I think a big reason for some physicists not migrating to Mastodon is that the community is somewhat fractionalized. Astro has astrodon, and QI has qubit-social, but large communities like condensed matter/materials science, plasma, nuclear, high energy, etc don’t have instances (to the best of my knowledge). Other communities, like hydrodynamics and physics education, are smaller, so a separate instance for their subfield might not make sense.
I almost think that the different physics/math instances should be connected somehow, so people in Mathstodon, social-qubit, and similar instances can have more communication with people outside their direct field of study. Or, combine all physics instances into a larger physics-based mastodon instance.
@JoshuahHeath
Directly following the local timeline from another instance is currently not possible, right?
I think such a feature might help to solve that problem.
@JoshuahHeath @TVZache I have liked using a list so far to have a quantum only feed because I joined before qubit.social was created.
Although, you have to manually add profiles to the lists.
@quantum_purva @TVZache I have the same for condensed matter. Unfortunately, as @sreedhar and I found out, a list can’t be made public.
@JoshuahHeath @TVZache @sreedhar That's unfortunate. I looked it up and still seems to be an open issue on GitHub. Fingers crossed someone does work on it !
@JoshuahHeath @TVZache you can go to the instance URL /public which may show you the local feed - the admins have choice of showing local or federated feeds there
but to the original point, joining an instance is also about track record - mathstodon has been around for 5 or 6 years and is fantastic. other instances are popping up left and right but I am not sure their owners always fully realize the commitment needed over longer time
@TVZache I believe you are correct; I can’t follow a timeline from another instance. If we could follow several, or switch between additional related timelines, that could solve the issue.