@gremaure hello and thank you! Having my toot replied to really makes me feel welcomed.

Seems like the service does come with a steep learning curve, but it sure is interesting to dig into!

I'll try to worry less about the culture or doing the right things. From what I've seen so far, it seems many like cats, so it can't be that difficult to mingle, can it? :p

@renata I think cats are a pretty safe bet anywhere on the internet ^^

I think the culture is probably just something we'll get a feel for in time. It's definitely overwhelming but I've come across some really interesting people here, and it's a much more diverse space than Facebook or Twitter, which is nice. :)

@gremaure You're right :) My favorite thing so far is how human every interaction has been. To think that something like this come to fruition because some people set aside their time to work on it without any "reward" is amazing.

I love humanity.

@renata There's no limit to what people can achieve when they set their minds to it.

Most of the time I love humanity. I have my cynical days where I think it needs to be switched off and on again a couple of times though :P

@gremaure I mean, that is the first rule of tech support, so there's no reason to believe it won't work for humanity too :P

@Sacchan whee someone to talk to when it's pretty much dead everywhere! Hello, glad to be here :)

@Annalee hii and thank you! I'm loving this small corner of the internet that you organize :) Thanks for the hard work

@renata credit where it's due: @phildini does the heavy lifting :)

@Annalee thanks, @phildini 😊 It's a good place to be.

@renata Heh, and one way you can tell I'm not quite used to it is I did the wrong smiley there! Let's try again: 😃 There!

@kindjourneys hahaha. I hope I'll be savvy enough to explore the federation timeline as early as you, though! 😄

@renata Heh, you got boosted by someone I follow! :-) (I do read the federation timeline sometimes, though! :-) )

@kindjourneys so that's how it works! Everyday you learn something new :D

You seem pretty cool yourself! 😄 I didn't know any folk musician

@renata Hee, thank you! :-D

@renata Also I hope it's okay if I follow you! You seem rather super. :-)

@gekitsu isn't it strange that you meet people with the most similarities on a place known for its diversity? 😀

@renata yes, there is a very counterintuitive element to it, isn’t there? on the other hand, that people with a tendency to procrastinate are easily found on the internet, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. ;)

@gekitsu right :p still it feels good to mingle with people who procrastinate for the same reasons 😂

@renata absolutely!

@lapis oh hello! My hobbies include reading, writing (but mostly dumps), and discovering everything new and exciting! Professionally I deal with data, so I always get a good chuckle when data meet memes, like you can find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/data_irl/

And that's a very helpful hashtag, thanks!

What did you do to dive in the deep end?

@renata Well, I started on Witches Town (rip) which I enjoyed, but was also a little confusing because people would talk about this boost and favorite stuff but it was all under different, witchier names and symbols, so I literally clicked buttons and hoped I didn't annoy anyone.
It also took me... months.... to realize that you can just click the reply button to reply to a post, you don't have to type someone's name to reply to them. 😳

@lapis ooh that was my biggest dilemma when picking an instance! On one hand, I wanted to join a smaller one with more relatable locals. But on the other hand, I dreaded the day my home might vanish just like that 😣

Your story with the reply button is hilarious! I can tell you're not a Twitter refugee then 😜

@renata lol
I made a twitter account years ago! ....and never used it once. Twitter still emails me suggesting people to follow. What a nag!

@lapis hahaha tell me about it! I've had it for all these years and tweeted a whopping 43 times in total! To be fair, I did join Twitter all too late when it'd become unusable.

I wish I could leave it for good, but my current job requires it.

That's very annoying of them. Do you have reasons not to delete your account?

@renata ...........it honestly never occurred to me. Ok that's something to put on the list of things to do.

@lapis hope you get that figured out :D

@verity hi to you too! 😀

@venetianblond hello there 👋

@Einahpets oops! Somehow I missed your toot. I'm currently reading "How to Lie with Statistics", so data analysis is one of those interests. I'm hoping to learn more "advanced" data viz preferably this year itself.

What made you choose wandering.shop? 🙂

@renata so I'm a volunteer on a committee in a professional organization that is actually looking at data visualization, so that is definitely an interest of mine! I work in the collection and data quality of clinical data, so viz isn't something I know a ton about yet, heh, but somewhere I see my field moving towards.

My interests: I read a lot of speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, horror) and try to keep up with my kids (ages 5 & 2). 😎

@renata and the reader in me is what made me choose wandering.shop.

@Einahpets sounds like I'm at the right place 😁

@Einahpets ooh, so do you, like, hand out surveys and conduct interviews for patients? And what do you do to control data quality?

I do read horror and fantasy, too! My guilty pleasures are https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories (horror) and https://www.reddit.com/r/hfy (fantasy), especially if I spend too much time on them.

@bortzmeyer I like that, how everyone has a role in shaping the fediverse into something everyone feel comfortable in 🙂

@renata Oh, and with regards the "instance disappearing" problem, people are actively working on the ability to migrate your account across instances. It's not there yet, only some things can be moved, but it is likely to be possible at some point, making the problem less of an issue.

@ColinTheMathmo oh that's awesome to know, thanks! It's not always easy to look for info regarding mastodon (I do always try googling before asking), so I'll keep your offer in mind (and hold you to it 😜)

@renata Not a problem - happy to help when I can, just not always available.

Cheers!

@ralph too deep