Over the years I’ve been trying to encapsulate, as simply as possible, what Beehaw interactions would look like ideally.
I kept coming back to all of my personal memories having holiday meals (Thanksgiving and Christmas for example) with very close family and friends.
Thinking back through decades of these meetings, I cannot remember anything but everyone being kind and charitable in action as well as speech.
Many pages of very thoughtful and reasonable philosophic explanations have been written, on our sidebar, about the behavioral expectations of Beehaw.
Let’s go back to the holiday meals for a moment and imagine having an open invitation for anyone to join. What do you think the outcomes would be?
This is the problem that our endeavor is experiencing. The open nature of ActivityPub (allowing anyone to join our table) is defeating our purpose.
The administrators, moderators and community members have been thinking about this for several months.
I, personally, believe that we all will come to a comfortable consensus moving forward.
I think that if we defederated, Lemmy would be much worse off for it. I think we’d also be a lot slower, and I’d be checking it a lot less.
Beehaw brings something to Lemmy that Lemmy really needs. It’s leftist, but it’s also very compassion-focused, and we kind of lack that elsewhere. The rest of the otherwise kind of similar communities largely lack the spirit of getting along in good faith that I see here.
Like, what other community do you ever see people responding to hostility by reminding people where they are and it actually mattering? People seem to largely respect the space. Not to say it doesn’t ever have a need for moderation, it clearly does and y’all do a great job, but with that moderation it manages to be an exemplary space.
It would be a shame for Lemmy to lose that positive influence and that good example. And it would leave the more lefty-leaning options kind of… meh.
But it also really helps to bulk out the experience of using Beehaw. We don’t get that many posts, so it’s nice to be able to go to subscribed or all instead of just local. It’d definitely be a bummer to lose that.
Anyway, I think you’re much closer to your goal than you might see while you’re on the moderating and administrating end. You see all the nasty stuff up close, but we get to see the result. And compared to the rest of the internet, it’s an oasis.
I’d prefer if you guys stayed in the fedi, but this is probably the 10th time you guys have asked this same question on if you should stay. If you have to keep asking, I think you know the answer. No need to ask an 11th time.
Its an on going discussion and not a take our ball and go home situation. I think its important to gather support and insight with a big decision and not play dictator. Also, now the hectic holiday season is mostly over in the states, others opinions may differ from before.
If Beehaw chooses to leave the fediverse and defederate everyone, I wish them all the best, but I know I personally will not be joining.
I’ve had enough of walled gardens and private spaces, I chose the fediverse because Reddit started forcing decisions I didn’t like, like which apps I could use or how I interact with the communities I enjoy. The fediverse allows me the choice to choose what communities I want to subscribe to on my own terms, and that isn’t something I want to let go of easily.
There are downsides, there is noise, but that’s the role of hosting social media. It’s inevitable that as a community grows with more people who enjoy it, that there will also be people who want to tear it down. To me, that’s just a fact of the internet.
I’ll be disappointed, Beehaw is what inspired me to set up my instance and my communities and nurture my tiny instance - but I still believe in the fediverse. Welcoming differing opinions - not shutting them out.
A big general problem I have with the fediverse (as do others I’ve spoken to) is that it affords not real capacity to foster both private and public spaces with good and convenient means of moving and connecting with people between them. From the lack of truly private DMs, to no private group chats or local only spaces … the whole idea of private spaces for when people want them seems to be absent from the fediverse creators and it’s a significant gap IMO.
In the case of lemmy, I can imagine private communities being rather useful and pleasant. That is, communities visible only by people who are members or who have subscribed, with membership being optionally open or closed to being invite only or requiring approval or something similar. Having both federated and local-only versions of these would also probably be nice.
The useful part would be that you could meet people/accounts in private spaces and then see the same person/account in public too, which should only foster community creation through personal connections and discovery.
Then, whenever people need a quieter and more private space for a particular conversation or topic, they can take discussion out from the public and shield it in private. While you might argue that this would stifle discussion (and I see your point), I think there’s a relatively natural equilibrium between our needs for public and noisy engagement and quiet/safe/private interactions. I think people would naturally move between these spaces as they need.
Sounds like you want forums, basically :D
I’m pretty nostalgic for forums myself but while they are great for smaller communities centered around a specific topic, they were really difficult to navigate when it comes to larger general communities IMHO. Fediverse with its reddit-like structure has an advantage here, and I personally like the idea of AP and multiple smaller communities interacting. We just need better tech and UI.
Sounds like you want forums, basically :D
Not really. I prefer the Reddit like format, like you, and see it as a superior substitute for flatter forums.
A private community operating alongside public communities is what I’m talking about and I think that’s a different breast.
Is this not a forum? I’m confused on whatever definition you’re going for where private conversations make something a forum. What is this then?
This. I like Beehaw and I respect it’s nature. I even maintain an account here just to separate my more boisterous posting personality from the one that I feel safer in expressing on Beehaw. While I do external-post from my other account; that’s usually to respond to either Beehaw users not behaving in a way I feel is consistent with Beehaw values or to address others from external instances.
But I don’t want to see Beehaw closing it’s doors to the fediverse. If your staff team is getting swamped, you’re getting overwhelmed as admins, etc…then find more staff. You literally have the hugest pool of nice people right here on Beehaw, and I’m sure everyone who regularly posts here would likely be highly skilled at moderating somewhere on Beehaw if needed. Most of the time, Beehaw does not attract nasty people, and the hard work of the moderation done here shows.
Spread the load. Don’t defederate or give up on Fediverse. Invest in mental health buffs for your moderation team as needed if necessary!
I think that’s a great description, in part it’s what drew me here with the idea that the discussions and topics are always from a kind and informational perspective, without the common “sneer tone” that can so often overtake conversations on the internet.
Personally my experience with users on Beehaw has been entirely kind, thoughtful, and full of knowledgeable people, whatever the topic may be. The few poor experiences I have had here were from outside instances, it’s true, and I can’t imagine just how much of that you all must have to deal with. But I have also had just as many incredibly thoughtful interactions from some federated instances as well, generally the (seemingly) smaller instances. I feel like maybe every 1 in 10 comments through the posts I go to read in All might have be negative or purposeful troll, but all the rest are at least coming from a perspective that I can understand even if I may not agree - but it’s always worth engaging because it drives good thoughtful conversation.
I have an account on slrpnk that is federated with lemmy.world and it can be unbearable to use sometimes - the slrpnk community itself is wonderful, but lemmy.world dominates the All feed, and lemmy.world comments… it’s a mix of dismissive and instigative. I feel like every 1 in 10 comments might be coming from a kind and thoughtful perspective. Comments are immediately downvoted, often times there’s comments no more than a sentence long through a whole thread. Except for moderators, but there’s just a tone that I can’t quite place among reading the interactions that feels… maybe not entirely welcoming? However I also understand they have a lot going on there, and certainly some history I’m missing.
Anyway, that’s a long way of saying I really, really value both the Beehaw community & mods and our set of instances, even if there may be a few that still have problems that I don’t get to see as a regular user. But I do know that I value all of your comments enough to see what you have to say and get to know my internet friends - Chris, your determination for community is inspiring and you’ve got some cool hobbies! And the few times I have seen moderator intervention and extended discussion, I’ve yet to come across an example where I think any of you handled it poorly. (All of you) Your contributions here are more than mod team leaders when you need to be, you feel like community members through and through - which unfortunately feels rare for a mod team!
Regarding federation and instances - maybe the family analogy is something that can be adapted? Here on local we are the immediate family but the instances that I appreciate the most I still feel are cousins. I think many of them appreciate us as well. Unfortunately, I think the negative users overall will not be prevented from their bad habit by a sidebar and our philosophy. With that in mind I think federation with servers that focus on sharing knowledge is the most important.
From the recent post made on I think lemmy.ml regarding Beehaw’s federation - the reception was terrible. It felt terrible to read. But looking through the comments, I would say over 80% of them at least had to be lemmy.world users who have never even interacted here - or if they did were soon defederated from and clearly salty about it, all of those getting ~30-50 upvotes. It was a literal circlejerk about our instance coming from a flawed or probably just intentionally wrong perspective. Information like a game of telephone. If it weren’t so inflammatory it would have been funny, given my actual experiences here.
However, the rest of the comments though were from a wide, wide array of instances saying they would miss our presence, with it being about a 50/50 split from lemmy.ml itself. And each instance I happened to see that felt positively about us, I likewise had only ever had good interactions from members of those instances as well.
Luckily, I had already seen just how awful lemmy.world can really be, as I mentioned I’d created my slrpnk account just a few weeks ago which is actually where I saw that post, maybe just last week or so? Suffice to say, the reception from them was not surprising in the least because to me it seems clear the intent is to tear down, not lift up. You cannot share knowledge in a tear down community because no matter what, somehow your knowledge is wrong.
Users here just have a completely different intention and way of using and interacting with the internet. Users on other smaller instances feel like that intention is there too. We share knowledge with the intent of further gaining and growing our ideas and abilities and because it helps another member of our community. That is becoming more and more rare on the web and I really value our presence in the fediverse and I believe that there are others that do too.
Whatever the future may hold for our instance, I’ll likely migrate with and keep it as part of my sites, but I do worry about the continued level of engagement over time. On the other hand, I realize I don’t like the wider fediverse as much as I thought I did after my last month or so looking around on other accounts. (I definitely need to curate better, though). Anyway, I saw this post 14 minutes in and I only got distracted once so… Happy new year to all and I look forward to our next interaction!
I came to Beehaw wanting a replacement for orangesite™. However, I’ve since decided that I care a lot less about having a massive network and more about just having a positive community of strangers to talk to about my life and interests. In that respect I’d totally be open to a smaller platform. Whether that’d be Beehaw or somewhere else, I don’t know. But Beehaw leaving the Fediverse wouldn’t be the dealbreaker for me that I once though it would.
All that said, I’d definitely prefer Beehaw to stay in the Fediverse. While there are a lot of dorks out there in the wild, there are some communities that I’d really miss.
