I've made some updates to #MastodonNearMe - and as always I'd love to hear about language- or location-focussed servers for the map.
@jaz There's a wide, sad expanse in the #USA between Chicago and Washington State evidently needing regional or state-wide Mastodon servers.
Maybe that shows untapped potential for growth. Even #California lacks a state-focused server!? Let's go!
New regional instances would do well to follow the model of @hoosiersocial for #Indiana residents.
@ScottStarkey @jaz @hoosiersocial the twin cities have a small server at mspsocial.net!
@gcoleman @ScottStarkey @hoosiersocial thanks for the link, I'll look into adding it in the morning
@gcoleman @ScottStarkey @hoosiersocial I'm a big fan of the MSP approach in general, but a closed registration server doesn't meet the need for the map, I only include servers that are open for registration.
Thanks a lot, @jaz
@IceCubesApp That might be (one) nice way for new users signing up to find a suitable Mastodon instance?
@jaz wow this is great work!
@stinerman thanks
@jaz Wow! Thanks for this work. I'm really passionate about the idea of regional, local-interest instances. Would be thrilled to see @hoosiersocial on the list!
@thekitmalone @hoosiersocial it's on there
@jaz While I'm not on it, here in Bellingham, Washington there is subdued.social ... Bellingham is the "City of Subdued Excitement," in case the server name doesn't make immediate sense.
@jaz The canadian.social is hosted from Kelowna BC, Canada.
@jaz And a small server for the #SanJuanIslands (in Northwest #WashingtonState, #USA) at https://sanjuans.life
@jaz How should I publish location-related metadata about my instance? Is there a standard?
@jaz thats cool
@jaz The already listed graz.social has also a pixelfed, lemmy and mobilizon instance running.
@groberschnitzer I need to get around to researching additional platforms for the list, I'll bookmark this for future use, thank you!
@jaz There's wien.rocks and graz.social for cities in Austria.
@MeerderWoerter got them both, danke!
@jaz@toot.wales ottawa.place should be one of them but isn't. it fits all the inclusion criteria.
just a suggestion!
@jaz@toot.wales You're welcome.
@jaz Not sure that I believe that there are more Mastodon servers in Alice Springs than in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth combined.
@jaz This looks entirely inaccessible to blind people using screen readers. Can we have a list view or something please? Also, using visual only ways to delineate one kind of server from another will always be inaccessible to us. Maps are not something that can be accessible for all at this point, we do need text and a search facility. Sorry.
@davetaylor2112 Hi Dave, please review the text list at https://github.com/jazmichaelking/mastodon-near-me/blob/main/README.md (and let me know if there's improvements I can make to that list to improve accessibility).
@jaz Hi, well, it's kind of OK, but it would be really helpful if it was organised in some way, otherwise, especially as it grows, people just have to read through link after link. Try finding what you want in a list like that and ask yourself how efficient that is? It's certainly a start though, so thank you.
@davetaylor2112 what would make sense? continent, then country? One table per continent? (I'm a CTRL F user, but I understand that's not for everyone). I could take it off Github if that's part of the issue. I will also reinvestigate #OpenStreetMap - my belief is it has good accessibility support (e.g. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind ) but I may be working from old data. I had hoped by using #OSM I was enabling an accessible view of the underlying data with good options for adaptive and assistive tech.
@jaz Probably country, unless a country has so many that it needs further defining. Actually, yes, a web page somewhere would be much better, then you can have headings for people to navigate by. Control-F only works when you know what you are looking for. Hope that helps, and thanks again.
@davetaylor2112 so you're saying organise the tabular data by country, I would add a column solely for country, leave towns and cities alone, but sort order the data by country. The only bugaboo would be multi-country regions like the Balkans server, how best to organise those?
@jaz Well, as long as it's possible to find our way around without having to go through the whole list, you can be flexible with what headings you use to be honest. Country or region, for instance, is perfectly acceptable, just whatever works best for the list as it goes forward.
@davetaylor2112 I could add H2 headings for continent and H3 for country as an example (on this page already linked)
@jaz Yep, you're there. Surveys say that more of us use headings than any other navigation feature, and I know I do.
@SherlockHans got it, danke!