This was my first thought. I’ve never said “self hosted” to a client and, honestly, never would. “On-prem” or “Running on your server.” The idea of a company “self hosting” something is literally just “hosting”.

I run a mastodon instance in docker and a Sharkey instance in docker on another server. I, personally, didn’t find it especially temperamental but, to be fair, I have pretty extensive experience troubleshooting Docker issues re: networking/permissions/volumes because I am cataclysmically unclever.

Some advice: I would definitely recommend against running it on a naked domain you care about (i.e. instance.com). Always deploy it on a subdomain (i.e. mastodon.instance.com) because, if you ever change servers, have to re-make your intance, have domain issues, etc, you will be fucked pretty much forever on that domain. On a subdomain, you can just use a different subdomain.

Holy shit I’m installing the fuck out of this right now

The way this work, not that I’m aware of. Your best bet for that would probably be etherpad