Created FAQ (markdown)

FAQ.md

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+Frequently Asked Questions
+==========================
+
+#### What is a Mastodon?
+
+A prehistoric animal, predecessor of the mammoth.
+
+#### Why the name Mastodon?
+
+There's a progressive metal band with the same name that I'm a fan of that brought the animal to my attention. I thought it's a pretty cool name/animal.
+
+#### How exactly is it decentralized?
+
+There are different ways in which something can be decentralized; in this case, Mastodon is the "federated" kind. Think e-mail, not BitTorrent. There are different servers (instances), users have an account on one of them, but can interact and follow each other regardless of where their account is.
+
+#### Technically, how does the federation work?
+
+We are using the OStatus suite of protocols:
+
+1. Webfinger for user-on-domain lookup
+2. Atom feeds with ActivityStreams, Portable Contacts, Threads extensions for the actual content
+3. PubSubHubbub for subscribing to Atom feeds
+4. Salmon for delivering certain items from the Atom feeds to interested parties such as the mentioned user, author of the status being replied to, person being followed, etc
+
+#### What is mastodon.social?
+
+The "flagship" instance of Mastodon, aka the server I run myself with the latest code. It's not supposed to be the only instance in the end.
+
+#### What else is part of the federated network?
+
+Let's call it the "fediverse". It has existed for a longer while, populated by GNU social servers, Friendica, Hubzilla, Diaspora etc. Not every one of those servers is fully compatible with every other. Mastodon strives to be fully standards-compliant and compatibility with GNU social is higher in priority than the others.