I thought I would try out firefish/calckey but found a few issues.
I should say I am in my 50s and have been around since I used 1970s BBS so have a reasonable understanding of the Fediverse etc.
But, joinfirefish.org seems to have gone for style over substance. It also doesn’t render properly on Safari (iOS)
Choosing a server to join seems unnecessarily difficult. At the top of the list is firefish.social marked as verified but when you click or tap to find out more you are presented with a coming soon page (not seen one of those since the 90s when everything was Under Construction).
The choice of servers seems limited with a need for more general servers.
It looks like I’m going to need to host my own. But a quick glance seems their’s poor documentation.
What do people think? Can anyone recommend a good general server in English?
I dunno, I was up and running in five minutes. You pick an instance, you sign up, you verify the email, and you’re good to go. What server doesn’t matter much, barring it closing unexpectedly and without warning. There’s not enough users to need more than a handful.
If you don’t mind about the local timeline, or that the main language is different or that other users might get it defederated then your approach will work.
I feel like finding a good instance in the fediverse (that’s accepting users) is always a nightmare.
That being said, I’ve been happy with the vibes on lemmy.blahaj.zone and they have a calckey/firefish instance (that’s the main blahaj.zone). But it’s not strictly general-purpose.