hi,

tilde.town is big. we have over 2,000 registered users and receive numerous signups every week.
despite existing for over four years, our administrative infrastructure is not that much more
evolved than when ~vilmibm manually created every user account with a google form, a big
spreadsheet, and a lot of coffee. we have automation, but it's primitive and not easily to delegate.

there are a number of administrative improvements coming that will allow town moderation and
administration to be spread over a team of volunteers. the ultimate goal is for each individual
volunteer to do far less work than in a system with a single admin while, all the while,  maintaining a healthy
community.

what is a healthy community? it is one that can weather change, growth, technical glitches, account
problems, and conflict without ripping itself apart or transforming into something ugly. tilde.town
has been coming down with a community cold: we have not had the right tools for maintaining a
healthy community and we're suffering as a result. admins are overworked and burning out, which
leaves no energy for actually contributing to and modeling the kind of community we wanted
tilde.town to be.

in order to accomodate the improvements coming, we're pausing user sign ups. the first improvement
is around our email systems, and it's easiest to not be processing new user signups while that's
going on.

if you were hoping to sign up and don't want to wait for this maintenance window, i recommend
checking out this list of similar servers: https://tildeverse.org/members/

best,
~vilmibm