- Goodbye Stoat Lounge
It is sad to say goodbye to things, even things that are silly to be sentimental about. I was added as the primary moderator of what was then the Revolt Lounge in mid-2023. It was my ‘in’ to working on Stoat, and as such, is a special server for me, but all things come to an end. Today, after a solid five-year run, the Stoat server upon Stoat is being overhauled to focus exclusively on the platform itself rather than being a general discussion hub.
I’ve long pushed for the server to be kept around as a melting pot of everyone on the platform. It is a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of the community, and it has led to a great deal of valuable discussions leading to great outcomes. However, Stoat is of such a size now (1.4 million users) that it is time for the server to take on a new form.
It is good and healthy for Stoat as a platform to avoid centralisation of users in one server. It lowers it as an attack vector for undesirable behaviour, freeing up more resources for platform moderation, and it also prompts users to disperse around the platform. More individual thriving servers is good. More niches, more communities, greater variety.
It is sad to see it change, but it is time for change to happen. My thanks to everyone I’ve had pleasant conversations with over the years.