A Belgium-specific fedi instance has emerged: belgae.social. That’s great news. There is a new forum there for Brussels as well: !brussels@belgae.social I think !brussels should plan to close down. Rationale:

belgae.social is a thematic node specific to Belgium, while fedia.io is general purpose. General purpose instances are best suited for topics that lack a thematic instance. The forum herein is not too popular anyway. Very few others post here and that’s a rare event. No downvotes. Silent downvotes are both an injustice and are ripe for abusive & suppressive shenanigans. Since no fedi platform is smartly designed in this regard, it’s better to just disable downvotes. Which is what belgae.social has done. It’s more of a safe space this way. You can still make a critical post but then at least the OP’s dignity is respected enough to be informed of the criticism.

I will keep !brussels open for maybe 3-6 months or so, just in case belgae.social turns out to be short-lived. Folks should probably crosspost to both. Probably best to post on belgae.social first, then cross-post to fedia.io. That’s best for visibility.. so that fedia.io readers become aware of belgae.social and not the other way around.