Now that we are making accessible instance information through the API I think it's time to rethink instance discovery. Coming from an information sciences standpoint we should differentiate the obtainable data from the information. You start making it possible for someone to write an application to crawl instances based on "who knows who" excluding those with a flag stating they wish to be excluded. You can then form a dynamic database. THEN working from that it's time to curate

With this method you can decententralize instance discovery by not requiring admins to manually add themselves to one list that keeps all the data. Anyone can gather the data for their own discovery application. Without third party services.

The data is not the information. Each application or service can then use their own methods to filter and curate the list. Of course joinmastodon.org should have some kind of picker but drawing on an open database is more reliable

Like, I could pull the database then make my own curated non-dynamic list I publish based on my own criteria.

The presentation to the user is how we give this data meaning and make it into information. We could even establish like "we all know these categories are what joinmastodon uses" but allow that to not go through a middleman who is a single individual and not really accountable to anyone, and inevitably not going to agree with everyone in the work on everything

Mostly I want to make it so admins aren't adding themselves to tons of different lists when instead they can set something on their instance that let's the curators come to them.

@shel 💯 on that. Lmk which things are missing from the instance API. Admin username and list of languages could safely be on there. Categories or tags or whatever - that's the complicated bit...

@gargron @shel off the top of my head (and some of these might already be included.)

Instance display name: (in case maybe someone doesn't want to be listed as m.oct.james.network)
Admin name:
Self-description
Opt-out flag (for those who don't want to be in databases)
Are registrations open
Number of users
Languages spoken
18+ flag (for instances like resize.club or kinky.business)

Definitely ask others besides me for this. Really the hard part is tags