WxCloud is the Mastodon server for weather enthusiasts.

Welcome!

Please send an email to info@theweatherstationexperts.com if you register for an account to speed approval. Admins aren't receiving the account request emails at this time.

WxCloud is a Mastodon server aimed at connecting weather enthusiasts and professionals. As a result, we expect those that sign up for accounts to contribute to the discussion, whether it be on weather, climate, or the environment.

Our Commitment to an Open, Safe, and Welcoming Platform

Mastodon is an open platform, and we treat wxcloud.social similarly. We follow the Mastodon Server Covenant. This means we:

• Actively moderate against racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.
• Have a system to take daily backups.
  
• Are taking steps to ensure the continuity of service by providing emergency access to server infrastructure to individuals other than the server owner.
• Commit to providing at least 90 days' notice of server termination.

What We Ask of You

As part of the broader Fediverse, you don't have to talk about the weather all the time. However, discussing the weather, climate, and environment makes our 'Local' timeline more useful. How you use your account is up to you, but we ask that you devote a portion of your time here to adding to #wxmastodon.

Funding

Initial costs for this server are sponsored by The Weather Station Experts. However, anyone interested in the weather, regardless of whom they work for or where they come from, is welcome here.

If you want to help with the costs of running WxCloud, we have set up a Patreon with contribution levels from $3 to $10 per month. While unnecessary in the short term, we expect to upgrade the server to more memory and storage this year. However, doing so doubles our hosting costs. We'd appreciate the help!

Click here to visit our Patreon.

Hosting

DigitalOcean hosts WxCloud, specifically from its NYC servers. However, cached versions of WxCloud are available from DigitalOcean's other endpoints worldwide, which is one of the reasons why we've opted to host WxCloud here. Remember, as we are based in the US, US laws regarding data storage and privacy apply, as well as state and local laws where applicable.

Backups

We want to ensure minimal data loss due to a server failure. Our server automatically backs up the database to an "off-site" location hourly at the top of the hour. Additional backups taken daily and monthly serve as additional copies should the hourly backup be corrupted.

Additionally, the entire virtual server is backed up nightly at midnight ET. As a result, we anticipate any failure to primarily affect content posted during the hour of the server incident unless a daily backup needs to be used.

Coders Welcome (or, our Bot Policy)

We welcome programmers and tinkerers. If you'd like to create a weather-related bot using a wxcloud.social account, you are free to do so. We do ask you to let us know, however. Bots can consume a high amount of resources. It must also be labeled as a "Bot" in the profile.

Effective November 29, 2023, bot usage is limited to supporting members. There is no minimum level, so you can pick the $3/month option (and that to be honest is roughly the cost of hosting a bot that posts imagery every day). Click here to visit our Patreon.

Bot accounts must also identify a controlling human account in their profile so we can contact in the event of issues.

We reserve the right to limit bot accounts that post frequently, including paid accounts, if we receive complaints on its content or posting frequency. We strongly recommend setting your account to unlisted if your bot posts more than two or three times a day or isn't useful to others.

Moderation

Moderation decisions will always be made independently of the instance's sponsors or supporters.

Below, we explain our moderation policies. We rely on reports to track offensive behavior. We cannot actively monitor the feed at all times, and we ask that you use the report features to assist us in keeping WxCloud a welcoming place.

Trends

We actively moderate trending hashtags to promote discussions on weather, climate, and the environment. This allows server participants to better find trending topics on the Fediverse that they will likely be interested in.

This means that what you see trending on wxcloud.social will differ from other servers. We feel this is helpful to Mastodon as a whole since it encourages our users to contribute to weather, climate, and environmental discussions on Mastodon, which benefit the public.

Servers with posts primarily in a foreign language

We have also decided to limit instances where most of the content is in a language other than English. This is not a suspension: this feature allows us to remove their posts from the federated timeline, but you can still follow them.

The primary reason for this decision is to make moderating easier. We are always looking for moderators, and if you speak a second language, that is very helpful. But for now, we don't have the personnel to ensure content meets our server rules.

Defederation

Defederation in 'Mastodon-ese' is refusing content from an entire instance (server). Since it is a decentralized platform, admins can block content they see as objectionable.

WxCloud uses the Garden Fence Fediverse Blocklist as the basis for its initial defederation decisions. You can see the reasons on our About page. Garden Fence polls the blocklists of seven large instances (including mastodon.social), and creates the list from those instances where most participants have blocked a particular server. This prevents blocks over trivial disagreements (i.e. don't like the admin, etc.), and ensures "the worst of the worst" isn't clogging our timelines.

Decisions on the defederation of instances for reasons other than what is listed here or in the Mastodon Server Covenant will be decided by the instance as a whole.

We're just volunteers

Please also remember that admins and moderators are all volunteers. You won't get an answer right away, but a hell of a lot faster than that other site.

Relays

As a small server, we aren't as well connected to the Fediverse since Mastodon only federates two servers when users from either follow each other. Relays are one way for smaller servers to discover more Mastodon content.

As of February 25, 2023, we have added two relays:

• Newsie.social (~140 servers)
• infosec.exchange (~110 servers)

We are additionally testing two hashtag-specific relays, thanks to Fedi.Buzz. This pulls in posts from the following hashtags:

• #weather
• #wx

These relays were carefully chosen to limit objectionable content to keep with the spirit of a family-friendly instance here at WxCloud. The result will be a much busier federated timeline, but this may result in content that may not be suitable for all ages. Please report any objectionable content to us.

Help Wanted

If you have Linux experience and want to help, please reach out. As the server grows, we'll need additional moderators. Please feel free to message us on Mastodon @wxstationexpert. Thanks for being part of our Fediverse experiment!

1. This is not a general purpose server. This is intended for use by weather enthusiasts and meteorologists.
2. This said, you can talk about anything you want (but talking about the weather, climate, and the environment often makes our local timeline useful).
3. Absolutely no racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, or prejudice of any kind. Engaging in any of the above is contrary to the spirit of Mastodon, and grounds for immediate suspension.
4. Please disagree in a respectful manner, not only on wxcloud.social -- but across Mastodon.

1. nothing.tacowolf.net: suspension