Hey new people and those thinking of joining, you do NOT need to sign up on huge servers!
You can follow and interact with people on any server from any server, the servers are connected.
It would really, really help the network right now if you could sign up on medium or small size servers. You will still be able to follow and interact with whoever you want, and the network as a whole will work much better.
A good safe place for beginners to find servers to join is https://joinmastodon.org/servers
@feditips what is your definition of a small, midsize and big servers?
My point being what’s the ideal size of a server? To be small enough to be performant and big enough to have good local feed.
Short answer: Go for a server with fewer than 10,000 members.
Long answer: It's not so much about numbers as percentage of the network. If everyone is on a small group of giant servers that will cause severe problems now and in the long term.
So, if you look at the numbers currently on https://joinmastodon.org/servers (in the top right corner of each server's info box), try to go for servers at the smaller end of the scale.
@feditips @ricardoramos I primarily joined an 8k server. They are having to do upgrades several times throughout the day yesterday. Are you sure the bigger instances aren't better placed to cope with the influx?
Believe me, no!
Mastodon.online has been as slow as treacle to use over the past week, really painfully slow. Errors and weird behaviour.
Mastodon.social doesn't even load sometimes.
The speed is to do with whether resources match demands, not resources overall.
Trying to all go onto one server is a really bad idea for this and lots more reasons. If we spread out onto lots of smaller servers we will still be able to communicate but each server will run more smoothly.