What is this about in simple language?

[chmac]

I've read the following:

Community-driven fork of Mastodon's federated social network software

Hello friends! A few announcements...

1. C4Social is now Magic Stone.
2. Ecko is the new name for our fork of #Mastodon.
3. Acropolis is the new name for our fork of #diaspora*.
   These new names are part of a transition from an experimentation phase into something more like testing.

Mission: We're creating magic through evolution of the Fediverse

What does this project actually aim to do? What's different from the mastodon upstream? What's in it for me? How do I know if this is a project I want to support and use?

If you're not looking for outside collaborators or users, feel free to close this ticket without comment. I assume this is a project trying to support some kind of change and so I assume these questions are helpful to explain to new visitors what's going on here, but of course I might be way off the mark.

[weex]

Hi @chmac. Welcome and thank you for this. We're definitely looking for collaborators and questions like these can be hard to generate as a founder so definitely appreciated!

Since one of the things we're doing is test C4 for more FOSS projects, and that contract orients all work around problems, I would like to address each as a separate problem. Running short on time at the moment but what I'll do when I'm free and invite you to do as well is to create an issue for each (or anything else that comes to mind). Then they can be solved with individual PRs against the site or maybe in other more creative and effective ways. There's tremendous freedom in early-stage projects like this which is part of what has made it exciting to work on thus far.

[weex]

Created a couple of issues, "What's in it for me? How do I know if this is a project I want to support and use?" I can see as a two part question that can be asked in each of Ecko's and Acropolis' repos.

[chmac]

@weex Cool, thanks for the positive reception.

One solution would be a blog post, or similar article that could be linked from the various repos. A sort of "what is this all about" post. Which could be as simple as a GitHub gist. Anything that has a likely long lived URL would probably do.

Like what's the issue in mastodon that this project ties to solve? Or why does this project exist? Maybe it exists because some group of people think it's cool or interesting to work on. Or it exists because mastodon doesn't have a specific feature that seems important to some people. Or mastodon is behaving in a non democratic manner. Etc, etc.

[weex]

@chmac Just reviewed and this is covered in the FAQ though I suppose it could be expanded. Not sure if you're thinking of some thing with more of a narrative?

[chmac]

@weex Answers in the FAQ look great. Maybe some part of that could be copied over to the homepage? I think to people who are not already familiar with the project this intro might not make sense:

Creating magic through evolution of the Fediverse
We want to see decentralized social media flourish. For that to happen, we need more people to get involved in improving what we’re already using and to start new projects as well. Magic Stone is applying a novel development model so that everyone can contribute their strengths to grow software along with the community.

[weex]

Definitely and thank you for focusing in on the opening paragraph. I suppose keeping to the spirit of the protocol I would ask besides the questions already posed, are there any specific points that can be clarified? If not then this problem might specified well enough for someone to tackle.

[chmac]

@weex Could be as simple as adding a sentence like "For more on the project and its goals, see the FAQ" with the link. What do you think?

[weex]

Got it. That's one of those ideas that's so simple but easy to overlook! Someone will read that but be like "ok?" 🤔

I'll PR that.