@evan There is a clear benefit to student-oriented instances, I think, but I also fear (with the recent example of brutal union-busting) that if the university hosts it, there won't be as much subversive possibility in it. Many difficult thoughts.

@evan The University of the Philippines hosts its own instance @upsystem 😊

@evan My institution is A5 on Microsoft 365 so we had Yammer until it got killed off. I don’t think I could convince them to fire up an instance. My official office space is “home” so I have to borrow space for office hours with students or use Teams.

@evan I think it makes sense, considering that universities already usually host email, but I think most students would rather use a more generalist or just university-independent server, for a number of reasons

@evan
If they can afford it and believe it benefits their students by providing information as well as a forum.

@evan in general, there seems to be many positives in the surface. But also a number of problematic details would probably need to be worked out.

Getting academics onto the fediverse first is probably a better more focused goal, then students can be thought about after that.

This … qualified yes was my vote.

@evan Instances for geographical areas tend to be moderated poorly and by people who are already in positions of social privilege. Why would happenstance comminglings like university study be any different?

@evan@cosocial.ca I'm making a Calckey server for my university! Hopefully it'll be adopted by my fellow students...

@evan@cosocial.ca mine does

i refuse to use it

@evan My union should too. I refuse to use Facebook, but much union activity occurs there. Mastodon provides a potential partial replacement that's much more in line with union values.

@evan University of the #Philippines present! ;) @upsystem #UP

@evan

I advise first reading about the history of Usenet and consulting any available greybeards who helped maintain university Usenet servers back when that was a thing.

You will need dedicated moderators and admins. That initial impulse to "free speech" absolutism you see at a lot of universities will absolutely wreck your administrators' and IT people's lives.

@evan
I've voted qualified yes, but I'm not sure about students accounts... Also teachers and investigators accounts should be also strictly professional... At the end the question is who owns the instance and the power relationship. I support goverment and institutions instances, even company instances, for official accounts; but for personal accounts instances should be community organized.

@evan
I voted 'qualified yes' and feel I owe you an explanation.
If I ruled the world, each university would host its own Mastodon instance.
The problem I foresee, a possible cloud - hence my qualification - is the practical business of finding/funding people to do the donkey work of hosting...
But assuming that - possibly minor and theoretical? - stumbling block could be overcome, my vote would be 'strong yes' :ablobthinking:

@evan @kcarruthers in the case of Australia I would suggest one instance run by aarnet, maybe NSF for the USA.

@evan Now do government agencies.

@evan
I think the academic community -- and the Fediverse -- would be much better served if universities were to collaborate on developing a far more extensive open source platform, combining the federation, fine-grained sharing and access control of Hubzilla with the collaborative, co-presence and publishing capabilities of Nextcloud.
In such a platform Mastodon-like microblogging would represent a subset of the services afforded.
Something like that could change the world.

@evan As a university employee, I voted for a Qualified Yes. I think it would be good for PR and social media teams, plus accounts for answering questions (admissions, help desks, etc), but I think faculty staff and students should make personal accounts on other instances.

A university hosting their own might even generate some journal articles 🎓

@evan I'd be concerned that it would have the problem university web hosting currently has, IE, accounts+posts being deleted after the users graduate or drop out, which would IMO not be good from a healthy-community perspective. If we were in DID world or whereever where Mastodon accounts were truly portable then it would be good.

I would also be worried about doing this at the same time the DeSantis right in the U.S. is starting to use universities as a lever for censorship and social control.

@evan privacy issues

@evan
For staff and public communications, absolutely. I think opening it to students would cause too much moderation load. If a university is willing to take that on, sure, but it would have to be done with strict policy support.

@evan Student unions and staff unions should host instances for members. Universities in their current top-down form - qualified no.

@evan
You'll lose those that graduate.

Whatever subject they graduate from, they will move to an instance with peers. They won't want their "Local" feed to be a bunch of students.

@evan

There'll be a conflict between the PR department, faculty and students, all of which may have very different ideas of what's reasonable to post about.

@evan I think this would be great for professors, lecturers, and researchers, but super unwise for students...

@evan I think *student groups* at universities should run instances. Thinking of SIPB at MIT