What is #BikeNite on Mastodon? And how does it work?
BikeNite is a weekly Q&A style discussion on Mastodon with community-sourced questions. The questions are mostly related to bikes and other types of cycles and how we use them. Currently #BikeNite is on Fridays at 4pm Pacific time. A host asks ~8 questions per night with Q1, Q2, Q3 (for ease of reference) and people can answer by replying to the post with A1, A2, A3, and so on. Questions are tagged with the #BikeNiteQ hashtag so it's easier to find questions to answer.
People are welcome to participate live or afterward at their convenience. We use the hashtag #BikeNite for discoverability, and we suggest boosting and replying to each other to offer support and to keep the discussion going.
It's a nice way to share your own experiences and learn from others either by reading their answers or asking your own question.
We've recently started tagging Proposed Questions with the #BikeNitePQ hashtag (thank you @xtaran@chaos.social for the idea). I add these to a queue and then load them up for posting live or via Buffer on Fridays.
How did #BikeNite on Mastodon start?
A number of people migrated to Mastodon from Twitter in late 2022. (I can only speak for myself here, as I don't know what the Fediverse looked like before I joined) Some of us missed #BikeSchool there, a similar fun Q&A discussion. @Jeremy_AI, before they left started #BikeNite on Mastodon to replicate the experience.
@Jeremy_AI did a great job of making #BikeNite fun and getting others involved with questions. It was great to see a real cycle-based community forming on a new (to some of us) platform. When @Jeremy_AI had to stop, I wanted to keep it going.
Now most of the questions are community-sourced and we have nice group discussion every week.
How do I join #BikeNite?
Join Mastodon or the Fediverse if you haven't already. Search for the #BikeNite hashtag (Here it is on the mastodon.social server, for example). You can ask questions by posting one with the #BikeNitePQ hashtag and it might help to tag me (@ascentale@sfba.social) as well.
Thanks! Hope you can join the discussion sometime!