once again speaking for myself here, except where these sentiments have already been expressed by other admins. this is not a moderator document or anything, and it will not be stickied.
we have a ton of new people thanks to clearing a lot of our queue and i’m already seeing a bunch of the same issues we had to quash a week/two weeks ago with the first big influx. so, to reiterate:
we (the Admins) are four people, only two of which have actual experience running or maintaining anything in the same universe of what we’re managing now. running this instance is not–and cannot be–a full time job for any of us and our insistence is that it doesn’t become one. full-time working on this site would be financially and socially ruinous. if just us four admins were being paid a fair wage for the work we do, our Open Collective would barely cover the last two weeks. in any case we are not the only people working on this site and worthy of being paid.
we cannot currently (and may not in the future either, to be honest with you) accommodate a lot of what you might think we’re able to do, or expect because Reddit had it either through an app or the base function of the site. this is moderationally, federationally, and technically. neither i nor the other admins have the requisite experience with coding to contribute to the site, and we already have a ton of bug fixes to wrangle that have given our volunteer sysops fits. most of your issues are probably caused by and better referred to Lemmy itself than to Beehaw itself. i would strongly encourage you also post them to either !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml or the software’s GitHub if you think it’s a general functionality problem. in general: we cannot refer your issues elsewhere right now, you will need to do that yourself.
Lemmy, i want to stress again, has very limited base functionalities, many of which our admins and sysops are trying to work around. those constrain us in what we can do or how. a lot of options we have at our disposal to make stuff run are binary, and a lot of the not-binary options are confusing. we have had to hack around a lot of these while waiting on permanent solutions in Lemmy itself. this is our current list of moderator functionalities we’d like to see.
we also cannot be perfect, and if you’re expecting perfect then i don’t know what to tell you. you are on what is basically beta software, being hosted and supported by volunteers. right now, we absolutely and simply cannot promise much of anything past “the site is online and moderated in accordance with our values.” if you can’t hang with that caveat i would strongly encourage you to please go somewhere else, for your own sake.
It’s kind of the defining line between “community as a product” and “community as a platform.” What is offered and provided is a platform for all of us to work together to build and sustain a community. What we’re used to is the other type, where there has always been a drive to monetize the experience. It’s like the fallacy that content creators owe their audience anything other than the content they’ve already provided. The people here running and moderating the community have my respect and admiration, because it’s not something I’d willingly step into, knowing the unrealistic expectations of most Internet participants.
People have become so jaded from years and years of corporate monopolizing, they no longer remember what an internet run by real humans feels like.
I’m not saying that in order to excuse them. Quite the opposite. To make this whole “federated” thing work, we all have to remember the empathy we lost dealing with the Facebook’s and Twitter’s of the world.
An internet run by the people for the people is by nature going to have more empathy’ and therefore more risk of hurt feelings. We need to be aware of that.
Extremely valid, and I appreciate the clear communication and all the hard work you and the team have put in so far.
What you’ve accomplished here is super appreciated.
The approach of this instance, the clear communication, all that and more.
I know some might expect this to replace reddit, but I think more will discover the differences and advantages and disadvantages of using a federated service, especially when instances have their own rules which can be a bit more involved than simple subreddit rules.
Really have to echo some of the other comments, though. Take care of yourselves. You’re not beeholden to us. If you need maintenance days or just need to cool shit down so you don’t burn out, know that the entitled ones who expect more are in the minority.
I think many of us, at least initially, joined specifically because we wanted a pleasant space to interact with each other and Beehaw is all about that.
It would hopefully be uncharacteristic of the users of this instance to hold your feet to the flames and demand shit en masse.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re flowing with the river here. Taking things as they come along. If, sometimes, that means the river slows down for a while, that’s okay.
Take your time, let things settle. If it means slowing down the instance a bit while you get your bearings, I see no issue with that. And judging by many of the comments here, I don’t think I’m the only one.
I think you guys are doing great with what you’ve got so far.
I’ll take four part-time admins trying their best over a corporate tool any day. Slick platforms have a way of turning into shitty platforms over time when money is involved and the whole business model is about luring in the masses to drive engagement metrics.
Your principles are sound. The rest will come.
