jaz @jaz@toot.walestoot.wales

I'm back to thinking about fediadmin dashboards and tools and what it would take to get something working, and im looking at druple and zabbix and other monitoring tools because most of what i think would help is statistical reporting and adding some basic OSInt to the moderation UI. Add to the OSInt context appropriate statistical correlations and data.

Basically i need a prepackaged dashboard UI tool, a log ingester that can do activitypub messages, and a way to index and search all that efficiently. I wish i had a few thousand to sponsor development for six months, thats all it would take...

You could stand it up as a moderated relay, admins would have to apply and get approved, signing in with their oAuth from their own server account. That would grant the relay permissions to read and write reports that can be viewed in the dashboard, where the relay adds additional context about reports from the database of relayed posts. Relays could become opt-in moderation enclaves where shared community moderation values are agreed on and reports can be handled by a group of mods, or at least reviewed and commented on if wanted.
From each moderation account, they would have tools for their server, essentially scripts like fedifetcher or import/export tools and other actions via the mastodonAPI for their server.

A modular tool dashboard(think Softalicious) could allow packaging and distribution of scripts or configurations, or adding functions like the CSAM scanner that IFTAS developed. A plugin to add functionality for PeerTube features, or pixelfed moderation specific challenges.

Package the whole project up and make it available on YunoHost and anyone could put a fediserver, relay, and moderation dashboard on some old desktop in their basement <3

There are issues. The final product is asking a lot. There's some problems around post retention with edits, deletes, and expiring posts. There's questions as to the utility or need of relays after a certain amount of activity and if server alliances that might create cultural bubbles that are beneficial or not. Security and privacy issues for bad actors that join a relay unchallenged, or how joining multiple community relays might make for floods of network traffic.

This is something I, as an admin, really want to see. I feel so ignored and abandoned by the mastodon development team for not including more than the most basic moderation and reporting tools. Technical solutions wont solve our community problems, but they can empower our community caretakers to cater to their people.

edit: the OSInt data is especially relevant when doing account approval reviews.