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Beehaw on Lemmy: The long-term conundrum of staying here

Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things.

Up front: we aren't confident in the continued use of Lemmy. We are working through how best to make the website live up to the vision of our documents—and simply put, the vast majority of the limitations we're running into are Lemmy's at this point. An increasing amount of our time is spent trying to work around or against the software to achieve what we want rather than productively building this community. That leaves us with serious questions about our long-term ability to stay on this platform, especially with the lingering prospect of not having the people needed to navigate backend stuff.

Long-time users will no doubt be aware of our advocacy for moderator tools that we think the platform needs (and particularly that we need). Our belief in the importance and necessity of those tools has only hardened with time. Progress of those tools, however—and even organizing work on them—has been pretty much nonexistent outside of our efforts from what we can see.[^1] In the three months since we started seriously pushing the ideas we'd like to see, we’re not aware of any of them being seriously considered—much less taken up or on the way to being incorporated into Lemmy.

In fact: even within the framework of Lemmy's almost nonexistent roadmap and entirely nonexistent timetable on which to expect features it has been made clear to us that improving federation or moderation on the platform are not big priorities.[^2] We have implicitly been told that if this part of the software is to improve we will need to organize that from scratch. And we have tried that to be clear. Our proposal is (and has been) paying people bounties for their labor toward implementing these features, in line with paying all labor done on our behalf—but we've received mixed messages from the top on whether this would be acceptable. (Unclear guidance and general lack of communication is symptomatic of a lot of our relation with the Lemmy devs in the past few months.)

Things aren't much better on the non-moderator side of things. The problems with databases are almost too numerous to talk about and even Lemmy's most ardent supporters recognize this as the biggest issue with the software currently. A complete rewrite is likely the only solution. Technical issues with the codebase are also extensive; we've made numerous changes on our side because of that. Many of the things we're running into have been reported up the chain of command but continue to languish entirely unacknowledged. In some cases bugs, feature requests, and other requests to Lemmy devs have explicitly been blown off—and this is behavior that others have also run into with respect to the project. Only very recently have we seen any overtures at regular communication—and this communication has not hinted at any change in priorities.

All of what was just described has been difficult to get a handle on—and having fewer users, less activity, and more moderators has not done a whole lot to ease that. We honestly find that the more we dig and the more we work to straighten out issues that pop up, the more pop out and the more it feels like Lemmy is structurally unsound for our purposes. (One such example of what we’re working with is provided in the next section.)

In summary: we believe we can either continue to fight the software in basically every way possible, or we can prioritize building the community our documents preach. It is our shared belief that we cannot, in the long-term, do both; in any case, we're not interested in constantly having to fight for basic priorities—ones we consider extremely beneficial to the health of the overall Lemmy network—or having to unilaterally organize and recruit for their addition to the software. We are hobbyists trying to make a cool space first and foremost, and it's already a job enough to run the site. We cannot also be surrogates for fixing the software we use.

PenguinCoder: A brief sketch of the technical perspective

I've said a few words about this topic already, here and here. Other Beehaw admins have also brought some concerns to the Lemmy devs. Those issues still exist. To be clear: this is a volunteer operation and Lemmy is their software; they have a right to pick and choose what goes into it and what to put a priority on. But we have an obligation to keep users safe and secure, and their priorities increasingly stifle our own.

In the case of this happening for open source projects, the consensus is to make your own fork. But:

The problem with forking Lemmy is in starting from all the bad that is inherently there, and trying to make it better. That is way more work than starting fresh with more developers. IE, not using Rust for a web app and UI, better database queries from the start, better logging/functions from the start; not adding on bandaids. A fork of Lemmy will have all of Lemmy's problems but now you're responsible for them instead.

We don't need a fork, we need a solution.

To give just one painful example of where an upstream solution is sorely needed: the federation, blocking, and/or removal of problem images.

  1. You post an image to Beehaw.
  2. Beehaw sends your content out to every other server it's federated with
  3. Federated server accepts it (beehaw.org is on their allowlist), or rejects it (beehaw.org is on their denylist)
  4. If the server accepts it, a copy of your post or comment including the images are now on that receiving server as well as on the server you posted it to. Federation at work.
  5. Mod on beehaw.org sees your post doesn't follow the rules. Removes it from beehaw.org. The other instances Beehaw pushed this content to, do not get that notice to remove it. The copy of your content on Beehaw was removed. The copy of your content on other servers was not removed.
  6. The receiving federated instance needs to manually remove/delete the content from their own server
  7. For a text post or comment that's removed, this can be done via the admin/mod tools on that instance
  8. For a post or comment including a thumbnail, uploaded images, etc; that media content is not removed. It's not tracked where in Lemmy that content was used at. Admin removal of media commences. This requires backend command line and database access, and takes about a dozen steps per image; sometimes more.

There are dozens of issues—some bigger, some smaller—like this that we have encountered and have either needed to patch ourselves or have reported up the chain without success.

Alternatives and the way forward

If possible the best solution here is to stay on Lemmy—but this is going to require the status quo changing, and we’re unsure of how realistic that is. If we stay on Lemmy, it is probable that we will have to do so by making use of a whitelist.

For the unfamiliar, we currently use a blacklist—by default, we federate with all current and newly-created nodes of the Fediverse unless we explicitly exclude them from interacting with our site. A switch to a whitelist would invert this dynamic: we would not federate with anybody unless we explicitly choose to do so. This has some benefits—maintaining federation in some form; staying on Lemmy; generally causing less entropy than other alternatives, etc. But the drawbacks are also obvious: nearly everything described in this post will continue, blacklist or whitelist, because a huge part of the problem is Lemmy.

Because of that we have discussed almost every conceivable alternative there is to Lemmy. We are interested in the thoughts of this community on platforms you have all used and what our eventual choice is going to be, but we are planning on having more surveys in the future to collect this feedback. We ask that you do not suggest anything to us at this time, and comments with suggestions in this thread will be removed.

As for alternatives we’re seriously considering right now: they’re basically all FOSS; would preserve most aspects of the current experience while giving us less to worry about on the backside of things (and/or lowering the bar for code participation); are pretty much all more mature and feature-rich than Lemmy; and generally seem to avoid the issues we’re talking about at length here. Downsides are varied but the main commonality is lack of federation; entropy in moving; questions of how sustainable they are with our current mod team; and more cosmetic things like customization and modification.

We’re currently investigating the most promising of them in greater depth—but we don’t want to list something and then have to strike it, hence the vagueness. If we make a jump, that will be an informed jump. In any case logistics mean that the timetable here is on the order of months. Don’t expect immediate changes. As things develop, we’ll engage the community on what the path forward is and how to make it as smooth as possible.

[1]: Other administrators have probably vocally pushed for these things, but we’re not aware of any public examples we can point to of this taking place. Their advocacy has not produced results that we're aware of in any case, which is what matters. [2]: Perhaps best illustrated by the recent Lemmy dev AMA. We’ll also emphasize that Beehaw’s admin team is not alone in the belief that Lemmy devs do not take mod tools or federation issues particularly seriously.

255 comments

  • A few high level notes about this post, given some of the discussions and behavior in the informal chat post by Chris the other day:

    • We understand this is perhaps the biggest crossroads we've hit yet, and a seriously big issue. It's understandable that you might have strong emotions about the Fediverse as a whole, or the action we are taking as an instance. If you are not from our instance and you come into this thread with a short hostile comment about how we aren't respecting your views or that we should never have joined the Fediverse in the first place, your comments will be removed and you will be banned.
    • Any suggestions for what we should do, that involve actual effort or time, such as finding developers to fix the problems we've had should be accompanied with an explanation of how you're going to be helping. We've lodged countless github tickets. We've done our due diligence, so please treat this post with good faith.
    • Similarly doing nothing more than asking for more details on the technical problems we are struggling with, without a firm grasp of the existing issues with Lemmy or the history of conversations and efforts we've put in is not good faith either. We're not interested in people trying to pull a gotcha moment on us or to make us chase our tails explaining the numerous problems with the platform. If you're offering your effort or expertise to fix the platform you're welcome to let us know, but until you've either submitted merge requests or put in significant effort (Odo alone has put in hundreds of hours trying to document, open tickets, and code to fix problems) we simply may not have the time to explain everything to you.
    • I want to reiterate the final paragraph here in case you missed it - we are not looking to make any changes in the short term. We expect it would be at the minimum several months before we made any decisions on possible solutions to the problems we've laid out here.
    • Finally, I want to say that I absolutely adore this community and what we've all managed to build here and that personally, I really care about all of you. I wish we weren't here and I wish this wasn't a problem we are facing. But we are, so please do not hesitate to share your feelings 💜

    • I’m angry. Everywhere I go on the internet, I encounter some form of prejudice and hate.

      What Cambridge Analytica unleashed 10 years ago spread like second-hand smoke to all the platforms and society at large, and it works. There are copycats all over the place now and the whole world has become more hostile. Professional psychologists / psychiatrists endorsing these media techniques was one of the worst things to happen to humanity. The damage may take centuries to heal.

      “Chaos and disruption, I later learned, are central tenets of Bannon's animating ideology. Before catalyzing America's dharmic rebalancing, his movement would first need to instill chaos through society so that a new order could emerge. He was an avid reader of a computer scientist and armchair philosopher who goes by the name Mencius Moldbug, a hero of the alt-right who writes long-winded essays attacking democracy and virtually everything about how modern societies are ordered. Moldbug’s views on truth influenced Bannon, and what Cambridge Analytica would become. Moldbug has written that “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth,” and Bannon embraced this. “Anyone can believe in the truth,” Moldbug writes, “to believe in nonsense is an unforgettable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army.” ― Christopher Wylie, Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

      • Moldbug writes, “to believe in nonsense is an unforgettable demonstration of loyalty

        Sounds like taken straight out of 1984 (published 1949).

    • You might want to check out Tildes too. I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, which I think is a community where you form relationships with others (hasn't been my experience there [nor here]), but its main focus is less noise, better content (as in both posts and conversation). It's less about jokes or raking in upvotes and more about having something meaningful to say.

      I haven't encountered that much of any kind of hate speech or your average internet assholery so it might be at least a place to check out.

      It's a bit dry and slow content wise so I don't think it'll end up being anyone's one stop shop for everything social media.

      • Our website came to fruition because many of us started on Tildes. We were upset with the way minorities were being treated on that website. I spoke out vocally about it, and was told in no uncertain terms that meta-discussions like that were not going to be tolerated. Tildes is better than most, but it still has issues that are not in alignment with what we are trying to accomplish here.

  • It is disappointing how unconcerned the Lemmy devs are with the lack of mod tools on this platform. Honestly if Beehaw decides to move away from Lemmy, I'll probably follow and stop using Lemmy altogether. Beehaw's all that's really keeping me here.

    • Not prioritizing moderation tools doesn’t make sense to me, either. A database that’s crummy (but functional) is an important issue, but one that seems like it can wait. Moderation tools cannot wait.

      Community building is what Lemmy is supposed to be for, right? Any instance, regardless of its goals or ideology, needs good moderation in order to thrive (what’s considered “good moderation” will vary widely from instance to instance, and that’s fine. You know what I mean, though). Even an instance that prides itself on minimal moderation needs powerful, flexible mod tools to deal with things like spam and cp.

      The less obvious technical parts are important, of course, but users don’t love or hate an instance because of the back end. They care about how it’s moderated.

      Bear in mind that I know nothing about programming, moderating, etc. Take that into account when considering my comment.

    • Yeah, like... I'm not on beehaw myself, but if beehaw goes, I'd probably end up leaving myself. One of my biggest complaints about Lemmy in general is the lack of special interest communities. There's politics, porn, general news, technology news (which is mostly complaining about That One Guy), Linux discussion, general memes like you'd see on Twitter or Reddit, and a trickle of more niche memes. There's a complete dearth of content for niche communities like individual games or special interest hobbies, because the userbase is simply too small to support a healthy special interest community. If Beehaw migrates off Lemmy, it will take a big chunk of that already too-small userbase with it, and the problem will be exacerbated even further. If that happens, I don't know if it's worth sticking around.

      • I'm pretty protective of my online privacy so I have a tendency to make alts rather than allow disparate interests to be correlated to the same user (I'd rather have 3 accounts than a single account that show that I'm a person with my hobby with my career living in my city), so I've scattered my lemmy alts all across the lemmyverse (less beholden to instance downtime or an admin trying to correlate users).

        There’s a complete dearth of content for niche communities like individual games or special interest hobbies, because the userbase is simply too small to support a healthy special interest community.

        At this point, lemmy doesn't even have much in the way of communities on some mainstream topics: sports, lifestyle/advice, food, cars, fashion, television, film, music, local issues in major population centers, etc. I mean, back in the 2000's, these were topics that were mainstream enough that they were able to publish printed magazines or even newspapers for newsstands, but we can't even get a critical mass of commenters for many of these topics on lemmy.

        Yes, linux/FOSS and video games and tech are relatively niche interests that do have robust discussion here on lemmy, but that's mainly a function of who tended to adopt use of the platform. Is lemmy going to be like Hacker News or Slashdot in that it never makes the jump to the mainstream?

  • The thing is, when Beehaw is no longer in Lemmy, it will be a regular VBulletin, phpBB, Discourse, etc. community. Nothing wrong with that.

    The question will be: if the change is made, will the users follow? Because a lot of users in this post https://lemmy.ca/post/4990126 have said that they prefer Beehaw to stay in Lemmy because it is a Reddit alternative. It is big risk.

    • We are not and never intended to be Reddit or a Reddit alternative. This is clearly laid out in our docs. We are trying to do something fundamentally different, and are not interested in users who just want Reddit but elsewhere.

    • The question will be: if the change is made, will the users follow?

      ultimately: if it fails, it fails. our metrics for success here aren't size or longevity, really—they're just bonuses.

    • Well, we have stated that we are not trying to be reddit. There are more reddit-like alternatives than the more traditional forums that are possibilities.

      We entirely expect that if we move away from Lemmy, we will lose people. Will that be for the better or the worse? Nobody can know as nobody can predict that future. It's a very difficult position.

  • I'm a simple man. Where Beehaw goes, I follow.

    I have had enough of attempting to engage others in good faith, and assuming everyone is an rational actor.

    Beehaw is a community that chooses to be excellent to one another, and to not be garbage human beings. I'm on board with that. Fuck the toxicity everywhere else. I'm with you and will die on this proverbial hill.

  • Honestly, I'm happy to join if beehaw move on to something like a forum and not-federated. IMO (which may sound selfish to some but) I join beehaw because of the vibe and the rules that I'm happy to follow. I'm not really joining beehaw because I want to use it as a Reddit replacement, but I want to interact with the community. I feel like Beehaw identity doesn't really tie to lemmy or on specific software.

    So whatever if it federates or not will not really affect me much. I only speak for myself, of course. For others, it might not be the same case. I feel safe commenting and talking in beehaw own community, so... whatever the decision, maybe I'm happy to stay/follow with beehaw. Thank you for the transparency and hard work you all put into beehaw :)

  • Wow. This is a lot.

    First off, I want to thank all the devs, admins, and mods, for all the time they have put in on Beehaw. I cannot even begin to fathom what you folks go through and the time you have put in to give us this space. All I can give you is a few bucks and my heartfelt appreciation.

    Now to the heart of the matter (now I've got that Don Henley tune in my head.): If the developers of Lemmy are not serious about mod tools, then yeah, time to book. Moderation is kind of a no-brainer when it comes to running a successful community, especially one built on the vision and values established here at Beehaw. If we have to go with a non-FOSS solution for a bit, I'm down, as long as the spirit of this space remains intact. That is non-negotiable to me. I'm so done with mainstream social media, that if anything happened to this space, I'd just settle for my Firefish account, and just be done with everything else. Hell, I may just retreat to Discord where a bunch of my gaming buddies are.

    But as long as long as Beehaw exists in some form, I'm there.

    • I appreciate the support. We are doing our due diligence to find a better path for Beehaw. It may not be perfect, in the eyes of every participant, but it will be better.

  • Late to this discussion, but speaking as a Reddit refugee and a very average user, I'll follow beehaw wherever it goes...

    ...but I will probably also fire up my nearly-forgotten kbin account as well.

    The fediverse is far from ready for the challenges that it faces but I'm very interested in its development and future. I really think it or something like it is what the internet is trending towards. I'm quite lucky being in some of priveleged categories so I don't face the level of harassment many fellow beeple do very day.

    I think we have a good thing going here and it's so freeing to read and comment without having to read past all the usual hate and bad behaviour.

    So Im happy to lurk in one place and be myself in another. Do what you guys have to do. I'm in.

  • I'm sure I'm saying nothing new with all the comments here, but I thought I'd comment anyways:

    I don't think it would be the end of the world for Beehaw to migrate to a new non-federated platform, and I would probably maintain my account there as well. I honestly think Beehaw and Lemmy might both be worse off for it though.

    When Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works a while ago I made a second account to browse the defederated side of Lemmy; but I've found I rarely use that account anymore. The number of bad (and often hurtful) takes I've seen coming from the wider Lemmy community are exhausting and I can't be bothered to look through them most of the time.

    Right now I feel (aside from all the work our overworked admin team deals with) Beehaw is in the perfect sweet spot. It has the welcoming and protective environment, which I feel is absolutely necessary; and it has activity from select instances that helps keep it interesting and fresh.

    I think if Beehaw left Lemmy, I would miss activity from the friendlier instances, and I'm sure they would miss the activity from Beehaw as well. If Beehaw left, I genuinely think the whole of Lemmy would be just a little less safe and a little less friendly.

    Having said that, it sounds like the current model is simply unsustainable, and maintaining the integrity of all of Lemmy is not your job. I hope you can find a solution that makes everyone happy while still maintaining your sanity.

    My personal suggestion would be to contact the admins of some of the friendlier instances and maybe try making a shared suggested whitelist that just has confirmed friendly instances with admin teams you trust. Each instance could obviously alter their own whitelist, but it could be a good starting point for any new instances who are looking for safe instances to federate with (pending approval).

    Good luck to you all in navigating this issue

  • Whatever does end up happening to Beehaw, o7 (salute) to all the hardworking mods and those working to maintaining Beehaw.

  • I'm very sad to see this. The saddest thing is the state of development I guess and this is just the fallout. I do hope that you will try an allowlist at first (at least before deciding to leave the fediverse altogether) and maybe struggle through until things get better (I do believe they will get better; software development is just inherently not a super fast process).

    The problem with forking Lemmy is in starting from all the bad that is inherently there, and trying to make it better. That is way more work than starting fresh with more developers. IE, not using Rust for a web app and UI, better database queries from the start, better logging/functions from the start; not adding on bandaids.

    FWIW I actually think Rust is the perfect language for the backend. It's just that the quality of the code in Lemmys backend isn't great (from my limited experience). You can write bad code in any language. What you really need are professionals that are good at coding (unfortunately this is rare even among professionals). (Humbly) I am one such person. If you are serious about trying to start a better Lemmy alternative from scratch, I'd love to be involved in the backend discussions.

    Perhaps Beehaws issues could be something a new development community could gather around. My perception is that you have a lot of non-technical people who would be great at project management, requirements analysis, UX design and that sort of thing. This is kind of what Lemmy has been lacking from the start.

    I am not part of Beehaw, but that's only since I admin another instance. I could see myself having joined Beehaw if it wasn't for that. So again, if you are really serious about a potential new development, I'd love to be in on it.

  • I'd rather not see Beehaw split from Lemmy but if you feel you have to then I for one wouldn't mind seeing it using a phpbb board.

    Glory to the old forums! /old grumpy mode

  • Hugs, y'all. Do what you feel is best. <3

    I've been on Discuit more than Lemmy, but honestly? If Beehaw defederates or switches to a different platform, I'm more likely to visit Beehaw on a daily basis than I have been. I just prefer well-tended walled gardens. I grew up with forums being the way. Smaller communities feel the best. Even when the software base is good, the community management part is ... complicated with the fediverse.

  • An outsider point of view

    Lemmy started as a passion project and been growing slowly over years and then out of nowhere a small group of developers had to not only adjust to new influx of people, but also a barrage of ideas, suggestions and comments on what they should prioritize. I'm not sure how much experience different people here have with open source development, but the amount of changes in 3 months Lemmy developers managed to do is impressive to say the least. And there will never be open source project that manages to satisfy everyone.

    Fundamentally people assume that with open source project all ideas will get implemented either by developers or if someone does the work and makes a pull request. But like with every other project the maintainers are allowed to have their own vision and not implement everything someone asks for or have different priorities or specific structure in mind.

    Beehaw always tried to create something where they have complete control over everything. And that worked with federation when they were one of a few "big" instances (some people might not know but Beehaw is 21 months old, opened on 2021-11-12), but once influx of new users came in the existing tools weren't enough to have the level of control they wanted. So they clsoed the doors on new users and isolated themselves and at the same time angered a big portion of fediverse users for taking advantage of new user influx but the cutting them off from the rest of the fediverse.

    I'm not sure if people checked the posts where Beehaw listed features and tools they want and a lot of them are super tailored to Beehaw vision which is not in step with federated Lemmy as a whole.

    I don't think that the Beehaw vision and fediverse can coexist as they have diametrically opposed ideas.

    • I’m not sure if people checked the posts where Beehaw listed features and tools they want and a lot of them are super tailored to Beehaw vision which is not in step with federated Lemmy as a whole.

      I don’t think that the Beehaw vision and fediverse can coexist as they have diametrically opposed ideas.

      As another outsider, I disagree. All the ideas and suggestions from the beehaw team seem like things that would benefit the whole Fediverse (or other lemmy instances at least). I'm curious what suggestions you think are incompatible?

      • Take

        If a Berson is reported on another instance, we never get the report.

        Why should Beehaw get a report for something not done on their instance? Instance rules only apply to that instance activities.

        Or

        Limiting (Lock our communities down from certain instances but still allow people using our instance to talk to people from those instances)

        That is fundamentally anti federation suggestion.

    • the amount of changes in 3 months Lemmy developers managed to do is impressive to say the least.

      I'm trying to be nice, but two full time paid people did not manage to do much in 3 months if you mean May, June, and July regarding the Reddit API change period. It seems Rust is their main focus and in the middle of all this they decided to start a new front-end in Rust. When dozens of new front-ends were being developed by eager newcomers, including replacements like Photon that even have admin and moderation interfaces.

      I’m not sure if people checked the posts where Beehaw listed features and tools they want and a lot of them are super tailored to Beehaw vision which is not in step with federated Lemmy as a whole.

      I've checked their listed features and tools, and I have no idea what you are talking about. They are features that Lemmy needs. What exactly do you mean that Beehaw is "super tailored"?

  • I appreciate the transparency through all of this. It's nice to know about the problem while there's still some time to handle it. To be honest - I probably would not follow Beehaw to any new non-federated platform. Its nothing against Beehaw (I love this community and its admins) but I'm just not convinced that we could ever attain enough regular users to keep critical mass on the niche topics I follow. That's the real advantage of Lemmy - all (well-behaved) instances get to share their user base.

    Unfortunately, I also understand why staying on Lemmy might not be an option. Same with forking or using another Fedi software. Either way - I trust y'all to consider all the options and make the best choice. 🐝💙

  • I wrote a big ol post that didn't post apparently. Anyway, I assume you have been looking at Postmill. If beehaw move I'm likely going to follow. Tbh without the fediverse, I would likely engage more often. I find that I dislike conversing with federated users because they come from a place with a different ethos. As a result I still have to deal with crap.

    • Tbh without the fediverse, I would likely engage more often.

      I think a lot of people would. Being federated means that every comment on every subject gets sent out to every instance beehaw is federated with, even if you delete it. That feels less like sharing a feeling with a community and more like spraying it out into the internet.

  • Alternatives or not, I think it’d be very beneficial to document concept of operation that you want. That way you can either take pieces of these conops and tell lemmy devs what you want, or if you have your own project this will be its conops and you can guide developers towards features you need.

  • At first I thought this might be an overreaction to be perfectly honest. But I just read through some of the Dev responses in the AMA... what the fuck is the issue with removing exploding heads from join-lemmy??

    The other questions on the development itself weren't awesome but wow that comment chain about join-lemmy is something else.

    I could overlook the CCP support if they keep it on their instances but funneling people into an instance like that... I'm not sure how to feel about Lemmy either TBH.

  • I'd be curious what the roadblock is in the dev process here, is it a lack of volunteer devs writing pull requests, or not enough people allowed to review and approve/deny those pull requests

  • From the AMA you linked it sounds like the Lemmy maintainers are just two and are unable to deal with all the missing features. They made it sound like it might stabilise in the future and they are still trying to make it scale.

    I read their reply as this : there are many things to implement and moderation is not a priority compared to other features. Do you know if someone made a PR about adding more moderation features? Was it accepted or turned down?

    • Yeah, the whole "this is THEIR software and we're just a few hobby people" struck me.

      Aren't the Lemmy devs in a pretty similar situation? I wouldn't be surprised if individual instances got more donations than the Lemmy project itself. (And to be clear, I don't expect any of that is a living wage for someone.)

      "Starting from scratch" is usually a pretty naive suggestion for a large project that seems to be functioning well in large scale production.

      I do get that there are problems, especially from a moderation perspective. But that's one scope of a much larger project.

      Pointing fingers seems less productive than pull requests and/or patience. And I'd be surprised if there were other, open software available that has the same functionality outside of the fediverse.

      I know of the issue with decommissioned servers, which has been resolved. I've seen the instances crashing less and less over time. I've experienced the software responding faster and more reliably. So I've seen some amount of progress. The project isn't dead. In fact you can watch what they're doing at their GitHub link. It's very, very active.

      • This is honestly where I'm standing as well, having gone through dev processes before, it all takes more time than everyone assumes. The issues brought up sound like features that need added, but the good news is this is Open Source, so anyone with the know-how can build it. I'd even argue Rust is an excellent approach for the backend, being very similar to C. So what's missing, the dev able and willing to commit hours to developing that change, a reviewer to handle the pull requests, or has someone developed it and the pull request is being gate kept?
        \ As much as I understand and agree with the issues presented, I think we need to remember that we're moving at the pace of Open Source, not a funded private company.

      • Honestly, I expected lemmy to be pretty crunchy for the next 5+ years. Any sub-5 year old platform is gonna have issues scaling and having features built out. But particularly foss ones, which are pretty much always cash strapped and running off goodwill and enthusiasm- like much of the early internet. I for one, like it :)

  • If you decide to move and leave all the cack behind, I'm in.

    I'll probably be more involved and would even be willing to chip in with a small subscription. That or registered users may also keep a lot of the trolls away.

    • If Beehaw was to move to a centralized platform I wouldn’t be following, but I would if the platform was federated.

      What if we started out not federated with anyone, but clearly actively working towards it? Would you still follow?

      By federated, do you mean decentralized and interoperability with other platforms (TBD), or specifically federated with Lemmy, Kbin, etc? Do you desire ActivityPub (aka mastadon) federation or others acceptable, as long as it's not just Beehaw here?

      A federation is a group of computing or network providers agreeing upon standards of operation in a collective fashion.

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