this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
222 points (80.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43989 readers
726 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I'm trying to get some feedback on our potential move.

Let's start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.

A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.

We decided that our 'Northern Star' or guiding principle would culminate as 'Be Nice' with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.

We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.

One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.

During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.

Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.

After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.

Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.

(page 5) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Didn't you defederate from a lot of instances anyways? And recreate every major community to have yet another copy talking about the same subject and splitting the readership/people?

If I were you, I'd pull the plug and do it properly. All I've seen is beehaw causing confusion with (new) users on other instances and I alone have explained like 5 times why people can't see some posts or their posts can't be seen by other people because of defereration and that it's a complicated 3-way triangle how Lemmy handles that (with the originating instance of the community, the home instance of the user and the instance the other user is on.) And you're confusing your own users by letting them believe they're on the fediverse and part of Lemmy, while they're in fact part of maybe 10% of the Fediverse. It adds to the confusion that every community exists twice or more times and users have to handle that. Your own admins complain a lot. And it causes you pain.

I think you were better off with a discord server or a closed forum. And it'd spare you and everyone being constantly annoyed with each other.

In theory connecting people is always a good thing. But I don't see how that would work out here.

[โ€“] PsychedSy 3 points 11 months ago

I disagree with you guys for a lot of reasons.

Diversity of thought and, well, your silly shit are important. No. I wouldn't do what you do myself. Yes. You should stay. Send a link and I'll donate.

The fediverse needs testing of both technical and social areas.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I'm not sure I understand where you guys are planning to be moving on to- just a website? I will miss beehaw for sure, I appreciate the technology and gaming communities there which I follow. I've been blissfully oblivious to any toxicity either from beehaw or towards beehaw. But you must do what your instance prefers first and foremost.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

You pop in here and ask the community if we would be sad if you left? You're either phishing for a reason to leave by garnishing negative sentiment, further driving your "parishioners" to WANT defederation, or you are wanting to tarnish Lemmy as a platform, or both. Various sects of Christianity do this manipulative shit all the time. They force their flock to spread the word knowing full well they will face negativity -- no one likes to be solicited to -- and come crying to the church about their treatment, where the church comforts them and reinforces why only they can provide safety and warmth. It's cult tactics.

You don't want to know if you should defederate from the rest of us, you want to spread doubt in the platform and wall yourselves off to the world that doesn't conform to your views. You talk about negative aspects of Lemmy without offering any specifics and/or providing solutions to things you find problematic. To me, that's a red flag for someone wanting attention for a decision they already made. There's a sarcastic reply to that, I believe it's "bye Felicia."

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

You're smaller and weaker defederated. The fact that you chose to post this on lemmy.ml rather than beehaw clearly proves that.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It'd be a shame imo but end of the day your choice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Indifferent

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The fact that you talk about users as "seeking refuge" means you think of your instance as much more than a social media platform.

So I would say that yes, maybe Lemmy is not what you actually need. It's designed to federate discussions between everyone using it, and that's a poor fit for a refugee center (so to speak).

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

At least two communities I use are on Beehaw, but I wouldn't be super affected.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Late Reply: This is going to sound harsh but it's true. I wouldn't miss it. If Beehaw disappeared tomorrow I probably wouldn't even notice, and I'm sure that would be the case for many other people here. The problem is that because Beehaw has defederated so aggressively from the largest instances and shut its doors to new users, and people just moved on, or didn't notice or care. I spent most of my first days on Lemmy.world and consequently didn't see a majority of the content from Beehaw, but I did see many upset users who had to Migrate from Beehaw due to the defederations since most of the content and communities they wanted access to wasn't available to them on Beehaw.

Since Beehaw didn't (and still doesn't) have community creation enabled it never really had niche communities like other instances did, it is rather forgettable because of that, what most people will remember it for though is the defederations and having to migrate accounts to not be cut off from the rest of the fediverse.

load more comments
view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ