I've seen some questions and concerns around the new Terms of Service that mastodon.social has announced will be coming into effect on July 1, and how they might affect sunny.garden.

https://mastodon.social/terms-of-service/2025-07-01

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086

The announced ToS changes only apply to users of mastodon.social, and do not apply to users of sunny.garden.

They also won't apply to other Mastodon servers in general, unless the admins of those servers decide to adopt similar ToS.

What is coming in the release of Mastodon v4.4 is a new Terms of Service page which can optionally be configured by the admin to display either a completely custom Terms of Service, or one generated using Mastodon's default template.

sunny.garden will not be adopting the default template in the short term. For better or worse, we don't currently have a Terms of Service, and would take some time and discussion to develop one, if that makes sense to do so in the future.

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden May review :blobclipboard:

database maintenance; mastodon update; peoplemaking.games; hosting costs and donations;

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/06/05/the-sunny-gardener-may-2025/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

I never remember to ask until I'm actually writing the post, but if you're a sunny.garden user and have a photo or piece of art, etc. (preferably wide or easily cropped) that I could use as the header of the monthly review (like https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/05/05/the-sunny-gardener-april-2025/) then send me a link. :yell:

The submission deadline for this month is whenever I finish writing the post (probably tomorrow around this time) :blobovo:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

I've added a couple of new sections to the Community Guidelines on our About page https://sunny.garden/about

- Post Your Own Thoughts And Creations
- Image Descriptions

#SunnyGardenAdmin

Dire news... :Blobhaj_Shock:

It was brought to my attention that a few of the emojis on the server were not displaying correctly.

Emojis are case sensitive, and Mastodon allows multiple different cased versions to be registered in the system (eg. both :blobhaj_mlem : and :Blobhaj_Mlem : ) but in that situation, only one of them will show up in posts (apparently at random).

When I imported some emojis a while back, a few of them got duplicated in this way. I've removed the duplicate versions and the ones in the emoji picker should work now:
:Blobhaj_Mlem: :Blobhaj_Witch: :Blobhaj_Pumpkin_Face:

Unfortunately this will affect any past posts that used the removed versions, and those will no longer display: :blobhaj_shock:
:blobhaj_mlem:
:blobhaj_witch:
:blobhaj_pumpkin_face:

Please let me know if you run into any emoji in the picker that aren't displaying in posts, so I can check if it's the same issue :yell:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

Maintenance is complete and we're back up and running :blobclipboard:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

I'm planning on taking sunny.garden offline briefly later today in order to run some minor maintenance, and apply system upgrades.

The maintenance is in preparation for upcoming Mastodon release 4.4 which will remove support for redis namespaces (see https://github.com/mastodon/redis_namespace_migration for technical details).

If all goes well, this should take less than 15 minutes, starting at approximately:

PDT 23:00 May 12
UTC 06:00 May 13
JST 15:00 May 13

#SunnyGardenAdmin #MastoAdmin

Going to try running an online repack of the sunny.garden database to reclaim some disk space.

In theory, this shouldn't result in any downtime. In theory... :blobcatspace:

EDIT: database repack has now completed, no apparent issues. :blob_sign_nice:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden April review :blobclipboard:

a quiet month; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/05/05/the-sunny-gardener-april-2025/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden March review :blobclipboard:

mastodon updates; nicole; email and backups; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/04/06/the-sunny-gardener-march-2025/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

I'm looking to improve sunny.garden's timezone coverage for moderation, particularly during the North American early morning to early afternoon.

If you have been an active sunny.garden user for a while and would be interested in helping moderate the server, then let me know :blobclipboard:

As far as time commitment, there isn't actually much to do. Lately we get an average of 2 reports a day, 90% of which are obvious spam (half of which are Nicole), not urgent, and can be resolved in less than a minute.

The more important factor is being available to respond to notifications, for the one or two reports a year that really ought to be dealt with ASAP. There are occasional issues which call for some discussion about how to handle, and we have a Discord channel for that, which again is very low traffic.

#SunnyGardenAdmin

Finally got around to setting up a new email server hosted in Canada. That's the last piece of sunny.garden's infrastructure now moved off of US providers.*

* ok, so I'm still using Let's Encrypt SSL certificates. Not a lot in the way of good alternatives that I know of, which is a problem in itself for the half of the internet that relies on them.

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden February review :blobclipboard:

a federation issue; a Mastodon update; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/03/05/the-sunny-gardener-february-2025/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden January review :blobclipboard:

It was a busy month for sunny.garden and the Fediverse at large.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/02/03/the-sunny-gardener-january-2025/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

I've switched sunny.garden's translation system from the paid DeepL plan (~$20-30/mo.), to a local LibreTranslate server (free) to at least try out for a while.

In addition to being cheaper, this keeps the translation process on the server instead of sending the text to DeepL.

I do expect the translations to be rougher, depending on the language, the exact text, etc.

If you're using the Translate feature over the next few days, let me know what you think of the results. :blobclipboard:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

The Translate feature on sunny.garden should now be active again. I've upgraded to the paid DeepL plan for the time being, and will look into a self hosted option at some point. :blobclipboard:

#SunnyGardenAdmin

It looks like sunny.garden has finally hit the limit on the free tier for our translation service (DeepL) so the Translate function may not work for the time being. :oh_no_bubble:

I'll be taking a look into either upgrading to a paid plan, or setting up a self hosted service (LibreTranslate).

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden December review :blobclipboard:

Mastodon update; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2025/01/04/the-sunny-gardener-december-2024/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden November review :blobclipboard:

Mastodon updates; a busy month; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2024/12/06/the-sunny-gardener-november-2024/

#SunnyGardenAdmin

sunny.garden October review :blobclipboard:

Mastodon updates; spam; bots; hosting costs and donations.

https://hub.sunny.garden/2024/11/03/the-sunny-gardener-october-2024/

#SunnyGardenAdmin