csed.social has been created to be a social networking site that is home to computer science education professionals.
In November of 2022, after Elon Musk took over at Twitter and started making drastic changes, millions of users started looking for social networks that were not under the control of a corporation. Most of these users were destined for Mastodon. Mastodon is not a platform but a federation of servers united under a single API with the intent of giving users choice and protecting them from becoming "the product."
There was a problem though, users still had to make a choice about what server to join. The vast majority would join mastodon.social. If this were any typical federated system, the choice of server wouldn't really matter that much. You may end up with a slightly different user experience but the core information would be the same. Mastodon has one unique feature that makes the choice of a server important. The local feed shows all of the local content from the server. On a big server like mastodon.social that feed can be overwhelming. Providing topic based servers clusters users around a like set of ideas and can provide a more focused local feed.
csed.social was created as a focal point for the cs education community. This server would collect and verify computer science education professionals so that they can easily access content more relevant to their needs while still gaining access to the mastodon federation as a whole.
It should be understood that the purpose of csed.social is not to restrict posting to computer science topics but merely to concentrate like professionals in a single server. While some educators may choose to separate their computer science persona from their hobby persona by creating separate accounts, the hope of csed.social is that this becomes the single account for most of our members. Seeing the full range of activities and beliefs of our colleagues creates better relationships and strong professional learning communities.
To be sucessful this server will require the cooperation of the members for a variety of one time or ongoing tasks and volunteers are currently being sought out to fill these roles. Many of these roles are technical and are an opportunity for us to practice our lifelong learning skills as we together develop a member run social networking server as part of the mastodon federation.
Define the mission and produce the required rules, terms of service and privacy documents for csed.social.
Complete the set up, operations and review security. Verify new members and handle moderation tasks. Scale the server as we grow.
Build a real website, attract members and build lists useful to the community with an eye on future events and sponsorship activities.
Build a path to sustainability, ensure that we maintain three months of operation costs so that we can sign the mastodon compact if desired.
Lead the work of the other groups. Establish procedures for maintaining a leadership team.
Documentation and support for new members and the process for operating the seerver.
Arrange for in person events at conferences to reenforce the relationships built virtually.