Show the server software in the user profile

[mrdk]

Problem

It is a well-established joke that the first thing newbies read when they enter the Fediverse on a new Mastodon account is that “Mastodon is not the Fediverse!”. And that the resulting annoyance is the main reason why there are not more new users in the Fediverse. It might even be true.

Nevertheless, it is a legitimate wish that every user should know that they are on a network with many different kinds of servers. It just does not feel this way. Even just finding out which software another user's servers run is complicated. (You need to go from the user's profile page to the profile page on their server and then find somehow the page on the server with the information about the software it runs. Complicated enough so that one does not do it “just so” and many times.)

What I wish is that the server software of every user can be found easily on their Phanpy profile page.

Proposed solution

How to get the data

Phanpy can use the NodeInfo protocol to get the necessary information. Specifically, the field software has the entries

• name with the name of the software,
• version with the software version,
• repository with the URL of the repository, and
• homepage with server project homepage.
  (The last two entries are only present in NodeInfo 2.1.)

How to display them

I would only display the name and, if it exists, the homepage of the server, to keep things simple for the user.

The second line of every profile dialog contains the user's Fediverse address:

Right of it, the content of the name field should be displayed. And if there is a homepage field, the name should become clickable and direct the user to the project's homepage.

Furthermore, in the ordinary timeline, there is a tooltip that shows an user's full Fediverse address when one hovers over the user name at the top of a posting. In this tooltip, the content of the name field should also be shown.