@jwildeboer 2 days past 4 year anniversary :)

@jwildeboer Time flies, apparently. Should have checked my profile before I answered. Closing in on 4, years, not ”1-2” :)

@jwildeboer Is there a way to find out?

@jwildeboer ok need to amend that, last edit to the password entry for mastodon.social was March 2020. So 6 years now. Wow.

@jwildeboer Got my first accounts in 2018. But started using the Fediverse regularly only after Elon took over Twitter.

@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net over 15 years

@jwildeboer 7 months and now I'm getting bored 🤣😝. Because none of my friends are here 😁

@jwildeboer i used identi.ca for years before it was destroyed by some random stuff called pump. Then was forced to be on twitter, since people on the tech stack I'm interested were only there. It seems that this account here is 9 years? Time freaking flies 😱😱

@jwildeboer

I came with the first "Fuck Elon Musk"-Wave.

@jwildeboer My first account is from 2017 :D

@jwildeboer I’m not just new to the Fediverse but I’m new to social media. I avoided signing up for a social media account until February 2026. Curiosity got to me. I chose Mastodon because I read “The Internet Con” by Cory Doctorow.

@jwildeboer I was part of the great Twitter migration of '22. Those were heady days when everything seemed possible.

@jwildeboer I am guessing a good number of the 3-5 years group was the twitter melt down time frame. I selected that. But actually I had signed up for diaspora long before. But I didn’t really use it. So it probably doesn’t count properly.

@jwildeboer ✅ Off and on for years

@jwildeboer I was going to reply 3-5 then realised that @Floppy created this instance way before the pandemic which meant that it had to be more than 5 years ago.

First insight: "Far longer than I originally thought" is quite popular ;)

@jwildeboer 3.5 on mastodon, a lot longer if you count in a now defunct diaspora node...

@jwildeboer Heh. I can't prove my answer because the server I started with has been decommissioned, but... 🤣

@jwildeboer

I initially got an account in 2016, but never used it. When I came back to the Fediverse in 2022 during the Great Twitter Migration, that instance was no longer active, so I got an account on mastodon.lol. When that instance went down I moved to my current instance, me.dm.

@jwildeboer Since December 2018. Before that, I was on gnusocial and later on mastodon.cloud.

@jwildeboer

I joined the day muskrat got the keys to Twitter. I deleted my Twitter account and never looked back. The Fediverse is my only social media account. It’s comfy here.

@jwildeboer There's a bit of a bulge dating from when Musk began the process of acquiring Twitter.

@jwildeboer just found out when looking up the date yesterday was my 4 anniversary…Yay

@jwildeboer four years today! Wouldn’t leave now

@jwildeboer Active since 2022, first account in 2017.

@jwildeboer

I came in November 2022 in the big migration from Twitter when it came under ownership of a... Well, I'd rather not write down my opinion of the owner of the site that used to be Twitter.

@jwildeboer
Should have checked more thoroughly. It's more than 5 years, not 3-5... 😅

Alt...

Small Screenshot showing Mastodon & 14/06/2020 tags for my previous (first) account.

@jwildeboer Seit Elon Musk Twitter aufgekauft und in eine rechte Jauchegrube verwandelt hat. Ich sagte auch, das Twitter damit tot sei. Ach, wäre es doch nur gestorben, statt verdreht, gebrochen, zerrissen und zerfleischt worden zu sein hin zu X. 🕯️😢

@jwildeboer We talking how long have I been active or how long have I had an account on $fedi_service ?

@jwildeboer Since "Musk day" and never looked back...

@jwildeboer I’m new to Mastodon but old to social media. The others have … an unpleasant user experience. Wanted something different. And my wife made me do it. 🙂 As usual she was right.

@jwildeboer
I've been here for almost six years

@jwildeboer apparently almost 3.5 years, i wouldn't have thought! Though quite some time was rather to completely inactive.

@jwildeboer In April I've been for 8 years in Fediverse

@jwildeboer Seems I was on Identi.ca in 2010

@jwildeboer long enough…

@jwildeboer

This poll is kind of flawed since anyone here who has been here for 3 years has 2 options in the poll (both 1 to 3 and 3 to 5).

A better poll would have been:

* Less than 1 year
* 1 to 3 years
* 4 to 5 years
* More than 5 years

@jwildeboer The most important thing is actually that we’re all here NOW! 👍

@jwildeboer I made the account in 2023 but never used it, then came back to it in the last few weeks after getting off of almost all other big tech social media. So far the experience is much better and I'm glad to be here now. 😁👍

@jwildeboer Was on identi.ca in 2008, then self-hosted Laconica/StatusNet. Then went to self-hosted Friendica for a few years after StatusNet became "social networking for the enterprise", ran out of IPO money, and imploded.

Then I cocooned for a few years but eventually got a .social account (didn't think that through) in 2021, with a shiny new name and gender (as is the Fediverse custom). And found things really haven't changed much.

@jwildeboer I've always beem here, since time um.. inmemory (or something)

@jwildeboer Making me feel old...

@jwildeboer Unfortunately my original instance no longer exists to check but I'm *pretty certain* I joined before april 2021, I think it was in 2020 or maybe even 2019 in fact.

@jwildeboer

& I fucking love it💙

i am so happy i landed here. i had heard of Mastodon when i got on bsky bc i wanted to be part of the resistance to this fascist regime

but when they booted me for celebrating the death of a racist, fascist bigot & I came to the #fediverse, i couldn't be happier!

@jwildeboer Due to some weird timestamp error, my first post on Octodon social was a few hours before the admin’s first “test” post. There were obviously people already there in good numbers, and I felt late to the party in April 2017. People rushed in, people rushed out. Nov ‘22 was the peak influx for sure- I think that was when Musk did a particularly onerous thing that was a final straw for lots of Twitter holdouts. It was an interesting time, and I’m glad it’s worked out this long.

@jwildeboer already 8 years @ mastodon and additional time earlier @ gnusocial
Had to look it up though

@jwildeboer
[x] since the date Musk announced he buys twitter. Whenever that was.

@jwildeboer since the day Elon bought Twitter!

@jwildeboer just realized that next year it will be 10 years.

@jwildeboer I was a bit late. It was 8 years and 5 months ago when I joined the first Mastodon server 👴🏽

@jwildeboer Strictly speaking, I've had an account since 2017; but in practice I've been most active over the past 3-5 years.

@jwildeboer almost exactly 3.5 years.

@jwildeboer

Apparently since 17.2.2025: https://feddit.org/u/tuuktuuk

A little over a year.

@jwildeboer In my 10th year!

@jwildeboer I have been instance-hopping for my first couple of years. I think the first account I ever had is now dead, but @xplosionmind@mastodon.uno and @tommi@mastodon.uno are still there! Crazy!

EDIT: woah I found @xplosionmind@mastodon.online

@jwildeboer I had to check - 4 years THIS month! 🥰🎂

@jwildeboer I created an account about 4 years ago. At the time I though it was too slow and didn't get it. Then I went to another social network (like Mastodon but smaller, it didn't federated with Mastodon, I can't remember its name now). Then I came back in November 2022, but this time with some friends from Twitter. Some of them explained me how this place works and I met more people afterwards. It has been better.

@jwildeboer when I joined it wasn't called fediverse and mastodon didn't exist.

@jwildeboer This comment simply shall bump the number of comments past the evil number.

Is it your reach, or only 6% growth in the past year? That can't be enough to net positive.
@jwildeboer

@jwildeboer just new here...

@jwildeboer I should've come here after #tumbr decided to pirge #NSFW content!

@jwildeboer new here, and it seems like I'm one of the few

@liw Often reading thu commits, if I'm looking for certain areas of the code it’s kinda nice to search the repo history for keywords, and see what paths pop out, discover the churn, see what tickets are referenced that I can read for more information. Thinking thats something claude/ai could do to summarise - grep the commits, extract ticket references, look up the ticket in YouTrack / GH etc. and summarise recent issue.

@liw ways to document the code architecture, entry points, data flows, etc are a problem I really don't feel we've cracked, especially in open source :(

@liw it's probably not optimally efficient, but I'll sometimes start by boxing out the lifecycle of the program: that is, I'll read the diff of the most recent commit to see what's still being worked on, then I'll go back and read the full contents of the initial commit to get a feel for the first working version. Then I gradually fill in the gaps with one or more other reading strategies depending on the codebase.

@liw I gave a talk about my process: https://www.joshmatthews.net/cusec16/unfamiliar.html

@liw I start reading the tests. They tell me the api and whats toplevel and whats support. also, the expected order of things.

(Then I abandon all hope cause I deep dive depth first and get lost, but thats on me)

@liw Having a particular issue to solve. This shifts the goal from the overwhelming having to understand the whole thing to just having to figure out how a specific aspect works. You don’t feel lost because you know what you are looking for. And while looking, you discover how the whole thing hangs together more or less by accident.