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196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
Moss @lemmy.blahaj.zone

VERY IMPORTANT POLL RESULTS: STAYING ON BLAHAJ.ZONE!!! (THANK GOODNESS)

Edit edit: pls stop voting we already decided. read the post title. I love blahaj.zone and personally wanted to stay.

EDIT-I feel the need to clarify that I don't really care either way, I have no ambitions to be an instance admin, I just want to do whatever's best/preferredf or the community-

Hello everyone, I'm making this post because I have received a very enticing offer that I think we as a community should consider.
Ruud from lemmy.world has reached out and offered to set up our own instance under the domain of 196.social, hosted on lemmy.world's hardware. This would allow the community to exist as a separate entity from any one instance, while also improving stability, as it would not be impacted by The same volume of hacks or attacks. It would also not be affected by Lemmy.worlds downtime as it would be fully separate.
The one trade-off is that we would have to fund this ourselves. Ruud says he is more than willing to cover the costs initially until we get some sort of funding set up, but after that grace period we would have to crowdsource the money. He says that the expenses of running a one community instance are very low, however. especially if we don't allow account creation, so it would not take many people to fund it per month.

Please vote in the comments whether we should remain on blahaj.zone, or migrate to our own instance.

34 comments

  • The Blahaj admins have said they're fine with us staying here, so I don't see much point in moving. Also do you really want to have to start doing fundraising for 196?

    Feels like you keep looking to move without actually talking to the admins (who commented repeatedly on your last post). If you want to move, do it. But I won't be contributing financially if you decide to move to your own instance, there's a place for us here and it works fine.

  • So, one thing I'd mention is the systems and admin work involved in running an instance.

    This is on top of the community moderation, and involves networking with other instance admins, maintaining good relations, deciding who to defeferate from, dealing with unhappy users, etc.

    Then there's the setup and maintenance of the servers, security, hacks, DDoSing, backups, redundancy, monitoring, downtime, diagnosis, fixing performance issues, patching, coding, upgrades etc.

    I wouldn't be here doing this without @ada. We make a formidable team, and without any self effacement, we are both at the top of our respective roles with decades of experience.

    Big communities also magnify the amount of work involved. We're almost at the point where we are starting to consider getting additional people involved.

    Moreover we're both here for the long haul, with the willingness and ability to personally cover the shortfall in hosting costs.

    I'm not trying to convince you to stay here. But in addition to free hardware, you're going to need a small staff to do these things for you, so my advice is to work out if you have reliable AND trustworthy people (because these people will have access to confidential user data) who are committed to do this work long term with you. Where will you be in 3 years, 5, 10?

    • Yeah it seems like Moss may be severely underestimating the work that goes into running an instance. You and Ada do a great job of running blahaj zone, and it seems pointless to move elsewhere and create more work for the people behind 196

    • I would like to acknowledge here that Ada and I, while being part of a marginalized community are both still very privileged.

      I also want to make clear that I'm not saying that you need to have decades of experience, or the means to cover the costs by yourself, but rather wanted to point out it's a hard job and you need to have (multiple, qualified) people to do the job for a larger instance. There may also be times when the donations don't 100% cover the costs, and you'll need to have a plan when this happens.

      Unfortunately multiply intersectional marginalized people have a lot harder time getting that experience and to have a means to fund such instances. It can additonally be a lot harder for them to find opportunities to gain this experience.

      If you do find yourself in a similar situation, and would like an opportunity to gain some experience/training in a LGBTQIA+ / neuro-diverse / marginalized people-friendly community project, please message myself or @ada and we may be able to help.

  • Ruud says he is more than willing to cover the costs initially until we get some sort of funding set up, but after that grace period we would have to crowdsource the money.

    How about getting funding handled first and then considering it.

    Funding is an issue no matter how you slice it.

    If you set it up elsewhere, then fail to secure funding, then it gets shut down, what then? Like may as well just shut it down to begin with if you haven't gotten funding figured out, because that will be the outcome. Site lost, because funding wasn't handled first. This an example of "putting the cart before the horse."

  • Yeah, I'd be worried about the community dying due to lack of funds instead of engagement. It only takes a month or two for that to happen. Even if the host is decent about it charity can only go so far. I'd vote to not become a new instance as cool as that sounds.

    Edit: I'd rather see funds go to a place like blahaj to keep it up and thriving. That'd be a much better use of money

  • Stay on Blåhaj. Plzzzz, come on - Moss, don't be scared Blåhaj wants 196, it's just that they had to fix some hardware stuff.

    It's good here and lgbtq friendly; idonno about lemmy.world, but Blåhaj is the best

  • I'll be honest, where we are now is pretty good as is. I mean, it's where 196 is strongest apart from Tumblr (and Reddit since they're opening that back up). A queer inclusive space like this is once in a blue moon, and I doubt it'll grow as big as this 196, much like how this instance wont be nearly as big as r/196. I say stay on blahaj.

  • I vote stay.

    While the Fediverse is built to be decentralized, social networks rely on network effects. People gather where other people are. There will always be 'winners' and 'losers' in building an instance, or even making an alternative 196. c/196 f/196, c/195, fedi196.gay, ect. The original started out with over half a million members, small by Reddit standards. We're the largest alternative around, and we got less than 10k.

    Administering an entire instance for one community seems like overkill, especially when there is a path forward to reducing costs significantly.

    Also I like the vibes here.

  • On a general note, since 196 over on reddit is reopening, I feel what this community needs is stability. The server is running really well (for me), it's not blocking tor or vpn traffic, it's not behind cloudflare and the admins are not bigots. The stuff you as sublemmy(?) owner should care about is keeping post quality high, and taking care about hostile users. This community is nice, and I'd hope I can come here for some nice memes for a long time. That's just my rambling 2 cents.

    • Also: Moss if you're reading this, how about making a chat with the mod team (maybe even public for transparency) where you discuss stuff like this first? Idk if Ada and Kaity are hosting a matrix server too, but feels like a fitting platform. Maybe add a public, an offtopic room and a secret mod room too and combine that into a matrix space. It would avoid making noise here if it is not necessary.

      • We're not running a matrix server at the moment, but it might be something we can consider.

34 comments