@mrdk As far as I can tell, about 47% of live servers are single-user.

What do you mean that the lifetime of servers doesn't tell much about the Fediverse as a whole?

@mrdk Also, as far as I can tell, about 55% of all Fediverse users are on the top 20 biggest servers. About 88% are on the top 100; about 99% are on the top 1000 biggest servers.

@evan @mrdk do you follow a particular methodology or data source to get these stats? It'd be nice to know (and make a note).

@omkar_foss

The method is adding the user count for the top N servers and then dividing that by the total user count for the Fediverse (or at least all known servers).

You can get the user count from a server using Nodeinfo.

https://nodeinfo.diaspora.software/

@evan Thank you!

@omkar_foss not all Fediverse software supports Nodeinfo, so it's an estimate rather than a measurement.

You also have to know that a server exists. There's a Mastodon API endpoint that shows which other servers a server has seen; you can use that to do a breadth-first survey of the network.

@evan sure, I think an estimate might be good enough to understand Fediverse health.

I guess /instance/peers might be the Mastodon API endpoint that you mention: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/instance/#peers

@omkar_foss Yes, I think that's it!

@mrdk @evan

Yes, perhaps might've been better to make the distinction, and ask for multi-person servers specifically.

The term "server" itself is imho an unfortunate case of a lower-level abstraction (that of the installed base) creeping into a high-level one (that of the unified social network stratum). It is a passed station, but a multi-account server/instance might simply be called a Hub.

"How do you join the fediverse, Self-hosted or via a Hub?"

"My actors are all on Hubs."

(Actor is also kind of a technical name, but Person doesn't match, and Identity is awkward. Account is possible, still technical. Fedizen might be used, but rings a bit weird.)

@smallcircles @mrdk why?

@smallcircles @mrdk Also, I ask the questions I want answers to. I don't like being told by other people what questions I should ask. If *you* want to ask some different question, you should definitely do it! Let me know, and I'll boost it.

@evan @mrdk

Don't worry. I am not *telling* you, I am *musing* on the phrasing of the poll.

@smallcircles @mrdk I wonder what the implications you read into the poll that made you think that single-user servers shouldn't count. What do you think it is "really" asking, or should be really asking?

@evan OMG I have this problem SO OFTEN trying to get measurement papers published in academic venues, we answer some interesting question and the reviews are basically "but why didn't you answer this OTHER question", and I just want to respond to say *this is an interesting question and I have answered it, if you want to answer this other question, how about you answer it*

@ricci i asked a few times and no one seemed to want to say why asking about multi-user servers is more important than asking about all servers. I think, but don't know, that they want to have some answers about the viability of the volunteer-run community server model? I'm not sure.