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Mastodon #research 🚀 I’m working on my master’s thesis at the University of Vienna, and I’d love your input! My research focuses on sustaining long-term user activity on Mastodon, contributing to a more active Fediverse. If you have a few minutes, please take my short survey: Your thoughts will contribute to meaningful research. Feel free to boost this post so we can reach as many users as possible. Thank you so much! 🙌 109 comments
 @stefko Will the outputs be published on an #OpenAccess repository under a free license (like CC BY for text, CC-0 for data)? @nemobis Hi! Thank you so much for your interest! The code for my computational analysis is already online and available as Open Access (it’s also linked at the end of the survey). I’d love to share the results of the survey too, but I haven’t decided where to publish them yet. Do you have any recommendations? @stefko Ah! I didn't get to the end of the survey: I don't even go past the first page without a mention of CC BY. ;) Yes, you can use https://zenodo.org/ (more advice at https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/?title=How_to_make_your_own_work_open_access&oldid=9356#Deposit_in_an_OA_repository_(%22green%22_OA%29 ).  @stefko @nemobis hello Stefanie. I agree with Nemo. As a data repository I recommend Zenodo, where your survey will share hard drives with the data of high-energy physics experiments in the Large Hadron Collider. I also believe Open Access is the only path consistent with asking for people's collaboration. Following you here. Will you toot when your results are out? @alberto_cottica @nemobis Hi! Yes I will publish my results as soon as I have them. Thank you for participating in my survey! @stefko Hi! Thank you for your research. @jakob Hi Jakob! 😊 I totally understand your concern, and I’ve already received similar feedback. I’m currently discussing this with my supervisor to find a solution. Changing the survey at this point is tricky because it could impact the results. I’ll definitely keep this in mind when analysing the data—thank you for bringing it up! @stefko @jakob I had the same problem, and I eventually decided against completing it because so many of the questions assumed I wasn't using my own instance. The reason I am on my own instance _might_ be relevant to your questions though. I didn't like how casually admins would threaten or actually defederate from other instances over minor infractions (or perceived future problems) and wanted to take control of that processes.   @stefko for the latency problem question at question 8, I wasn't sure what to answer either. I often experience long loading times for viewing videos, but I'm not sure if that's an issue of my instance or of the instance that it was posted from. Other than that chaos.social seems to work smoothly for me. Similarly for moderation questions, I wasn't always sure what to answer, as I don't notice moderation. And also (usually) don't notice content that I think should be removed. @stefko and I was surprised that there was no question regarding the amount of followers. Or own, perceived reach (which might be different, you might have only a few followers, but maybe they have more reach and boost your posts often). I would have been very curious how the (perceived) reach would correlate with the other, very interesting questions. @T_X Thanks for bringing that up. I was referring to the community guidelines. I hope it was not too confusing for you! @T_X Thank you for all your feedback! By that I meant that you create your own, public toots (which aren't replies and no matter if self-boosted or not)  @stefko @stefko Hi Stefanie, hast du noch andere Accounts auf Mastodon bzw im Fediverse...? Die Anzahl deiner Post's hier ... und dein Master-Thema harmonieren nicht wirklich... 😎 🙂 @stefko I'm on a couple of instances, so I've done my best to limit my responses to be about the largest one. I doubt you really want to hear about the moderation policies on my single user instance! @thenexusofprivacy @stefko @kissane I'm currently two-thirds of the way through reading this. I feel I have learned a few things. Things I was not naturally going to encounter. This article feels... important  @stefko@mastodon.social Ich würde ja gern dran teilnehmen, aber leider ist die erste Frage schon von der Fragestellung falsch angegangen.    @stefko sorry, but survey fails to go past first page in latest Firefox with uBlock origin and privacy badger running. @stefko found out the hard way that accidentally pressing the 'return' button on my phone keyboard while filling out the open text fields on the final page results in submitting the response 🤭 enjoy the half-sentence in the 'other remarks' section resulting from my fat fingers missing the backspace and hitting return. Good luck with the analysis and writing your thesis! @Timo_Micro Oh no! I’ll do my best to analyse it properly, and I’m glad the rest of the survey worked! Thanks for letting me know   @stefko filled it up, but Q7 felt weird: it felt more like a multiple choice between the options instead of put each on a spectrum, except the third option opens the possibility of managing high traffic. I answered the best I could.  @stefko I tried to fill it in but the only options were multiple times per month or never, I use it intensely for a week or two, every few months so wasn't sure how to answer. Could unfortunately not participate in the rest of the survey! @Zackstarkid Thank you for participating in my survey! I would love to know why you use Mastodon so rarely. Are there any reasons for that?  Done. Felt like I was somewhat biased in answering some questions - as I am one of the admins :flan_XD:  @h3artbl33d @stefko Yes, I came here to point that out too, the answers are skewed for instance admins. Of course I agree with every moderation decision on my instance, because I am the one making those decisions! 😂 @heinragas @h3artbl33d Hi! Thanks so much for your feedback—I’ve already addressed this issue based on similar suggestions I received. I really appreciate your support and for helping me with my studies! @stefko A pleasure to assist a lively-minded young Austrian. Here in the other “Austr…” country I think of yours mainly for musicians, composers, and biomedical researchers. @JamesAshburnerCBR I’m so happy to know that my survey has reached as far as the other side of the world! Thank you for supporting my research!  @stefko i'm amazed this survey just worked without js :blobcatopenmouth: @Dero_10 Thank you for your input! I've received similar feedback from others as well. I really appreciate your perspective! @stefko Done and boosted. Very interesting project about social medias and Mastodon !  @stefko is this for Mastodon specifically, or microblogging software on fedi as a whole? :shiba_confused:   @stefko I so happy to see you're on the right side of history and calling Mastodon posts Toots. Nothing but respect. @stefko no questions about the interface of Mastodon. I invested in the Ivory app, the web interface does not work that well. There should be more competition on interfaces. @rrustema Yes, I totally understand that! There could easily be a whole separate study on interfaces. 😄 I had to narrow down the factors for this research, but maybe for next time! @stefko Favorite Mastodon features? Annoyances/peeves (platform proper, instance)? @stefko answered your survey! But above all, the way the protocol is built (I think) does not allow for iterative exploration (human, I am not asking for more bots), and (cross-instance) exploration should be investigated further, IMHO. @fabriziob Thank you so much for your input! My literature review also highlighted the importance of user interactions in maintaining professional discourse. If you're interested in this topic, I came across an insightful paper by Wang et al. that explores the migration from Twitter to Mastodon, specifically how users experienced less engagement on Mastodon compared to Twitter. You can read more about it here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04005 @stefko thank you so much for the paper. @esoteric_programmer Yes, closed registration instances are not a problem at all, and I really appreciate you taking the time to fill out my survey! Initially, the survey was aimed at Mastodon users to help admins and moderators improve the environment on their instances. This might have made the questions a bit confusing for instance owners like you. I’ve since adjusted the survey based on feedback I’ve received on this issue. Thank you again for pointing it out—I’m grateful for your input!  Внезапно вопрос: что вообще впился всем этот Mastodon? Я уже который год им не пользуюсь и как-то ничего не теряю, так как ничего особенного они не даёт. К тому же не больше 4 картинок на пост, что даже как-то глупо что ли. @stefko Sehr nett! Das ist sehr merkwürdig. Meine Frau hat ihre Doktorarbeit an der Universität Wien auch mit einer Umfrage gemacht. In ihrem Fall ging es um Philologie, aber sie hat ihre Analyse komplett in #R und #Python gemacht. Hier ihr Repo: @stefko completed the survey, good luck processing the responses. Lot of engagement on your message! |
Gregory's Server
@stefko hi Stefko. I answered your survey. But some of my answers may not be as informative as you'd like: I don't use Home or Local feeds, only lists and #, so I'm not so aware of noise on my own instance. I noted this as a comment at the end.
I'm more aware of trolls on other instances, and I block those accounts - though, often by the time I spot them, they've been blocked (good work, moderators).
Best wishes for your studies.
Deb