around the city. The same is true for Mastodon. There is a caveat, though: you already had a look at your street/server’s rules. Your street might have decided not to build a bridge to a bad neighborhood whose inhabitants display a behavior that contradicts their rules. They might even have destroyed a bridge when it turned out that too many people from the other street came over and harassed people in your street. In Mastodon terms: the general idea is that servers federate with other servers – which means nothing else than that streets connect to other streets. But at the same time it has a long-established culture of taking care of their citizens, so every street will decide which other streets they want to connect/federate to and also to defederate (destroy the bridge) if they see behavior from another street they deem unacceptable.

Setting up your address/house

With this knowledge, you simply click on “create an account” and follow the steps just like you would do on any other social media site. There are servers that are completely open and you will get access right away. Many other servers are set up in a way you have to be either approved by the server admin or need an invite by someone who already is on the server. While this is a small hurdle it helps with keeping spammers and known harassers out. If you want an invite to my “street” glammr.us just drop me a line under [email protected] and I’ll send you one (due to work and other stuff I don’t know if I am really faster than the server admin, though).

By the way, you can still move to another street later. If you find out you like another street better, you can pack up your things (or your followers) and move there. There is an import/export function available.

Getting to know your neighborhood

Once you settled into your new home and hung the curtains… Heck, I don’t have to explain to you how to set up a profile on social media, right? You have done that all your life. But let’s look around and get to know your neighborhood.

On the right hand side you see “Live Feeds” and if you click on that, you have the tab “This server” that shows you all the posts from all other people who are on the same server. Meaning: the more the people, topics, and culture on the server you picked resonate with your own, the more likely you will find interesting stuff and people to follow here. If you want to explore more, you can click on “Other Servers” which will give you the posts of all servers connected to your own, so, basically the chatter of all the people in all the other streets – minus the ones your street has burned the bridge to. If this is still not enough, the “All” tab shows you EVERYTHING that is going on on all the servers everywhere, so the whole Mastodon city. Ugh, that’s too much, let’s click back to your own timeline, which you see if you click on “Home”.

When you just have settled into your new home, this timeline will be empty. It will fill up with the posts from people and hashtags you follow pretty soon.

Meeting you neighbors

So, you moved into this street but people still don’t know you and you don’t know people. If you are lucky, you already know a person in the same street or at least in the city. Start by posting my address @[email protected] into the search field and click the “follow” button. Hi! Now my posts will appear in your timeline. You can do the same with @[email protected] and all the posts from this blog will appear in your timeline.

That’s nice, but you already know me. You can click on my profile and see who I am following and who follows me. You might find some of those interesting and follow them, too.

But that’s the equivalent to inviting me to a housewarming party. You get to know a handful of people I know but this is by far not the whole neighborhood. You still don’t know which bakery makes the best croissants and which bar has decent margaritas, so to speak.

Next up, follow a few hashtags with stuff you are interested in. I still hope we can get #MuseumDocumentation to its old strength, for example. So, you type that in the search box and you will see people who have used it as well as a tab “hashtag”. If you click on that, you get a list of hashtags that contain the word, you can follow it and every post that contains #MuseumDocumentation will appear in your Home timeline. There is also #croissants and #SilentSunday, by the way. Hashtags make the world go round in this city of Mastodon so use them in your own posts and don’t be afraid of following many. You can still weed out later once your Home timeline gets too crowded.

Say “hi”

Next up you might want to tell everybody you moved here and who you are. For that, you might want to create a post about who you are, using the hashtag #introduction and tell people a bit about you. Don’t forget to add hashtags about stuff you are interested in, you might find like-minded folks you never thought about.

And since people might want to look at your profile to know you better and you don’t want to repeat yourself, you pin it to your profile. On most servers you can pin more than one post, on glammr.us you can pin up to five.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to just comment on someone else’s post you liked. This platform is much more driven by conversation than other places (more in the next section). Don’t be afraid to ask and talk to people.

Decentralized and no algorithm – what does it mean?

You might have heard that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independent servers and doesn’t have algorithms in place but it might be a bit nebulous what that means in your day-to-day interactions. So, here are some thoughts in a nutshell:

• The servers are run by individuals or groups who are mainly doing this with their own money without commercial interest. Which means you won’t see advertisement on most servers. Which is pretty unique in a day and age where even your operating system might try to sell you something.
• You might consider a donation to your server admin to help with the cost because of the first bullet point.
• Twitter and other company owned platforms operate with algorithms to prioritize some posts over others. Wonder why you see Musk’s face so often when you go to Twitter? Yeah, that’s the reason. They also analyze how often a post is liked and more likes get a higher priority than posts with fewer likes. On Mastodon that isn’t the case. Here, when you go to your timeline you see all the posts from people and hashtags you follow in chronological order, nothing else. Nobody is more important than the other.
• Elaborating on this: If you like a post on Mastodon what you do is you tell the one who has posted you liked what they said. Nothing more, nothing less. Your followers won’t get informed that you liked a post from somebody else.
• If you want your followers to see a post you found interesting, what you have to do is boost it. On twitter this was called retweeting, boosting is nothing else, it transports the post into the timeline of the people who follow you. Again, the only difference: no algorithm is looking how often a toot is boosted to shove it into someone’s face who doesn’t want to see it.
• Oh, by the way, you can actually edit posts, so if you became wiser after posting, for example because someone corrected you in a comment, you can happily go back to your original post and make the change. Those who have interacted with your post before will get notified of the change (if they haven’t disabled that option to declutter their notifications).

Culture

The atmosphere of Mastodon can vary depending on your server and who you follow. In general, I found it much more pleasant than on twitter but so far there are only a few museum professionals on, so I miss the active exchange that we had on there. But that is a question of who is active, it has nothing to do with the platform itself.

In general, there is a culture that values inclusion and this means that it is nearly like an unwritten rule to add alt-text when you post an image or gif so visually impaired people also get a sense of what your image is about.

If you post about sensitive topics – or even just a spoiler to a current TV episode or movie – there is a feature to place a Content Warning (CW) to your post. What it does: It displays just what you have written as a warning and your post only gets visible if you click on it. It might be mandatory to place content warnings for certain topics on your server. Check the about page to see them and make sure you follow them.

If you get harassed by another user, report the abusive post and it will reported to the administrator of your server who can then check and take appropriate measures. How this is handled varies by server so if this is just run by one person it might take longer than if your server has a moderation team. But, by and large, I found them far more responsive than in other places, especially since on some platforms hate speech, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and lies are now acceptable behavior.

In conclusion

Although I wasn’t very active on the Mastodon account of Registrar Trek before I plan to be more in the future. But this, of course, will also depend on other people wanting to join in. See you there?

Angela

Footnotes/Further Readings

Fedi.Tips gives a good overview of features and how things are supposed to work.

https://fedi.tips/

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon by Tamilore Oladipo is also pretty good and adds a bit of context.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

This is pretty much what I said in less words with some things I didn’t mention like private messaging.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

#MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #mastodon #socialMedia #Twitter #X

Registrar Trek goes Mastodon

Update January 19th, 2025: In the light of the TikTok ban and Instagram blocking links to the Fediverse, I will soon post a second article about the bigger picture of the Fediverse, about different parts that cover different needs and are open source like Mastodon. There are alternatives for Instagram, Youtube, Facebook… but I found it would likely be overwhelming to cover them in this already lengthy article.

I avoid becoming political on here but I believe in democracy, equality, and that everybody should have the freedom to live their own life the way they please as long as they are not doing something that keeps others from doing the same. I also believe in the importance of honesty, science as a way to understand what is going on in our world and decency in treating our fellow living beings, including humans.

That said, it is obvious why I can’t stay on Twitter anymore, no matter how many connections I lose by shutting down the account. And yes, I will continue to call it Twitter as long as its owner refuses to acknowledge the name change of his own daughter.

I know that many see Bluesky as the new alternative but I don’t think that’s a viable option because while theoretically decentralized, practically it is still defined by one company and, in effect, one person, and we just see with Twitter and Meta where that leads to. Instead, I will go to Mastodon, where I already created an account in 2022 when Musk took over.

You will find me as @[email protected]

If some of you consider the same but don’t know how to start, here are some things I learned (I am also there with another personal account since 2022):

It all starts with picking a server and this seems to be the biggest hurdle for most. You will find a list of servers here: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers or you can look up servers that seem to suit you and create an account there. For example, if you navigate to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek you will see my feed (I wasn’t very active so far but that’s true for my professional social media in general). On the left side you see my server and what it is it about.

Mastodon is a city

The concept of “servers” sounds a bit foreign perhaps, and many people fear they will narrow their options by deciding for a server, so, let’s think of it a bit differently. Let’s say Mastodon is the city you want to move to. The servers are all the streets in this city. You look at several streets, at what other people live there, what shops are in there, what the general “atmosphere” of it is. This will be your new neighborhood so you want to make sure you will feel at home and safe there.

How can you learn about your new neighborhood? A good place to start is looking at the server rules. Those you find in the “about” section in the left hand column here:

You will see if the rules of your street and see if this looks like a description of a place you would like to live in. And of course, you might know other people who already moved into a street and talk to them about how they like it.

Once you find a street that suits you, you will move into a house there by creating an account. And you will get an address so people can reach you. My address is @[email protected] because I am called registrartrek and I live in glammr.us street.

Many people fear that once they picked a server, they won’t be able to follow people on another server. This isn’t true. Of course you can visit people in other streets once you moved into a city! Streets are connected to other streets so you can move around the city. The same is true for Mastodon. There is a caveat, though: you already had a look at your street/server’s rules. Your street might have decided not to build a bridge to a bad neighborhood whose inhabitants display a behavior that contradicts their rules. They might even have destroyed a bridge when it turned out that too many people from the other street came over and harassed people in your street. In Mastodon terms: the general idea is that servers federate with other servers – which means nothing else than that streets connect to other streets. But at the same time it has a long-established culture of taking care of their citizens, so every street will decide which other streets they want to connect/federate to and also to defederate (destroy the bridge) if they see behavior from another street they deem unacceptable.

Setting up your address/house

With this knowledge, you simply click on “create an account” and follow the steps just like you would do on any other social media site. There are servers that are completely open and you will get access right away. Many other servers are set up in a way you have to be either approved by the server admin or need an invite by someone who already is on the server. While this is a small hurdle it helps with keeping spammers and known harassers out. If you want an invite to my “street” glammr.us just drop me a line under [email protected] and I’ll send you one (due to work and other stuff I don’t know if I am really faster than the server admin, though).

By the way, you can still move to another street later. If you find out you like another street better, you can pack up your things (or your followers) and move there. There is an import/export function available.

Getting to know your neighborhood

Once you settled into your new home and hung the curtains… Heck, I don’t have to explain to you how to set up a profile on social media, right? You have done that all your life. But let’s look around and get to know your neighborhood.

On the right hand side you see “Live Feeds” and if you click on that, you have the tab “This server” that shows you all the posts from all other people who are on the same server. Meaning: the more the people, topics, and culture on the server you picked resonate with your own, the more likely you will find interesting stuff and people to follow here. If you want to explore more, you can click on “Other Servers” which will give you the posts of all servers connected to your own, so, basically the chatter of all the people in all the other streets – minus the ones your street has burned the bridge to. If this is still not enough, the “All” tab shows you EVERYTHING that is going on on all the servers everywhere, so the whole Mastodon city. Ugh, that’s too much, let’s click back to your own timeline, which you see if you click on “Home”.

When you just have settled into your new home, this timeline will be empty. It will fill up with the posts from people and hashtags you follow pretty soon.

Meeting you neighbors

So, you moved into this street but people still don’t know you and you don’t know people. If you are lucky, you already know a person in the same street or at least in the city. Start by posting my address @[email protected] into the search field and click the “follow” button. Hi! Now my posts will appear in your timeline. You can do the same with @[email protected] and all the posts from this blog will appear in your timeline.

That’s nice, but you already know me. You can click on my profile and see who I am following and who follows me. You might find some of those interesting and follow them, too.

But that’s the equivalent to inviting me to a housewarming party. You get to know a handful of people I know but this is by far not the whole neighborhood. You still don’t know which bakery makes the best croissants and which bar has decent margaritas, so to speak.

Next up, follow a few hashtags with stuff you are interested in. I still hope we can get #MuseumDocumentation to its old strength, for example. So, you type that in the search box and you will see people who have used it as well as a tab “hashtag”. If you click on that, you get a list of hashtags that contain the word, you can follow it and every post that contains #MuseumDocumentation will appear in your Home timeline. There is also #croissants and #SilentSunday, by the way. Hashtags make the world go round in this city of Mastodon so use them in your own posts and don’t be afraid of following many. You can still weed out later once your Home timeline gets too crowded.

Say “hi”

Next up you might want to tell everybody you moved here and who you are. For that, you might want to create a post about who you are, using the hashtag #introduction and tell people a bit about you. Don’t forget to add hashtags about stuff you are interested in, you might find like-minded folks you never thought about.

And since people might want to look at your profile to know you better and you don’t want to repeat yourself, you pin it to your profile. On most servers you can pin more than one post, on glammr.us you can pin up to five.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to just comment on someone else’s post you liked. This platform is much more driven by conversation than other places (more in the next section). Don’t be afraid to ask and talk to people.

Decentralized and no algorithm – what does it mean?

You might have heard that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independent servers and doesn’t have algorithms in place but it might be a bit nebulous what that means in your day-to-day interactions. So, here are some thoughts in a nutshell:

• The servers are run by individuals or groups who are mainly doing this with their own money without commercial interest. Which means you won’t see advertisement on most servers. Which is pretty unique in a day and age where even your operating system might try to sell you something.
• You might consider a donation to your server admin to help with the cost because of the first bullet point.
• Twitter and other company owned platforms operate with algorithms to prioritize some posts over others. Wonder why you see Musk’s face so often when you go to Twitter? Yeah, that’s the reason. They also analyze how often a post is liked and more likes get a higher priority than posts with fewer likes. On Mastodon that isn’t the case. Here, when you go to your timeline you see all the posts from people and hashtags you follow in chronological order, nothing else. Nobody is more important than the other.
• Elaborating on this: If you like a post on Mastodon what you do is you tell the one who has posted you liked what they said. Nothing more, nothing less. Your followers won’t get informed that you liked a post from somebody else.
• If you want your followers to see a post you found interesting, what you have to do is boost it. On twitter this was called retweeting, boosting is nothing else, it transports the post into the timeline of the people who follow you. Again, the only difference: no algorithm is looking how often a toot is boosted to shove it into someone’s face who doesn’t want to see it.
• Oh, by the way, you can actually edit posts, so if you became wiser after posting, for example because someone corrected you in a comment, you can happily go back to your original post and make the change. Those who have interacted with your post before will get notified of the change (if they haven’t disabled that option to declutter their notifications).

Culture

The atmosphere of Mastodon can vary depending on your server and who you follow. In general, I found it much more pleasant than on twitter but so far there are only a few museum professionals on, so I miss the active exchange that we had on there. But that is a question of who is active, it has nothing to do with the platform itself.

In general, there is a culture that values inclusion and this means that it is nearly like an unwritten rule to add alt-text when you post an image or gif so visually impaired people also get a sense of what your image is about.

If you post about sensitive topics – or even just a spoiler to a current TV episode or movie – there is a feature to place a Content Warning (CW) to your post. What it does: It displays just what you have written as a warning and your post only gets visible if you click on it. It might be mandatory to place content warnings for certain topics on your server. Check the about page to see them and make sure you follow them.

If you get harassed by another user, report the abusive post and it will reported to the administrator of your server who can then check and take appropriate measures. How this is handled varies by server so if this is just run by one person it might take longer than if your server has a moderation team. But, by and large, I found them far more responsive than in other places, especially since on some platforms hate speech, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and lies are now acceptable behavior.

In conclusion

Although I wasn’t very active on the Mastodon account of Registrar Trek before I plan to be more in the future. But this, of course, will also depend on other people wanting to join in. See you there?

Angela

Footnotes/Further Readings

Fedi.Tips gives a good overview of features and how things are supposed to work.

https://fedi.tips/

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon by Tamilore Oladipo is also pretty good and adds a bit of context.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

This is pretty much what I said in less words with some things I didn’t mention like private messaging.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

#MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #TikTokRefugees #mastodon #socialMedia #Twitter #X

Registrar Trek goes Mastodon

I avoid becoming political on here but I believe in democracy, equality, and that everybody should have the freedom to live their own life the way they please as long as they are not doing something that keeps others from doing the same. I also believe in the importance of honesty, science as a way to understand what is going on in our world and decency in treating our fellow living beings, including humans.

That said, it is obvious why I can’t stay on Twitter anymore, no matter how many connections I lose by shutting down the account. And yes, I will continue to call it Twitter as long as its owner refuses to acknowledge the name change of his own daughter.

I know that many see Bluesky as the new alternative but I don’t think that’s a viable option because while theoretically decentralized, practically it is still defined by one company and, in effect, one person, and we just see with Twitter and Meta where that leads to. Instead, I will go to Mastodon, where I already created an account in 2022 when Musk took over.

You will find me as @[email protected]

If some of you consider the same but don’t know how to start, here are some things I learned (I am also there with another personal account since 2022):

It all starts with picking a server and this seems to be the biggest hurdle for most. You will find a list of servers here: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers or you can look up servers that seem to suit you and create an account there. For example, if you navigate to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek you will see my feed (I wasn’t very active so far but that’s true for my professional social media in general). On the left side you see my server and what it is it about.

Mastodon is a city

The concept of “servers” sounds a bit foreign perhaps, and many people fear they will narrow their options by deciding for a server, so, let’s think of it a bit differently. Let’s say Mastodon is the city you want to move to. The servers are all the streets in this city. You look at several streets, at what other people live there, what shops are in there, what the general “atmosphere” of it is. This will be your new neighborhood so you want to make sure you will feel at home and safe there.

How can you learn about your new neighborhood? A good place to start is looking at the server rules. Those you find in the “about” section in the left hand column here:

You will see if the rules of your street and see if this looks like a description of a place you would like to live in. And of course, you might know other people who already moved into a street and talk to them about how they like it.

Once you find a street that suits you, you will move into a house there by creating an account. And you will get an address so people can reach you. My address is @[email protected] because I am called registrartrek and I live in glammr.us street.

Many people fear that once they picked a server, they won’t be able to follow people on another server. This isn’t true. Of course you can visit people in other streets once you moved into a city! Streets are connected to other streets so you can move around the city. The same is true for Mastodon. There is a caveat, though: you already had a look at your street/server’s rules. Your street might have decided not to build a bridge to a bad neighborhood whose inhabitants display a behavior that contradicts their rules. They might even have destroyed a bridge when it turned out that too many people from the other street came over and harassed people in your street. In Mastodon terms: the general idea is that servers federate with other servers – which means nothing else than that streets connect to other streets. But at the same time it has a long-established culture of taking care of their citizens, so every street will decide which other streets they want to connect/federate to and also to defederate (destroy the bridge) if they see behavior from another street they deem unacceptable.

Setting up your address/house

With this knowledge, you simply click on “create an account” and follow the steps just like you would do on any other social media site. There are servers that are completely open and you will get access right away. Many other servers are set up in a way you have to be either approved by the server admin or need an invite by someone who already is on the server. While this is a small hurdle it helps with keeping spammers and known harassers out. If you want an invite to my “street” glammr.us just drop me a line under [email protected] and I’ll send you one (due to work and other stuff I don’t know if I am really faster than the server admin, though).

By the way, you can still move to another street later. If you find out you like another street better, you can pack up your things (or your followers) and move there. There is an import/export function available.

Getting to know your neighborhood

Once you settled into your new home and hung the curtains… Heck, I don’t have to explain to you how to set up a profile on social media, right? You have done that all your life. But let’s look around and get to know your neighborhood.

On the right hand side you see “Live Feeds” and if you click on that, you have the tab “This server” that shows you all the posts from all other people who are on the same server. Meaning: the more the people, topics, and culture on the server you picked resonate with your own, the more likely you will find interesting stuff and people to follow here. If you want to explore more, you can click on “Other Servers” which will give you the posts of all servers connected to your own, so, basically the chatter of all the people in all the other streets – minus the ones your street has burned the bridge to. If this is still not enough, the “All” tab shows you EVERYTHING that is going on on all the servers everywhere, so the whole Mastodon city. Ugh, that’s too much, let’s click back to your own timeline, which you see if you click on “Home”.

When you just have settled into your new home, this timeline will be empty. It will fill up with the posts from people and hashtags you follow pretty soon.

Meeting you neighbors

So, you moved into this street but people still don’t know you and you don’t know people. If you are lucky, you already know a person in the same street or at least in the city. Start by posting my address @[email protected] into the search field and click the “follow” button. Hi! Now my posts will appear in your timeline. You can do the same with @[email protected] and all the posts from this blog will appear in your timeline.

That’s nice, but you already know me. You can click on my profile and see who I am following and who follows me. You might find some of those interesting and follow them, too.

But that’s the equivalent to inviting me to a housewarming party. You get to know a handful of people I know but this is by far not the whole neighborhood. You still don’t know which bakery makes the best croissants and which bar has decent margaritas, so to speak.

Next up, follow a few hashtags with stuff you are interested in. I still hope we can get #MuseumDocumentation to its old strength, for example. So, you type that in the search box and you will see people who have used it as well as a tab “hashtag”. If you click on that, you get a list of hashtags that contain the word, you can follow it and every post that contains #MuseumDocumentation will appear in your Home timeline. There is also #croissants and #SilentSunday, by the way. Hashtags make the world go round in this city of Mastodon so use them in your own posts and don’t be afraid of following many. You can still weed out later once your Home timeline gets too crowded.

Say “hi”

Next up you might want to tell everybody you moved here and who you are. For that, you might want to create a post about who you are, using the hashtag #introduction and tell people a bit about you. Don’t forget to add hashtags about stuff you are interested in, you might find like-minded folks you never thought about.

And since people might want to look at your profile to know you better and you don’t want to repeat yourself, you pin it to your profile. On most servers you can pin more than one post, on glammr.us you can pin up to five.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to just comment on someone else’s post you liked. This platform is much more driven by conversation than other places (more in the next section). Don’t be afraid to ask and talk to people.

Decentralized and no algorithm – what does it mean?

You might have heard that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independent servers and doesn’t have algorithms in place but it might be a bit nebulous what that means in your day-to-day interactions. So, here are some thoughts in a nutshell:

• The servers are run by individuals or groups who are mainly doing this with their own money without commercial interest. Which means you won’t see advertisement on most servers. Which is pretty unique in a day and age where even your operating system might try to sell you something.
• You might consider a donation to your server admin to help with the cost because of the first bullet point.
• Twitter and other company owned platforms operate with algorithms to prioritize some posts over others. Wonder why you see Musk’s face so often when you go to Twitter? Yeah, that’s the reason. They also analyze how often a post is liked and more likes get a higher priority than posts with fewer likes. On Mastodon that isn’t the case. Here, when you go to your timeline you see all the posts from people and hashtags you follow in chronological order, nothing else. Nobody is more important than the other.
• Elaborating on this: If you like a post on Mastodon what you do is you tell the one who has posted you liked what they said. Nothing more, nothing less. Your followers won’t get informed that you liked a post from somebody else.
• If you want your followers to see a post you found interesting, what you have to do is boost it. On twitter this was called retweeting, boosting is nothing else, it transports the post into the timeline of the people who follow you. Again, the only difference: no algorithm is looking how often a toot is boosted to shove it into someone’s face who doesn’t want to see it.
• Oh, by the way, you can actually edit posts, so if you became wiser after posting, for example because someone corrected you in a comment, you can happily go back to your original post and make the change. Those who have interacted with your post before will get notified of the change (if they haven’t disabled that option to declutter their notifications).

Culture

The atmosphere of Mastodon can vary depending on your server and who you follow. In general, I found it much more pleasant than on twitter but so far there are only a few museum professionals on, so I miss the active exchange that we had on there. But that is a question of who is active, it has nothing to do with the platform itself.

In general, there is a culture that values inclusion and this means that it is nearly like an unwritten rule to add alt-text when you post an image or gif so visually impaired people also get a sense of what your image is about.

If you post about sensitive topics – or even just a spoiler to a current TV episode or movie – there is a feature to place a Content Warning (CW) to your post. What it does: It displays just what you have written as a warning and your post only gets visible if you click on it. It might be mandatory to place content warnings for certain topics on your server. Check the about page to see them and make sure you follow them.

If you get harassed by another user, report the abusive post and it will reported to the administrator of your server who can then check and take appropriate measures. How this is handled varies by server so if this is just run by one person it might take longer than if your server has a moderation team. But, by and large, I found them far more responsive than in other places, especially since on some platforms hate speech, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and lies are now acceptable behavior.

In conclusion

Although I wasn’t very active on the Mastodon account of Registrar Trek before I plan to be more in the future. But this, of course, will also depend on other people wanting to join in. See you there?

Angela

Footnotes/Further Readings

Fedi.Tips gives a good overview of features and how things are supposed to work.

https://fedi.tips/

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon by Tamilore Oladipo is also pretty good and adds a bit of context.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

This is pretty much what I said in less words with some things I didn’t mention like private messaging.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

#MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #mastodon #socialMedia #Twitter #X

Registrar Trek goes Mastodon

I avoid becoming political on here but I believe in democracy, equality, and that everybody should have the freedom to live their own life the way they please as long as they are not doing something that keeps others from doing the same. I also believe in the importance of honesty, science as a way to understand what is going on in our world and decency in treating our fellow living beings, including humans.

That said, it is obvious why I can’t stay on Twitter anymore, no matter how many connections I lose by shutting down the account. And yes, I will continue to call it Twitter as long as its owner refuses to acknowledge the name change of his own daughter.

I know that many see Bluesky as the new alternative but I don’t think that’s a viable option because while theoretically decentralized, practically it is still defined by one company and, in effect, one person, and we just see with Twitter and Meta where that leads to. Instead, I will go to Mastodon, where I already created an instance in 2022 when Musk took over.

You will find me as @registrartrek

If some of you consider the same but don’t know how to start, here are some things I learned (I am also there with another personal account since 2022):

It all starts with picking a server and this seems to be the biggest hurdle for most. You will find a list of servers here: https://joinmastodon.org/de/servers or you can look up servers that seem to suit you and create an account there. For example, if you navigate to https://glammr.us/@registrartrek you will see my feed (I wasn’t very active so far but that’s true for my professional social media in general). On the left side you see my server and what it is it about.

Mastodon is a city

The concept of “servers” sounds a bit foreign perhaps, and many people fear they will narrow their options by deciding for a server, so, let’s think of it a bit differently. Let’s say Mastodon is the city you want to move to. The servers are all the streets in this city. You look at several streets, at what other people live there, what shops are in there, what the general “atmosphere” of it is. This will be your new neighborhood so you want to make sure you will feel at home and safe there.

How can you learn about your new neighborhood? A good place to start is looking at the server rules. Those you find in the “about” section in the left hand column here:

You will see if the rules of your street and see if this looks like a description of a place you would like to live in. And of course, you might know other people who already moved into a street and talk to them about how they like it.

Once you find a street that suits you, you will move into a house there by creating an account. And you will get an address so people can reach you. My address is @registrartrek because I am called registrartrek and I live in glammr.us street.

Many people fear that once they picked a server, they won’t be able to follow people on another server. This isn’t true. Of course you can visit people in other streets once you moved into a city! Streets are connected to other streets so you can move around the city. The same is true for Mastodon. There is a caveat, though: you already had a look at your street/server’s rules. Your street might have decided not to build a bridge to a bad neighborhood whose inhabitants display a behavior that contradicts their rules. They might even have destroyed a bridge when it turned out that too many people from the other street came over and harassed people in your street. In Mastodon terms: the general idea is that servers federate with other servers – which means nothing else than that streets connect to other streets. But at the same time it has a long-established culture of taking care of their citizens, so every street will decide which other streets they want to connect/federate to and also to defederate (destroy the bridge) if they see behavior from another street they deem unacceptable.

Setting up your address/house

With this knowledge, you simply click on “create an account” and follow the steps just like you would do on any other social media site. There are servers that are completely open and you will get access right away. Many other servers are set up in a way you have to be either approved by the server admin or need an invite by someone who already is on the server. While this is a small hurdle it helps with keeping spammers and known harassers out. If you want an invite to my “street” glammr.us just drop me a line under [email protected] and I’ll send you one (due to work and other stuff I don’t know if I am really faster than the server admin, though).

By the way, you can still move to another street later. If you find out you like another street better, you can pack up your things (or your followers) and move there. There is an import/export function available.

Getting to know your neighborhood

Once you settled into your new home and hung the curtains… Heck, I don’t have to explain to you how to set up a profile on social media, right? You have done that all your life. But let’s look around and get to know your neighborhood.

On the right hand side you see “Live Feeds” and if you click on that, you have the tab “This server” that shows you all the posts from all other people who are on the same server. Meaning: the more the people, topics, and culture on the server you picked resonate with your own, the more likely you will find interesting stuff and people to follow here. If you want to explore more, you can click on “Other Servers” which will give you the posts of all servers connected to your own, so, basically the chatter of all the people in all the other streets – minus the ones your street has burned the bridge to. If this is still not enough, the “All” tab shows you EVERYTHING that is going on on all the servers everywhere, so the whole Mastodon city. Ugh, that’s too much, let’s click back to your own timeline, which you see if you click on “Home”.

When you just have settled into your new home, this timeline will be empty. It will fill up with the posts from people and hashtags you follow pretty soon.

Meeting you neighbors

So, you moved into this street but people still don’t know you and you don’t know people. If you are lucky, you already know a person in the same street or at least in the city. Start by posting my address @registrartrek into the search field and click the “follow” button. Hi! Now my posts will appear in your timeline. You can do the same with @admin and all the posts from this blog will appear in your timeline.

That’s nice, but you already know me. You can click on my profile and see who I am following and who follows me. You might find some of those interesting and follow them, too.

But that’s the equivalent to inviting me to a housewarming party. You get to know a handful of people I know but this is by far not the whole neighborhood. You still don’t know which bakery makes the best croissants and which bar has decent margaritas, so to speak.

Next up, follow a few hashtags with stuff you are interested in. I still hope we can get #MuseumDocumentation to its old strength, for example. So, you type that in the search box and you will see people who have used it as well as a tab “hashtag”. If you click on that, you can follow it and every post that contains #MuseumDocumentation will appear in your Home timeline. There is also #croissants and #SilentSunday, by the way. Hashtags make the world go round in this city of Mastodon so use them in your own posts and don’t be afraid of following many. You can still weed out later once your Home timeline gets too crowded.

Say “hi”

Next up you might want to tell everybody you moved here and who you are. For that, you might want to create a post about who you are, using the hashtag #introduction and tell people a bit about you. Don’t forget to add hashtags about stuff you are interested in, you might find like-minded folks you never thought about.

And since people might want to look at your profile to know you better and you don’t want to repeat yourself, you pin it to your profile. On most servers you can pin more than one post, on glammr.us you can pin up to five.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to just comment on someone else’s post you liked. This platform is much more driven by conversation than other places (more in the next section). Don’t be afraid to ask and talk to people.

Decentralized and no algorithm – what does it mean?

You might have heard that Mastodon is a decentralized network of independent servers and doesn’t have algorithms in place but it might be a bit nebulous what that means in your day-to-day interactions. So, here are some thoughts in a nutshell:

• The servers are run by individuals or groups who are mainly doing this with their own money without commercial interest. Which means you won’t see advertisement on most servers. Which is pretty unique in a day and age where even your operating system might try to sell you something.
• You might consider a donation to your server admin to help with the cost because of the first bullet point.
• Twitter and other company owned platforms operate with algorithms to prioritize some posts over others. Wonder why you see Musk’s face so often when you go to Twitter? Yeah, that’s the reason. They also analyze how often a post is liked and more likes get a higher priority than posts with fewer likes. On Mastodon that isn’t the case. Here, when you go to your timeline you see all the posts from people and hashtags you follow in chronological order, nothing else. Nobody is more important than the other.
• Elaborating on this: If you like a post on Mastodon what you do is you tell the one who has posted you liked what they said. Nothing more, nothing less. Your followers won’t get informed that you liked a post from somebody else.
• If you want your followers to see a post you found interesting, what you have to do is boost it. On twitter this was called retweeting, boosting is nothing else, it transports the post into the timeline of the people who follow you. Again, the only difference: no algorithm is looking how often a toot is boosted to shove it into someone’s face who doesn’t want to see it.
• Oh, by the way, you can actually edit posts, so if you became wiser after posting, for example because someone corrected you in a comment, you can happily go back to your original post and make the change. Those who have interacted with your post before will get notified of the change (if they haven’t disabled that option to declutter their notifications).

Culture

The atmosphere of Mastodon can vary depending on your server and who you follow. In general, I found it much more pleasant than on twitter but so far there are only a few museum professionals on, so I miss the active exchange that we had on there. But that is a question of who is active, it has nothing to do with the platform itself.

In general, there is a culture that values inclusion and this means that it is nearly like an unwritten rule to add alt-text when you post an image or gif so visually impaired people also get a sense of what your image is about.

If you post about sensitive topics – or even just a spoiler to a current TV episode or movie – there is a feature to place a Content Warning (CW) to your post. What it does: It displays just what you have written as a warning and your post only gets visible if you click on it. It might be mandatory to place content warnings for certain topics on your server. Check the about page to see them and make sure you follow them.

If you get harassed by another user, report the abusive post and it will reported to the administrator of your server who can then check and take appropriate measures. How this is handled varies by server so if this is just run by one person it might take longer than if your server has a moderation team. But, by and large, I found them far more responsive than in other places, especially since on some platforms hate speech, sexual harassment, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and lies are now acceptable behavior.

In conclusion

Although I wasn’t very active on the Mastodon account of Registrar Trek before I plan to be more in the future. But this, of course, will also depend on other people wanting to join in. See you there?

Angela

Footnotes/Further Readings

Fedi.Tips gives a good overview of features and how things are supposed to work.

https://fedi.tips/

A Beginner’s Guide to Mastodon by Tamilore Oladipo is also pretty good and adds a bit of context.

https://buffer.com/resources/mastodon-social

This is pretty much what I said in less words with some things I didn’t mention like private messaging.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon

#MuseumDocumentation #RegistrarLife #RegistrarTrek #mastodon #socialMedia #Twitter #X