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Registrations are now open at exercise.cafe!

Image of coffee cup with chat symbol in foam, with a pair of running trainers and barbells

I’m pleased to announce that registrations are now open at exercise.cafe/register

Configuration is ongoing, and I’m on the lookout for moderators, but I wanted to keep the momentum going on this project. Please register if you would like to share and discuss things related to exercise and fitness (and can agree with the Code of Conduct below!)

For those new to the Fediverse, this is an instance of Pixelfed, which is kind of like a federated/decentralised version of Instagram. The difference is that your updates can be followed by anyone from a compatible instance.


Code of Conduct v0.1

Exercise.cafe is a community focused on sharing and discussion of exercise and fitness-related activities. It’s a friendly, non-judgemental space.

The following behaviours all help make exercise.cafe a positive environment:

  • Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
  • Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
  • Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
  • Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
  • Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community

Examples of unacceptable behaviour include:

  • Public or private harassment
  • Sexual attention or advances of any kind
  • Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
  • Publishing othersโ€™ private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
  • Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a social setting, including excessive advertising

We welcome members regardless of qualities such as gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family structure, spirituality, religion (or lack thereof), education, or other personal traits. We particularly celebrate diversity and do not tolerate bigotry or prejudice. Diverse opinions on politics, religion, and other matters are welcome as long as they align with our core values. For the avoidance of doubt, this is anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-transphobic space.

Enforcement

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behaviour may be reported using the built-in tools of the platform. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly, respecting the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Consequences for actions deemed to be violations of this Code of Conduct:

1. Correction

  • Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behaviour deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A private, written warning from community leaders, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested.

2. Warning

  • Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A warning with consequences for continued behaviour. No interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in other spaces, too. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.

3. Temporary Ban

  • Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

4. Permanent Ban

  • Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals.
  • Consequence: Removal of contravening content. A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.

This instance is run by Doug Belshaw (@doug) and the moderators are:

  • [looking for volunteers!]

If you feel that you have been treated unfairly by a moderator of this instance, please make this clear to another moderator. Please be aware, however, that direct messages are not yet end-to-end encrypted.

Funding

This server will be supported by donations. The ability to do this will be set up at a future date.

Blocked servers

Exercise.cafe is a node of the Fediverse network. While users can block individual users from other servers, the following servers are blocked for all users of exercise.cafe. This is due to actions which contravene our code of conduct.

  • [list of known problematic servers will be found here]

References

Thanks to the following for inspiration:

License

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Code of Conduct for exercise.cafe

Pixel art running shoe with speech bubble

Last week I was thinking about a Fediverse instance focused on fitness/exercise. I’m pleased to say that, with the help of Matti at Spacebear Oรœ, I’ve set up a Pixelfed instance at exercise.cafe.

Registrations are currently closed, and I’ve asked for potential testers to kick the tyres and establish some norms. Before I do that, I want to ensure there’s v0.1 of a Code of Conduct established. If you’re interested, I’d like your assistance.

>>> Click here <<< for an etherpad with a draft Code of Conduct. Please follow the instructions at the top of the pad if you’d like to contribute!


Temporary logo for the purposes of illustration created by DALL-E 2

Thinking about a Fediverse instance focused on fitness / exercise

TL;DR: would a Fediverse instance for fitness / exercise be popular enough to be sustainable? How would it work? More questions at the end of the post!

Image generated by DALL-E 2 of a fitness social network

As I mentioned on this blog recently, I’ve rejoined Strava. It’s pretty much the go-to social network for people into various types of fitness and exercise, with most of my network either being runners (like me), cyclists, or swimmers. Or, of course, a combination of all of this and more.

I’m wondering whether a federated version of the social elements based on a Fediverse platform might be interesting to people. By the results of a casual question via Mastodon this afternoon, I think it might…

Some history and context

In the early days of social networks, there was a trend of lifestreaming, where you’d literally share a firehouse of everything you were up to, everywhere. So if you did exercise every day, that would go on (for example) your Twitter stream, along with books you were reading, thoughts you were having, etc.

We’re in a different environment these days, with more awareness of privacy concerns, and even general-purpose social networks tending to skew towards certain types of content. For example, Twitter is more more about sharing news and politics than a decade ago. Instagram is less about generic ‘photo sharing’, more about following influencers and (from what I gather) buying what they recommend.

The situation on the Fediverse is different. This is mainly because there are not only lots of different kinds of software platform that make it up, but many different instances of each platform within the wider network. Niche interests for geeks are well catered for, and you can find everything from instances for people interested in co-operatives (like social.coop which I’m on), people into Open Source software (like fosstodon.org which I used to be on), to people interested in movies and obsolete technology (like laserdisc.party!)

What there seems to be an absolute dearth of, however, are instances related to fitness and exercise. This is a real shame, as I know there’s plenty of people tracking their activity in a multitude of different ways. Having a community around you to both compete with and encourage you is important. It’s about recognition of effort โ€” which you don’t just get when you’re using an app that merely tracks your activity.

Some features we’d need

Strava is, as far as I’m aware, the mostly widely used social network related to fitness and exercise. I use it by connecting my Garmin account, which takes data from my smartwatch, to Strava. This is posted to a feed (with various privacy controls) whereby connections can ‘give kudos’ and/or comment on each activity. There are competitive elements based on sections, which is motivating. But just someone giving you a thumbs-up for having done the longest run you’ve ever done is sometimes enough.

While it would replicate everything that Strava provides, I’m wondering whether a specific Fediverse instance for fitness / exercise would be of interest to people? I can certainly see myself having an account where I just post such things and have discussions with others about both activities and gear.

It could just start with people posting whatever they feel comfortable sharing. For example, Strava automatically puts a geofence around my home address for privacy, so I would probably share this kind of thing that can be generated by my Garmin app:

I don’t tend to take my phone running, so I don’t take photos, but you can imagine that being a sweaty selfie!

Questions

The things I yet to figure out are:

  1. Is it worth my time to pursue this?
  2. Who else might be interested in moderation?
  3. Which platform would we use?
  4. What features do we need to turn on/off?
  5. Which languages would we support?
  6. How can we make it welcoming to people of all types, while allowing for an element of competition?
  7. Are there any custom features which would help differentiate it from just a vanilla Fediverse instance?

Answers and suggestions welcome in the comments below! ๐Ÿƒ ๐Ÿšด ๐ŸŠ

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