I think we should own our insurance and admin it ourselves, and set up statutes to transparently explain how we moderate it, how moderators are chosen and (eventually) how they can be impeached. It’s in the spirit of the fediverse, and the cons of federation are largely a question of educating the users, which will happen gradually. I see it as the most promising way to sustainability.
Comment on Monday Daily Questions (Newbie Friendly) - 08/07/2023 02:00:00 AM GMT-4
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
What are your thoughts on having a dedicated WetShaving Lemmy instance vs. creating a WetShaving community on something like lemmy.world?
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the pros and cons. In general, running your own instance makes you an “admin”, whereas creating a community elsewhere makes you a “moderator”. Admins can invite other admins and moderators, and moderators can invite other moderators. Admins can ban users across the entire instance (currently Wetshaving, Wetshaving Server Discussion, Straight Razors, etc.). Moderators can only ban users from communities they moderate.
Pros of the current dedicated instance:
- Is in line with the general philosophy of a decentralized network.
- Can publish instance-wide rules, and more granular rules per community. For example, the instance rules cover behavior and etiquette, pornography, etc., while the /c/wetshaving rules cover content guidelines, review disclosure, etc.
- Can still be subscribed to and accessed from users on other instances (for example, I have an account at lemmy.world, and if I’m logged in there I can still browse and post on this community.
- Users on this instance can still subscribe to communities on other instances, and this has the effect of advertising traditional wetshaving. If a user with an account on this instance comments on a post on lemmy.world, their username is appended like “user@sub.wetshaving.social”. Maybe someone will notice the wetshaving link and give us a visit. (I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, but I have to double check).
- As more people on THIS instance subscribe to things on other instances, and visa versa, sub.wetshaving.social should appear when people search their instance for “wetshaving”.
Cons of the current dedicated instance:
- Search – as of this writing, searching for a community called “rollercoasters” doesn’t yield any meaningful results. You have to search for !rollercoasters@lemm.ee to have a result.
- As soon as anyone on this instance subscribes to !rollercoasters@lemm.ee, only then will it appear in search results.
- If someone on another instance searches for “wetshaving”, they may not find this community. (hard to call this a con, because the same can be said if /c/wetshaving was on another instance.
All in all, I think the cons would apply no matter which instance /c/wetshaving is hosted at, be it our own instance or something like lemmy.word, and the only cons are related to searching. This is a general downside to decentralized networks and will improve over time.
What do you think?
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
how they can be impeached.
Already plotting to get rid of me, I see!
I put some ideas in a response to PBnT666 above, but I largely agree with you about gradual growth.
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
I honestly don’t know. I kind of agree with @gfdoto@sub.wetshaving.social that we need to know what the Lemmy is about before making decisions, and that the separate Lemmy instance vs. being a sub community somewhere else is a sideshow or a consequence of the more basic decision.
If it’s buying insurance against reddit’s decisions (as [@djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social](sub.wetshaving.social/u/djundjila seems to suggest, if I interpret that correctly), I don’t think that it’s worth to spend the time and money to maintain a separate server - I don’t think that the r/wetshaving community will transfer to a different place, under any realistic scenario.
One question would be whether things like the LG or AA could take place also here and on Mastodon, which could give this place (or any Lemmy) a huge boost.
It’s also a bit sad to see that many of the people who posted here in the beginning don’t do so anymore (for instance, @gcgallant@wetshaving.social, @merikus@wetshaving.social or @sahenders@sub.wetshaving.social - who all post on Mastodon, but not here; still others seem to have abandoned the fediverse entirely).
Will we be able to attract new people from the fediverse? This will also depend on how well the fediverse does as a whole. For the moment, after some growth, it seems to me that people are rather going back to reddit.
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
I’d like to pivot away from being a r/wetshaving replacement, and move towards being another place to share your shave stuff. I still have some work to do, but up until yesterday, anyone asking to join was asked to explain their relationship to r/wetshaving, and in the absence of that tell us what their favorite shave soaps are. Not great for people who are interested in wetshaving but haven’t started yet. I’d like to be more open than that. There is still a question to answer when signing up to prevent bots and spammers, but I want to detach this from Reddit.
The time and money for hosting aren’t a problem right now, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.
Hosting a LG or AA here would be cool! I agree that it would have to start out being side-by-side with r/wetshaving. In fact, I’ll add some AA posts to the bot sometime today. I want to add additional auto posts like Mail Call, etc., too. Maybe in the future, the LG committee and shill this forum and give an extra point if the user cross-posts all 30 shaves here.
As far as people taking a break (or quitting) Lemmy, that doesn’t bother me. Lemmy saw a huge boost from the Reddit API thing, but it was temporary. Not just here, but everywhere. Now that this instance is established, it needs to be a natural migration of old and new users alike.
I saw a stat recently where the amount of interaction with Lemmy has gone up quite a bit with the release of Sync for Lemmy (the Android app). I do see mobile apps increasing the overall usage of Lemmy in the long term. Mastodon had a great app from the start when people started to bail from Twitter, and I think that probably helped them retain a lot of the refugees.
PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
Thanks for your detailed response! I see that you, @djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social and @merikus@sub.wetshaving.social have plans for continuing, which is excellent news.
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
I agree with everything said here
PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
Testing: do I see it if I’m pinged from Lemmy to Mastodon?
gfdoto@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I think you’re missing a major con of the current dedicated instance, which is ownership, or lack thereof. During the Lather Games the bot stopped posting the daily threads and that wasn’t rectified for over a month. I understand this is volunteer work and I don’t fault anyone for preferring to spend time over on Reddit during the Lather Games, but if this instance is always going to play second fiddle then it will never reach its full potential. Around the time when LG started, the Lemmy version wasn’t updated very quickly when a new version came out that broke compatibility with some third party apps which resulted in me giving up and going to another instance.
Until someone is willing to dedicate the time to fully support this instance, I don’t really think there is a point to discussing the various pros and cons that you mentioned because to me there is a baseline level of Lemmy functionality that’s not consistently being met. I kind of feel the ship has sailed and people are happy to continue using Reddit and I’ve moved on to Discord for my wetshaving needs, but I still come back here from time to time to see if anything has changed.
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
Yes indeed, and there was a major shift in the ownership yesterday. The hosting is now behind a different account, which multiple people will have access to (as soon as DJ gets home from vacation 😎 ). Same goes for our bot account, @wetshavingadmin. The new ownership model gives more people access to the upgrade function.
Yes, that was frustrating. A lot was learned a lot about how updates work with the hosting company and it will happen a lot faster now. That update is what broke the bot, though, and the bots took time to get updated by the bot writers. The latest update (to v0.18.3) only took a day or so for us to pull the trigger on, so we could make sure it wasn’t a bad update.
With the way everything is set up right now (as of yesterday), if another Lather Games were to start tomorrow, we would not have the same problems.
I have access to everything (hosting, admin, accounts, etc) as of yesterday, and I’ve been busy making changes and improvements. The bot should be all set up and good to go. We also have djundjila and I’m sure the moderation team will grow.
Reddit and Discord are pretty cool! I’m pretty excited for the future of Lemmy, but it’s going to be a slow churn. Nothing wrong with that.
gfdoto@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Sounds like things are heading in the right direction. Thanks to everyone involved!
spj_hook@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
I also don’t blame anyone (and it’s not like I’m willing to step up to the plate) but I think that’s a great point. Things have been inconsistent around here. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank @PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social for posting all the daily threads manually this past month, in order to keep things going.
PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
🙏
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
Yes, @PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social ++;
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
Yes indeed. Thanks @porkbuttsntaters666
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 1 year ago
@walden@sub.wetshaving.social, @merikus@sub.wetshaving.social, and I have the plan to work out a gouvernance model later this summer that does not rely on a single person carrying the admin and financial costs to address this issue long term. Currently, this instance is owned by merikus while I own the domains for both this and the mastodon instance and Walden took over most of the admin work. This is obviously not ideal for sustainability
gfdoto@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Thanks for your efforts!