I’m not posting on the birdsite (dogesite?) anymore, but I do check in from time to time. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the sick burn served out by @benwikler in the wake of the #wisconsinelection ! #protasiewicz #signalflare #glovecompartment

@jerry I'd tried setting up a resource for Google+ refugees, which ... turned out to be hard.

Lessons learned, however, at https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Main_Page.

Related subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/

I've been meaning to compile a set of lessons learned, of possible interest to you and perhaps @evacide (I'd initiated contacts w/ EFF a ways back but dropped that ball).

• Community is a lot harder to preserve than content. Existing social media platforms aren't just the publisher but the directory.

• Move to an established platform. Even if it's not ideal, something that's up right now beats the heck out of still-in-development (or not even that) options.

• Mailing lists are highly underappreciated. They offer an out-of-band universal contact mechanism: email addresses.

• Though managed migration of community is hard ... informal migration can still be surprisingly effective if people know where to find you. Post VERY PROMINENT NOTICES of where you'll be moving to.

• #SIGNALFLARE was a mechanism created and employed heavily at G+. The hashtag, plus a set of contacts and alternate platforms at which you could be found was encouraged. I'd compiled many of those in a Notable Names Database: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/G%2B_Notable_Names_Database

• Once a platform has either announced it will be shutting down, or appears quite likely to do so for other reasons, the best thing to do is to establish alternative presences sooner rather than later.

• In fact, better than that is to have a multi-platform strategy from the start. Do NOT put all your eggs in one basket. (Jerry with mailing list, blog, podcast, Twitter, and Mastodon presences is an exemplar here.)

• There's a notion of three types of people in an emergency: 1) deer in the headlights, 2) show us what to do, and 3) this ship's unsinkable. Numbers 1 & 3 can't be helped, group 2 are your squad. (There are also a few other categories, including griefers and profiteers/opportunists.) For a platform migration, the good news is that few people are likely to die, so groups 1 & 3 will eventually rediscover the main body, but during the transition they're of less than no use.

• People do in fact die. The refugee Diaspora* instance for G+ refugees, Pluspora.com, failed after its admin died, without any continuity / transfer-of-leadership plan. Joindiaspora, the original Diaspora* instance, after both technical debt and an AWOL admin meant that it was no longer viable. #BusFactor is a real problem, continuity needs addressing.

There's more I could write, this is probably a good start.

#TwitterExodus #Plexodus #CommunityMigration #CommunityContinuity #SwitchingPlatforms

@bcmFietser That's a practice strongly recommended and publicised with the hashtag #SIGNALFLARE by many people who'd migrated elsewhere from Google+ when that service shut down.

Tell people where you're going.

Having out-of-band communications / contacts (email, phone, other social networks) also helps.

Putting the information in the most durably visible location also helps. Twitter header and pinned posts, for example.