added readme with instructions

server-util/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+# make-users.py
+
+This script must be run via python **on your mastodon server** because it calls the [`tootctl`](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/) administration tool. There's lots of stuff you can do with the [Mastodon API](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/api/guidelines/), but creating users like this requires a CLI tool.
+
+This is a _one-time step_ that you do when you begin to use toota-palooza. You can delete this script after you run it once.
+
+# Usage
+
+1. Decide on an email address to use for all your accounts. (See EMAIL ADDRESSES below)
+2. Decide how many you want to run
+3. Copy this `make-users.py` script to your mastodon server.
+4. `cd` to a directory where you can write an output file. You could do it from `/tmp` if you wanted to.
+5. Make sure the mastodon `tootctl` binary is in your path, or provide the path as a `--path` argument. 
+
+# Email Addresses
+
+There will be some emails generated (the toota-palooza system tries to minimise them), and email addresses are needed for logging in. So we generate one email address per test user. You give us a regular email address like this: `person@example.com`. We will generate userIDs that look like this: `tooter_pqda_568`. And we will assign the email address: `person+tooter_pqda_568@example.com` to the `tooter_pqda_568` Mastodon account. For most email services (GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail), this ["plus addressing"](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipients-in-exchange-online/plus-addressing-in-exchange-online) has been an Internet standard for decades.
+