AkademieNL's new admin

The social media landscape is so different today from when I started participating around 2011. Things change, and that is okay — when the old dies, it becomes the compost for something new.

For me, something new sprouted from Twitter's compost beyond just joining Mastodon: I am taking over as the admin for the Mastodon server akademienl.social.

When I started on Mastodon in November 2022, choosing a server felt as personal as setting my MSN messenger status back in the day. At exactly the right time, Robbert Hoogstraat decideded to start akademienl.social — a Mastodon server for people who had some personal affiliation to the Dutch scholarly community. I joined two days after the server was live.

Robbert was an approachable admin from day one — we even had a phone call to get to know each other. It is a small server, with a specific target audience, and some of my closest social media friends joined this instance.

Robbert was always transparent about the need for funds for the server. Robbert consulted the community on consequential decisions, and transparently shared that the server might be shut down if nobody stepped up to take over. I appreciate that transparency and honesty in an admin.

I put my hand up and offered to take over in case they felt I would be a good fit. Robbert agreed it was a good fit for various reasons, including that I am active on the server and not just looking to keep it on life support moving forward.

And so now I am a Mastodon Admin. 👋

My admin philosophy going in

As an admin, I want to take to Robbert's example and be approachable and transparent in how the server is run. This is also part and parcel of my own working philosophy: Public and participatory.

For now, I will first get familiar with this new hat and start figuring out what public and participatory could mean here. I will aim to keep all of the important communications on the AkademieNL Mastodon server, but might write a blog here and there to share thoughts in a longer form.

There's over 500 people registered on AkademieNL right now, and more than 150 of those were active in the last month. I take this admin role seriously and you can reach out to me directly anytime in a DM on AkademieNL to provide feedback or wishes. I will read every single one of them!

What next?

AkademieNL is in essence going to stay the same. You do not need to do anything and can keep posting if you already have an account.

If for some reason me being an admin makes you want to migrate to AkademieNL, you can find some information on that on the about page. Vice versa, if for some reason you want to migrate away from AkademieNL, you can find some information about that elsewhere. Either way, no harm done!

I am committing to keeping the server online for at least another two years (until March 1st, 2026). That means that I am committing to covering the difference between the donations and the costs, if no big challenges occur in the meantime (like cyber attacks causing super high costs). I will communicate next steps before 2026 so that you know what you can expect to happen once that date comes closer.

For now, I just want to say a big thanks to Robbert for setting up the server and building such a thriving and independent space for the Dutch scholarly community. I look forward to furthering that work 💜