Sakurajima Updates – November 2023

Happy 1 Year Sakurajima Anniversary. While I made a long post about how we started and experiences managing the instance during the first year. Since I didn’t make a monthly update, I may as well share what we have ready.

The Possible Switch to Sharkey

I have been looking at a fork of Misskey, Sharkey for a while and have decided to set up a single-user instance test server. So far, this fork is more like Glitch Soc, in which Sharkey adds additional features while following the upstream updates from mainline Misskey. So far, it has implemented some features of Firefish, such as federated edits, like button, and Mastodon API support. It’s a recent fork, so there will be some features that haven’t made it over, such as keyboard shortcuts, an MFM play button, and more. This is why we haven’t switched to it yet, especially since the fork started recently.

However, I have wanted to switch from Firefish to an alternative Misskey fork. It’s because of the other reasons that I have a problem with disregarding boosting a post from a specific user. Also, we miss out on all the new additions from Misskey, such as specific moderation tools, the ability to define roles, and a better offline view where you can view the local and federated timelines. Since Misskey is becoming a more serious alternative to Twitter in Japan and receiving more attention, we do expect more features that Firefish will miss out on.

As always, we do not plan to switch to Sharkey immediately, but we will revisit it in 3-6 months when I feel it’s ready. By switching, we will give up a few features that won’t be available, such as chats and post imports. However, the interface should be mostly the same, but with a few differences, since Firefish is based on an older version of Misskey. Also, we will take into consider any updates to Firefish during that time as well.