404.xpub.nl

This is a wiki zine in the making for the new XPUB1 students!

🌟 404.xpub.nl 🌟

404.xpub.nl is the Mastodon instance of the Experimental Publishing course. Maybe you are already familiar with Mastodon and immediately want to sign up or be part of an Admin or Server group? Or maybe this all sounds very new to you, what is "Mastodon" or the "Fediverse"? and what do you mean by "Instance"?

In all cases, WELCOME! This wiki page takes you along our process and thoughts while setting up the server but it also tries to provide some explanations.

Moderation

Code of Conduct

This is the currently online version of the Code of Conduct (on Mastodon "Terms of Service"):

Traditionally XPUB is the Master of Arts in Fine Art and Design: Experimental Publishing of the Piet Zwart Institute. XPUB focuses on the acts of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks.

404.xpub is an experimental, extraterrestrial, generational instance for all fish from the aquarium.

404.xpub is a place for current and post XPUBbers.

404.xpub moderation is under construction at the moment, be nice in the meantime.

The 404.xpub instance uses glitch-soc, a mastodon fork that supports markdown and html in toots. This is a non-exhaustive list of supported html tags:

<h1> - <h6> <ol> <li> <blockquote> <code> <sup> <sub>

work in progress

The following points will be added to the next version of the code of conduct by the moderation group but are not finalized yet:

When does moderation happen?:

Moderation is passive and the mods can take action upon their daily usage or when alerted by an internal or external user.

If any issues come up, the mods look at the subject and decide on an action in a timely manner.

Actions include: time-out for specific time period and outright bans.

You are entitled to appeal to a decision once. Good luck.

Privacy:

This comes in after we have details about system settings.

"By using our services you agree that a minimal amount of information about your connection (IP address) will be kept for debugging and maintenance purposes."

This is a temporal space.

Mods:

Mods advise the hardware team to moderate the bot spam troll etc.

Customization

Since we are hosting Mastodon on our own server we are not only responsible for moderation but can customize our instances features and appearance.

Features

Glitch Soc is a fork (in software meaning "duplicated an existing project and slightly modified")) of the Mastodon Software. We decided to use Glitch Soc because it comes with some exciting options for customization:

• formatted toots (posts) allow for Markdown or HTML editing
• Doodle: Microsoft paint - like interface to create doodles as image posts
• Colored toot visibility icons: icons showing how a post is posted (privat, public, dm...) normally they're grey, we can make them colorful
• Local-only toots: glitch-soc adds a feature called “local-only” or “non-federated” toots. Toots marked as such do not automatically federate to other instances, making them ideal for example for local server announcements and meta-discussion.

Styling

So called "Flavours", "skins" & "styles" - we can set up themes and stylesheets for the instance

Ideas from the Customization group:

• 1 minimalist, BW, pixel art?, monospace font
• 1 super flashy, overdramatic, many fonts

It is also possible to upload Logos, favicon & banners - to replace the default mastodon ones

Custom Emoji

So far, a great effort has been made by the customization group to develop a set of xpub emojis. For that they would use glyphdrawing.club a browser based pixel drawing tool and stick to a previously agreed upon color scheme.

Glossary

general terms

Fediverse

The Fediverse ("federation" + "universe") is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other by using a common protocol.

"federation" derived from political theory, comprises ways of collective organising where power is distributed

Decentralized

In widely known social networks like X or Instagram, one person or company is in charge of all decisions, from personal data to platform features, and will host all its contents on their own servers. The decentralized structure of the Fediverse allows any individual or organization to host a social platform using their own servers (referred to as an "instance") and make their own rules.

Instance

The fediverse is made up of distinct communities, also referred to as "instances" or "servers". 404.xpub.nl is the instance of experimental publishing. No matter which instance you sign up on, you can always reach anybody in the whole fediverse.

Mastodon

Mastodon is a free, open-source and decentralized social network with microblogging features similar to Twitter. As part of the Fediverse Mastodon is run on independently managed servers ("instances"). Users on those servers can communicate with another and other social platforms across the Fediverse (such as Pixelfed). Mastodon does not have algorithms or ads and every instance develops their own rules for moderation.

moderation terms

* nasty: all things unkind; sexism, racism, queer antagonism, xenophobia, ableism, ageism, media containing sexualized depictions of children and other kinds of oppression or general mean spiritedness.

* to dox: out someone's personal information like their address, name, physical manifestation without their consent.  

* boring: do not spam or post unsolicited, irrelevant posts, selfish

* selfish: keep self-promotion on a tasteful level

* irrelevant: this is a space within the themes of but not limited to : Access to tools, accessibility, aesthetic theory, Aesthetics, Alphabet, Amateur librarianship, Anthropocene, anthropology, Anthropology of water, anthropomorphis, Anti-capitalism, Collectibles, Archaeology, Architecture, Archival resources, archive science, Archives, Art, Art and society, Art criticism, Art education, Art history, Artificial Intelligence, Authentication, Authorship, Autonomism, Autonomous Servers, Autonomy, backups, Bauhaus, Biolinguistic, Biopolitics, Black liberation, Black studies, Black theory, Books, bureaucracy, Business & Economics, Caregiving, Certificates, Childhood education, Choreography, Civil disobedience, Classification, Climate change, Cloud Computing, Clouds, Codices, Collectives, Colonialism, Colonisation, Command line, Commodities, Communication and technology, Communication theory, Computational culture, Computational intelligence, Computer poetry, Computer science, Computerised typesetting, Computers, Conceptual art, Conceptual writing, Consensus decision making, Conspiracy theories, Consumption motivation, Contingent Librarianship, Copyright, Corpora, Counter-Cartograph, Counterculture, Crafts & Hobbies, Critical Algorithm Studies, Critical theory, critical thinking, CSS, Cultural Criticism, Cultural geography, Cultural History, Cultural Semantics, cultural studies, Culture and Society, Curriculum studies, Cute studies, Cuteness, Cyber-communism, Cyberculture, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk, Cyberwriting, Dance, dark patterns, data ethics, Data feminism, Data science, Decentralisation, Decolonisation, Deep learning, Democracy, Design, Design education, Diffraction, Digital art, Digital culture, Digital ethnography, digital heritage, Digital objects, Digitisation, Disability studies, DIY, DIY Servers, Documentary, Drama, Dystopia, Dystopic science fiction, Eco Studies, Economics, Education, Electronic publishing, embodiment, Emotionally durable design, Empathy, Entreprecariat, , Environmental anthropology, Environmental Humanities, environmental policy, Ethnography, Exile, Experimental music, Experimental publishing, Experimentation, Extinction, Facial morphology, Fan Studies, feminism,  Feminist criticism, Feminist methods, Feminist Servers, Fieldwork activism, Film, Film studies, FLOSS, Form, free access, Free culture, Fundamentals of Parametric Design with Grasshopper, Futurology, Game Boy; Nintendo; SNES; NES, game design, game manual, games, gender, Gender and sexuality, Gender hierarchies, gender issues in education, Geography, girlhood, Globalization, Grammar, Graphic design, Hacking, Handbook, hegemony, History, History of Science, Home robots, Horror, Hosting, How tos, Human Ecology, human geography, human infrastructure, Human-computer interaction, Humanities, Human–robot relationships, Hybrid publishing, Ideology, Image, Indigenous cultures, Indonesian art initiatives, information science, Information systems, Information visualisation, Infotainment, Infrastructure, Intellectual property, interaction, interactive fiction, Interdisciplinary Studies, Internet, internet measurement, Intimacy, Language, Language acquisition, Language and culture, Language and literature, Law, layout, Legal Theory, Lethargy, Libraries, Libre graphics, Licencing, Linguistics, Literacy, Literary and Cultural Theory, Literary Collections, Literary Criticism, Literature, loitering, Loss, love; discourse, Magical Realism, Mail art, maker spaces, Makers, Manifestos, Manuals, Maps, Marine ecosystem management, Marine pollution, Marine resources conservation, Marxism, Mathematics, Meat consumption, Meat paradox, Media, Media Art, Media criticism, Media Studies, Media theory, Memoirs, Memory Culture, Mental Illness, Mentalizing, Metafont, MetaPost, Minimalism, Monographs, Morality, Movements, multicultural/diversity education, Mundaneum, Museum and heritage studies, Music, Music industry, Narrative, narrative methods, Natural Language Processing, Nature, Neoliberalism, Neomaterialism, net art, nettime, Network cultures, Networks, Neuroimaging, neutrality, New Media, Noise, Non-Fiction, Notation, Novels, Nuclear power, Observation, Ocean, Ocean studies, Ontological anarchism, Open access, Open Source Publishing, Oral traditions, Orality, organization, Ownership, Pain, Paranodal, Pattern Language, Pedagogy, Performance, Performance art, performativity, Perl (Computer program language), Phenomenology, Philosophy, Philosophy and social aspects, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of violence, Photography, Pirate Radio Broadcasting, Plants, Play, Pleasure, poetic terrorism, Poetry, Political ecology, Political Science, Politics, Politics of violence, Pollution, Pop-psychology, Popular Culture, popular music, Population growth, Positivity, post-capitalism, Post-digital, Post-structuralism, Power, print, Printing - history, privacy, probability, Procedural generation, Programming, Prosody, Protocols, Psycholinguistics, Psychology, Psychology of violence, Public spaces, publications, Publishers and publishing - technological innovations, Publishing, Python, Queer theory, quilting, race, Race awareness, Race discrimination, Radical Feminism, radical history, Radical media, Radiophony, Raspberry Pi, Reading, Relearn, Representation, Resource depletion, Resources, Rhino, Rhinoceros, right to the city, rotterdam, RSS, Rules, Samizdat, Sandbox culture, Scenario modelling, science, Science fiction, Script, Self-discovery, Semiotics, sensorial methods, serious games, Sex drugs & rock'n'roll, Shadow libraries, Shakespeare, Shipping industry, Silicon Valley, Situationism, Smallest Federated Wiki, Social classes in literature, Social Geography, Social history, Social interaction, Social movements, social networks, Social robots, Social Science, social sciences, Sociobiology, Sociolinguistics, Sociology, Software - production, Software studies, Sound art, Space, Speech acts, Speech identification, squatters, squatting, STEAM, STEM, Style guide, Subject representation, surveillance capitalism, Sustainability, Tactical Publishing, Technical books, Technical images, Technical systems, technique, technology, Technology & Engineering, Technology - history, Technopolitics, Textiles & Costume, The Beatles, The Library Is Open, The Network We (de)Served, Theory and Philosophy, Threads, time, Tools, Translation, Twentieth-century, Typesetting, Typography, uncertainty, Underground culture, Underground publishing, Universal Basic Income, UNIX, Unreadymade, Urban Space, user experience design, User interfaces, utopia, Video art, Virtual ethnography, Visual communication, Visual poetry, Vocal portraits, Voice (Philosophy), Voice identification - history, VPN, VPN with raspberry-pi, water, Weathe, Weaving, whole Earth Catalog, Wiki, wiki4print, Women's rights, Writing, Written communication, zine

This list comes from categories of the bootleg library.

Server

404.xpub.nl runs on a server called debby.

The name debby comes from the operating system that the server runs on: Linux Debian.

The physical machine is hosted (for now, on the 11th of June 2025) in the XPUB studio, near our beloved pen plotters.

<picture here>

The server, she, is yet to be decorated! There are some stickers in the studio that are waiting to be sticked onto the machine.

Is debby allergic to AI? Of course she is.

We installed Linux ourselves on the machine. This was very smoothly.

However....

When installing Mastodon... this was a different story.

As of Tuesday September 2nd, 404.xpub.nl is running, has 10 users and is open for sign up with invitation ;)

However, there is an issue remaining: while users of 404.xpub.nl are able to sign up, post and follow each other, we are currently not able to federate with other instances. Practically this means that users signed up on 404.xpub.nl (our instance) can sign up, post and follow each other, they are not able to follow users on other instances, nor see their posts. So right now we have a small echo chamber where we only see and post for ourselves. This issue will be addressed by the server group (and whoever finds joy in debugging) in the upcoming weeks.

The installation was done by four students: Kiara, Eleni, Kim and Claudio. None of them had any server experience in the past. So this could be you ;). JOIN THE TEAM!

Further reading

If you want to take a dive into the notes of the prototying sessions we did around the Fediverse in May/June 2025, you can find everything here: Becoming part of Fediverse