There will be brief downtime (<30 seconds) while the server is upgraded to Mastodon 4.1.9 at:
6:15 PM ADT | 5:15 PM EDT | 4:15 PM CST | 2:15 PM PDT
Follow this page for updates.
Update 2023-09-20 5:15 PM EDT: Maintenance has concluded. Thank-you for your patience!
There will be brief downtime (<30 seconds) while the server is upgraded to Mastodon 4.1.8 at:
3:10 PM ADT | 2:10 PM EDT | 12:10 PM CST | 11:10 PM PDT
Follow this page for updates.
Update 2023-09-19 2:12 PM EDT: Maintenance has concluded. Thank-you for your patience!
There will be brief downtime (<30 seconds) while the server is upgraded to Mastodon 4.1.7 at:
10:00 PM ADT | 9:00 PM EDT | 7:00 PM CST | 6:00 PM PDT
Follow this page for updates.
Update 2023-09-17 9:02 PM EDT: Maintenance has concluded. Thank-you for your patience!
Come to our inaugural AGM. We are very excited to hold our very first AGM.
Register to attend here: https://lu.ma/frnzki9y
Save the date for the first AGM, with formal notice and the full AGM package to follow!
In the meantime, let us know:
Preparation and discussion on our Members Discourse: https://members.cosocial.ca/t/agm-prep-getting-ready-for-october-3rd/86
The CoSocial.ca maintenance detailed at https://blog.cosocial.info/blog/scheduled-downtime-for-database-upgrade/ has begun as of 4:30 AM PDT/7:30 AM EDT/11:30 UTC.
Follow this page for updates.
UPDATES:
We are announcing a scheduled downtime of 30minutes to 1 hour for a database upgrade on the main CoSocial Mastodon server. This will take place Sunday, Aug 27th, in the morning.
| Time Zone | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| UTC | 11:30 | 12:30 |
| ADT | 09:30 | 10:30 |
| EDT | 07:30 | 08:30 |
| CDT | 06:30 | 07:30 |
| MDT | 05:30 | 06:30 |
| PDT | 04:30 | 05:30 |
The Mastodon server cosocial.ca will not be available for posting or reading during this time.
Please bookmark this status page for updates during that time.
More about the database upgrade
Currently the Mastodon server and database are on the same virtual server in the Digital Ocean Toronto data center. We are moving the database to the Digital Ocean Managed Database service. The service takes care of backups and includes a standby database that is kept in sync.
The most important information in Mastodon is kept in the database, and this move will help with both scalability and backups.
The TechOps team will be performing an upgrade to the 4.1.5 version of Mastodon, as well as some database maintenance and upgrades. This is aimed to take place between 10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST and 1:30pm PST / 4:30pm EST, Friday, July 21st, 2023. There will be some brief downtime of 5 minutes or so in duration as a full restart of all systems will be required.
Tag the @coop@cosocial.ca account if you notice any issues.
The TechOps team has applied a security update to the Mastodon server. Members may have experienced some short down time.
See the v4.1.3 Mastodon release notice for more details.
Two weeks ago, the CoSocial board asked the membership to comment on the question of whether our Mastodon instance should pre-emptively defederate from the soon-to-be-released ActivityPub-enabled Meta community, Threads. The results are available under the hashtag #CoSocialMeta.
Only a few of the responses are in favour of pre-emptively defederating. The primary response is “wait and see”.
Based on this input, the board voted unanimously in favour of the following proposal:
“CoSocial.ca will not pre-emptively defederate from the Threads app fediverse instance by Meta. However, we authorise the Trust and Safety team to take all necessary steps to protect user safety on CoSocial.”
Our reasoning is this: CoSocial is a service that its members pay for. If the board and staff restrict that service in any way, it should be to improve the quality of the service for everyone.
We do block over 200 instances that have been set up intentionally for harassment and abuse, or that are so poorly managed that they are a haven for harassers and abusers. We think blocking those domains makes the experience of the fediverse better for all CoSocial members.
Until the Meta service is released, we won’t know what the impact will be on CoSocial members. Absent a very strong signal from our membership to do so, we should not preemptively block that server.
Individual CoSocial members will be able to block the threads.net domain. This should screen any incoming content from the Meta site for them, and keep anyone on the Meta site from following them.
The board and core team leads meet most Tuesday evenings to move the co-op forward. Agenda items and team notes are gathered ahead of time and discussed live. We’re going to start publishing some basic updates around what we’re talking about and working on.
With talk of Meta joining, there are voices proposing to de-federate (a technical process with Mastodon to block connections for an entire server)
At this stage of the co-op, our approach is to solicit feedback from membership on whether we should de-federate, and then the board will vote next Tuesday. A server announcement has been posted, and we are encouraging members to provide feedback to the board by using the #CoSocialMeta tag.
Test Lemmy (Reddit clone) instance up at news.cosocial.ca. Early adopter members welcome to experiment, but ⚠️⚠️ currently undocumented and filled with bugs ⚠️⚠️. Follow #NewsCoSocial for updates, as well as the @cosocial@news.cosocial.ca group.
Board previously approved a part-time sysadmin role, our first paid position. This will be a junior role, with only a few hours per month. First draft of a job description, to be posted next week.
First office hours / open working session hosted by Alka and Dawn. Tuesdays @ 4pm PST / 6pm CST / 7pm EST, watch for more posts and details.
Hosting some regular chat sessions on different topics. On deck: Tim Bray, next Wednesday June 28th, with the latest in hot fediverse topics, aka #HotFedi
Will be refreshing the info site here in the coming weeks. More content — and writers! — needed. Discussion on sharing basic info about the fediverse, both for new / prospective members, as well as for Canadian media who might be interested due to growing activity in the space such as Meta, Reddit, etc.
Want to help with comms, news, and documentation? Email comms@cosocial.ca
We have a bank account at VanCity! We’re still taking payments through OpenCollective, which has worked very well for us. Perhaps more important, we have cash on hand – member subscription fees, that’s all we collect – for many months of operations.
To-do: Review of OpenCollective setups, review of projected finances, updates from TechOps on hosting fees, and first paid role.
To schedule: a live review / tour of our test Lemmy instance. Moderation tools are very basic, manual block list.