@pwm @mint @NonPlayableClown @fba

> api to fedilist that asks if an instance is dead, and if so, since when.

Yeah, the status changes page would normally do that, but what is actually useful in this case would be the last successful contact timestamp. That's on the page, I can make it an endpoint, tack on something like the time it was first discovered, the most recent successful contact, etc. It'd probably be better to do this by putting microdata annotations on the page (so you just request the regular page and then pull out the timestamp), but for the lulz I am willing to do a JSON endpoint.

Speaking of status changes, I've been meaning to make the status changes page accept multiple hostnames because that makes the RSS feed a little more useful, you can subscribe to a set instead of subscribing to 50 RSS feeds for individual instances, so that's done, it's one of those things that is trivial enough that it always slips my mind: http://demo.fedilist.com/instance/recent-changes?host=fsebugoutzone.org,freespeechextremist.com,shitposter.world,gh0st.live,ryona.agency,poa.st . I think kirby was interested in that but I can't remember on any given day what server kirby is on.

> Then every time you record a block you make sure you know whether the blocked instance is alive or dead at the time of the block

Yeah, that was my thinking, but that it'd be recorded locally in the DB, so that someone imports a blocklist and then you don't need to fetch a thousand instances every time. Then when you do the query, you just check, like `where block_timestamp > last_alive_timestamp` or if you want to be certain, `where block_timestamp > last_alive_timestamp + '30 days'::interval`. Something like that.

> a minimum time after which someone is dead (fedilist side),

It's marked as "down" if it's been at least an hour and there have been at least four unsuccessful attempts, but I think if I just write the timestamp of the last successful contact, that's a little more flexible. Like, you can get the status by just hitting the recent changes CSV: http://demo.fedilist.com/instance/recent-changes/csv?host=fsebugoutzone.org.