Upgrade social.coop to mastodon 4.0?

This is definitely high on the list of things to do in the Tech Working Group. We have been a bit slow to do the upgrade because of some shifting amongst the team, and we are interested in testing our backup and restore beforehand. Look for more news about this soon, and check in with the TWG or get involved if you want to help out. (And thanks for the nudge, I think you are using Loomio as intended.)

You wouldn't know this @Scott Jenson but there's a discussion about potentially moving to a 'fork' of Mastodon called Hometown. The discussion is here.

If that doesn't happen, though, I definitely think we should perform upgrades to stable releases as soon as those with access to the server can do so (while thanking them for their efforts!)

I actually did find that discussion but that seemed mostly fueled by the desire to have >500 char post limit (which doesn't interest me at all) I just want social.coop to stay current and update to 4.0 as it has several quality of life improvements that are very much appreciated. I'd hate to think I moved to social.coop to move backwards.

Yes, it started that way, but eventually led to other features of Hometown that some found interesting (including me, the one that started the thread as you said only to have a higher char limit).

I always enjoy deeply how community talk can enrich us all... :)

@Ed Summers I didn't notice your comment at first. That's great to hear thank you. I appreciate with a community run instance, it can take time. As long as it's clear the Tech Working Group wants to move, that's enough. I appreciate everyone's hair is a bit on fire right now...

@Scott Jenson Please note that 4.0 is not an official release yet - it's an "RC", meaning release candidate. Some instances participate in the public testing of the RC, but I would argue that we should wait until the release is actually final.

That said, we are a bit behind regardless (3.5.3 is the latest stable release, and we're on 3.4.6).

That's actually my worry @Erik Moeller that the Tech group would rather move to 3.5.3 first. My hope is that 4.0 will be released fairly soon and we'd skip upgrade to 4.0. I'm assuming it's not trivial to upgrade so let's get the most out of the effort. If however, you feel that 4.0 is months away (you have much more experience in this than I do) then maybe 3.5.3 isn't quite so bad.... I just really miss the quality of life improvements I had on 4.0, it's the first thing I noticed when arriving here.

I have a slight preference to stay off of Release Candidates for social.coop; primarily because I want stability + reliability more than I want QoL improvements.

My experience maintaining Rails apps has mostly been that significant updates can range from relatively trivial to back-breakingly painful, and I haven't done enough with Mastodon to feel confident that a 4.0rc will not have adverse reliability, security, and data integrity effects.

Yeah, I think we want to stay on stable releases in general. I don't personally see much need to be on the bleeding edge at social.coop Although we have talked about potentially running multiple servers for testing. So perhaps a release candidate would be appropriate there? I also would like the TWG to get to a place where upgrading won't be much of a big deal, so upgrading one week and then again the next shouldn't be a problem?

4.0 has just been released: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v4.0.0

might be time to upgrade now, tho? https://portswigger.net/research/stealing-passwords-from-infosec-mastodon-without-bypassing-csp

I agree with @Christina Bowen about the security updates. Upgrading to 4.0 has never been about being on the 'bleeding edge'. 4.0 is no longer a release candidate, it's 'official' now. (and being used by LOTS of instances) It's not a risky action. The security upgrades alone should be enough reason to do it.

I believe that security issue is fixed in 3.5.5 as well, but don’t let me stop you from upgrading to 4

This security update should be done before the upgrade IMHO. Also, there is already a 4.0.2, however, one big concern I see with 4.x is the lack of a splash login/registration page, the new layout brings us to an /explore page, which shows the public timeline... This could be an issue WRT registration of new members...

I’m seeing many different threads about how confusing 4.x is, for different reasons, so aside from my previous mention, this one also stands out as wtf

1. Apparently if you click "Report" and then choose "I just don't like it" from the very limited menu of reasons for reporting, no report is actually generated. This is terrible and is going to lead to no end of frustration from users who don't understand why mods seem to be ignoring them. We already have the option to block someone without reporting, why add this pathway?

2. The only substantive reason among those limited options to click for why you're making a report is "Spam". Nothing at all about abuse. Terrible signal about priorities.

3. If I search for a username and the search is a little slow, while the UI is waiting it shows me a "You might be interested in" list of suggested follows. I dislike this anyway because algorithmic curation has done so much harm to every other social media site that's tried it, but to make things worse: every time I test it the list includes a specific user who I know has blocked me. They don't want to hear from me, why lead me to them?

https://weirder.earth/@eldang/109355565948465166

That post from @[email protected] is incorrect. I checked on my own server running 4.0.2 and replied to their post with correct info. I don't know why they believe "I just don't like it" doesn't generate a report -- it in fact does, a very detailed one. https://social.coop/@jsit/109356643758721981

I don't have the skills to help with the actual upgrade, but would love to see it happen. I for one prefer the explore / public-local front page since it lets you see what is actually going on inside the instance before you sign up. I would also make use of the hashtag-follow feature.

For sure, there are a lot of great enhancements that I'd love to see, plus I think being below 3.5 prevents media from different timelines from showing up correctly sometimes, so I'd love to see that get fixed.

There are supposed to be some significant performance improvements, too.

Not to mention the severe security concerns.

Honestly if this is still on 3.4 in December, I might start thinking more seriously about other instances.

Hi all, I'm a new user. I'd like to go to 4.02+ if possible. Below is a screenshot of reporting interface from the 4.02 instance I'm currently using.