Wow, plurk still exists?

The things you find trying to tidy up the password vault after almost 20 years and at least 4 cycles of export-old-import-new.

I'm going to bed now.

Wandering.shop doesn't want the stress of hanging out on the bleeding edge of updates, so excepting security releases, we don't update our instance until there's a stable release. We sometimes wait a bit longer just to see what other folks trip over, so yer here Community Admin can get the cheat notes before I spend days wondering where this control or that widget in the Moderation tools went.

But if you want to listen in on what's up, follow FediTips.

RE: https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/117474206171253879

For those new here, or even those who are just wanting to know what's up when something seems to have changed weirdly - please follow (and consider supporting, if you can!) @FediTips

Yours truly tries to be a good info resource for my own little Shop here, but FediTips is MY reference point for a lot of things!

Currently: Mastodon 5.0 is out for beta/early adopter users and you might be hearing stuff about it.

Here is what we will be doing:

Identifying accounts hosted on wandering.shop which have not been accessed in 6 months or longer.

Deploying a script which will re-set passwords to a long, random string, which we ourselves will not be able to read or un-do (database-level re-write).

Disconnecting/terminating all persistent sessions, such as a mobile client that has been granted access.

This will *lock* the account. No content or user profiles will be removed, or altered.

ANNOUNCEMENT will be placed on our timeline in a moment, but I'm also sharing as a post.

Due to the still-high levels of malicious spam coming from compromised accounts, wandering.shop will lock unused accounts as of 6 PM PDT this evening, October 18.

We are not aware that we are (yet) hosting any compromised accounts which are generating spam, but we cannot confirm that unused accounts here are not vulnerable to this ongoing malware script that is gaining access.

Hey folks - the reports are getting dealt with.

We are going through another wave of compromised accounts (not us, specifically, but fediverse-wide) where other data breaches have exposed emails&passwords that people have also used for Fediverse accounts which are now compromised, sometimes after years of inactivity.

This is your periodic reminder to never reuse passwords, and ideally use a password generator/locker + some sort of 2-factor authentication.

Breaking the Proprietor protocol for a brief minute to just reiterate that I love my local indie bookshops - all of them - and that Wordsworth Books just helped me get hold of an armful of some of y'all 'Shop authors' independently published work.

Before you leap to an online big-box because you don't *see* someone's work in any big publishing house pipeline, PLEASE GO HAVE A CHAT AND A TEA WITH A LOCAL BOOKSELLER. They are wizards who can summon literature through spacetime rifts, I swear.

Weeeellll... bless 'em all. Happy Friday, 'Shop fam, we got another wave of "verify your account" sc/pammers on the loose.

TL;DR: YOU NEVER HAVE TO VERIFY YOUR MASTODON ACCOUNT

If your admin has *any* reason to contact you ever it will be via DM from your own instance admin, ONLY.

The wider admin web is on it, but we cannot do much when open-sign-up instances are not as quick at their keys as the scammers are. I've already taken 45 buckets out to the trash heap today, will keep at it.

Patrons, be advised that the wandering.shop DNS servers are having upstream issues. Nothing we can do anything about, but it'll make the shop hard to reach sporadically.

It'll be a bit like the shop is slipping off into the back alleys for a bit, foraging for scraps and strays.

I must admit I find a collateral benefit in these sometimes .

It's nice to have the opportunity to discover another Wandering Shop author whose work I had not yet encountered.

😆

Good morning friends. Apparently today is the Monday that Proprietor needs to remind folks - mostly the rest of the Fediverse, not my folks - that Mastodon's Report function is not a vehicle for critique of Authors' works.

When you come across someone whose stories are not to your taste, you are fully empowered in this situation. Don't READ IT.

You, and no doubt the author, have better things to invest in. I'm quite sure that out there, somewhere, is a book you will like. Get a library card.

I will ask, if *you* are asked for the code, rather than offering it to someone you already know, please don't let yourself be pressured or feel obliged to share with a complete stranger to be polite - though we all want to be.

If you cannot be quickly and completely assured of a request being genuine, dig a little more, OR - just ask them to drop a note to me to chat it out.

None of us is perfect at detecting slop nowadays, but that should be on me, not any of you. I can deal with oopses.

... but for now they'll only work for 5-10 uses. They will still expire after 1 week. I will likely still lose track of It Is Sunday, Boss and forget them and you'll still be welcome to remind me, of course.

I hope this works fine - we have rarely had more than 5 uses of 1 single code in a week, and by limiting the uses we limit the risk of a bot sneaking past someone and then using the invite code to invite the whole swarm.

NEW INVITE CODE IS UP!

Okay, I do NOT like being the only gatekeeper AT ALL people, AT. ALL. Can't be a best Third Place if you're trying to keep the door actually locked and hiding behind a curtain to see who's there, but dammit, the Agents from iLands or whatever the latest thing that is spamming Mastodon registrations is, are incredibly annoying.

HERE'S THE THING FOR NOW.

I'm going back to doing my best to post invite codes for everyone to copy and hand out, as before....

Hey ho m'dears. Mod blurt for tonight: Was pointed at yet another sign-up spam phenom that Other Instances are suffering (not us - making all our new friends just knock first is so helpful). It led to this article, which is a quick read and a good warning for all those of you who may have "Contact me" links out there, and who *already* I'm sure get all kinds of "Hire me to be your background researcher..." spams.

https://tedium.co/2026/09/11/ilands-agents-email-spam-kaixin-tang/

The author of the article notes this targets creatives.

For anyone still looking for a new home base as toot.community is unfortunately wrapping up, wandering.shop is a cozy sort of spot from which you can explore the wider fediverse, or within which you can hang out with our various friendly characters.

We are nominally "invite only" but the way to get an invite is to ask someone already here, and don't be a bot or a butthead, basically.

We federate widely and moderate transparently.

cc; @support

An *account* is reportable if it is mass-following, repeated following/unfollowing/refollowing, or engaging in other attention-seeking behaviour that is disruptive to someone else's activity on the Fediverse.

Unfortunately this latter behaviour is something we're seeing a new wave of, and it's the harder one to suss out when reported. It is also likely to go un-addressed, particularly if the account in question has a @gazaverified link somehow.

Second, for accounts we do not host here, we moderate consistently with all other external accounts. If they are making public posts on the public timelines only, there is no cause for reporting a Gaza aid request - you may ignore, mute and block, or even boost as you wish.

The posts are reportable and will be moderated IF:
-- they are directly naming or replying to you or another who was not otherwise engaged with them
-- they are using inappropriate hashtags to enter others' conversations 2/?

Shop fam, I want to reiterate something and let you know of a new complication fedi-mods are seeing.

Gaza Mutual Aid requests of various sorts are all over our timelines, and as a fediverse management team, we lean with the faction this views this as a legitimate means of desperate people reaching for help.

We have consciously defined our tolerance, though, and will moderate our timelines consistent with our rules.

First, we do not *host* purely aid-seeking accounts. 1/?

Significant Dates in Science Fiction: August 4, 2026, I guess!

https://archive.org/details/bradbury-nimoy