Chinwag News @chinwagnews@chinwag.org

Hi new users and friends! Just wanted to mention that Chinwag's published rules have been mid-rewrite for a while now.

While there are not many major changes, we are adding an explicit mention of automatic cross-posting from other services at a "generally frowned upon" level. We don't want to see accounts generating a ton of traffic if nobody is actually using them and present on the service.

So just a heads-up on that, please DM this account if you have questions.

Hi, new people of Chinwag! Just a note to say that we don't jump quickly into software updates around here and if you're hearing about new features in some version of Mastodon you might not see it for a bit.

Also if you signed up via an app, we'd strongly encourage you taking a look via the web at https://social.chinwag.org once in a while as things are exposed a little differently in both and you might find new things there.

Welcome aboard, however you come in though!

Benevolent dictator Mike here.

My budget is going to be tight for a while, and while there's no danger to Chinwag, support would be more appreciated than ever.

https://liberapay.com/chinwag

If you can't, don't. It's cool. We'll still be here for you.

Image uploads were broken on the chinwag.im messaging service for a while today. While this issue is now fixed, it's a bit of a temporary solution and will need some downtime to address properly. This is likely to be about a week away. More updates soon.

The Chinwag Social app for Android has been synced up with Tusky 18, which has a ton of improvements from that side, plus our light Chinwag style and options for new users to sign up with us easily.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.chinwag.socialapp

A few minor patches and updates on top of the recent Chinwag Social upgrade have now been deployed, and it looks like the last few lingering issues are resolved (fingers crossed).

Please let us know if you have any concerns with the service!

This recent update contains the biggest push towards de-elephantising the UI yet, making Chinwag branding more obvious, and looking much less "off-the-shelf Mastodon". It's far from complete yet and might never be, but it keeps us busy here at Chinwag HQ.

You'll see more of our lovely, chatty clipart friends in the future, and we're chipping away at turning "toot" into "post" everywhere.

We're definitely having some image related issues after the update. Oddly uploading image attachments via the web interface seems broken, but using a mobile app it works fine.

Looking into it!

Chinwag Social is now running code synced with Mastodon 3.5.3. Please report any odd issues you think might be related to the update.

Our instance's source is published here: https://git.chinwag.org/chinwag/chinwagsocial

Have fun!

Testing! Are we back?

Expect downtime for Chinwag services tonight (within the next hour or two from this post). Initial tests seem to indicate the update to 3.5.3 will go fine, but there's only one way to find out, right?

We'll take the opportunity to do a full restart or two and check our backup system.

In the event of extended downtime, please check @bremensaki for updates.

We do have a supplemental service at feedtube.com that is available exclusively to Chinwag users where you can add any RSS feed from a blog or whatever and it'll become something you can follow and interact with here as a user.

We'd strongly recommend using something like that over a cross-posting tool.

If you want help with anything like this, please don't hesitate to ask!

Hi new users and friends! Just wanted to mention that Chinwag's published rules have been mid-rewrite for a while now.

While there are not many major changes, we are adding an explicit mention of automatic cross-posting from other services at a "generally frowned upon" level. We don't want to see accounts generating a ton of traffic if nobody is actually using them and present on the service.

So just a heads-up on that, please DM this account if you have questions.

We've requested that Chinwag Social no longer be listed as an available instance on the Join Mastodon site. This does not mean we're going anywhere, just that we'd prefer more organic growth.

If you're one of our users, please consider inviting your friends or family to join us! You can generate handy links for that here: https://social.chinwag.org/invites

Direct registration is still open for anyone visiting the site though, and there are no plans to change that at this time.

Hi, new people of Chinwag! Just a note to say that we don't jump quickly into software updates around here and if you're hearing about new features in some version of Mastodon you might not see it for a bit.

Also if you signed up via an app, we'd strongly encourage you taking a look via the web at https://social.chinwag.org once in a while as things are exposed a little differently in both and you might find new things there.

Welcome aboard, however you come in though!

Chinwag Social is currently closed to new registrations due to some bizarre IRC drama related bots signing up everywhere. What is this, 1995?

If you want a new account just hold your horses for a bit. We'll be down the pub waiting for all this to blow over.

Chinwag Social's code has just been synced up with Mastodon 3.3.2. Please report any issues you might see to us, but we expect this change to be fairly uneventful!

The RSS to ActivityPub service on https://feedtube.com is now set to allow feed additions by Chinwag Social users. If there's an RSS feed you're keen to follow via your Chinwag account, please feel free to log in and add it!