Look, I hear what you’re saying. And no offense intended, but people like you crow about things like fediverse not being supported… All the while, these applications are not supported by their own developers. And unfortunately, not unlike the majority of my experiences with Linux issues, every time I reach out for help I’m told the same old hat story, “this isn’t meant for beginners”.
And the “pains that come with learning about self-hosting” are so unnecessary and in my opinion quite apparently avoidable.
"Well, did you change the port number to this number that isn’t referenced anywhere in the documentation? It’s pretty obvious to anyone that’s been doing this for 20 years - who would be able to recognize that it’s a step everyone would need to do to deploy - so there’s literally no conceivable reason why that would be included…
###IN THE TUTORIAL
…Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this."
Look, this is software that has not even reached version 1.0. Of course it is incomplete. I totally understand your frustration, but if people are telling you “this is not for beginners”, maybe it would be wise to listen to it? You still haven’t answered my question: are you trying to run your own instance to learn or because you want “support the Fediverse”? If the former, it seems that you are trying to bite more than you can chew. If the latter, there are plenty of other ways to help beyond running your own instance.
Even though I don’t completely support what the other person said, the defense you are making here is dangerous. It’s not gatekeeping or anything like elitism, which is the argument of the other person. I don’t see the point of arguing with them regarding it.
So here you said ‘biting more than you can chew’. The fundamental problem I see here, which is something people say about Linux also, is that the entry barrier is pretty high. Most of the time it stems from lack of easy to access documentation in the case of Linux. But when it comes to some specific projects, the documentation is incomplete. Many of the self hostable applications suffer from this.
People should be able to learn their way to chew bigger things. That is how one can improve. Most people won’t enjoy a steep learning curve. Documentation helps to ease this steepness. Along with that I completely agree with the fact that many people who figure out things, won’t share or contribute into the documentation.
My point is in such scenarios, I think we should encourage people to contribute into the project, instead of saying there are easier ways to do it. Then only an open source project can grow.
The barrier of entry is not kept intentionally high. That’s what gatekeeping is.
I think we should encourage people to contribute into the project
Yeah, and one such way is to go through the documentation, work through the points where things are not clear and make a PR with the changes. That is much better for everyone involved than going around calling for a conspiracy to keep beginners away.
You still haven’t answered my question
And I’m not going to. It has nothing to do with the point that I was making. It has nothing to do with the quip that I started with. I came neither here nor to you to get advice. I made a sarcastic comment that you literally just confirmed. Thank you.
And the consolidation and gatekeeping of resources to the few seems just a tad antithetical to the entire foundation of decentralization.
From join-lemmy.org:
self hostable, easy to deploy
“people” are telling me that this isn’t easy, but Lemmy seems to think it is. Good luck arguing your way out of that paper bag.
And the consolidation and gatekeeping of resources to the few seems
What gatekeeping? And what “few”?
According to fedidb, there are 775 Lemmy servers deployed. So you have at least a few hundred people that are not involved with the project and that have managed to deploy Lemmy. I’m among one of those, and I have access to the same resources as you did. It may not be trivial, but it certainly is within possible.
Again, sorry that you are having trouble, but there is no conspiracy here to keep you away from having your own server.
