Hello world!
We would like to start by saying thank you ❤, no really 🙏 THANK YOU to ALL the moderators out there!
Without you folks, we would have no one to help keep our community safe and help build the communities both here on Lemmy.World and on other fine instances. To this end, we want to make sure your voices are heard 📣 loud and clear📣.
So, in the spirit of transparency, we would like everyone to know that we are looking to help out the folks working on Sublinks. Over the last several months we have grown to be more than just Lemmy.World. We’ve added platforms such as Pixelfed and Sharkey to help offer our users more diverse options for expressing themselves online. We still are very committed to Mastodon as well.
We DO NOT plan on moving away from Lemmy as a software platform at this time. Any changes in our core services would need to be discussed extensively internally AND externally with our community members. We firmly believe in the growth of the Fediverse and without the users, there would only be software, and that’s no fun!
Sooo…
The Sublinks team has written up a little survey, which we feel is both thorough and inclusive. It covers a wide range of topics, such as user privacy, and community engagement, along with trying to gauge things that are difficult when moderating.
Also please be aware the information collected by this survey is completely anonymous. As many of us in the social sciences background know, if you want the REAL feelings of individuals, they need to feel safe to express themselves.
Please feel free to comment in this thread, we will do our best to respond to any genuine questions.
We look forward to hearing from each and every one of you!
=Sincerely,
Fedihosting Foundation
PS … also if this sounds like a corporate press release to you folks, we still punk 🤘😜🤘
PS … also if this sounds like a corporate press release to you folks, we still punk 🤘😜🤘
"YES FELLOW KIDS, WE ARE ALSO, HOW YOU SAY, STILL DOWN WITH “IT” "
I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!
We DO NOT plan on moving away from Lemmy as a software platform at this time.
Well that is concerning.
To be fair, they can’t see the future. People can change their minds. Better to write something like this than say “we will definitely always support Lemmy” and then in 5 years say “lol that was a lie”.
I don’t know. I’m not beholden to a single platform. I use Lemmy with like three different clients too (Tesseract is by far my favourite for Desktop) so the “Lemmy” I care about is essentially just an API. The link above says
It features a Lemmy compatible API, allowing for seamless integration and migration for existing Lemmy users.
The way I read that is “you can use the existing Lemmy clients to connect to a Subkey instance.” Further it says
Embracing the fediverse, it supports the ActivityPub protocol, enabling interoperability with a wide range of social platforms.
Meaning we’ll likely be able to at least view Sublinks content via lemmy, if not interact with it like any other Lemmy community/post. In that case, who cares if it’s not Lemmy? To the end-user it might as well be.
My main concern is that a lot of jumping around would mean we’d lose users each jump. Eventually we’d just have empty halls with no content. Knowing that Subkey is out there as an alternative in case the developers of Lemmy decide to pull the plug, or something else happens with it, is heartening.
in case the developers of Lemmy decide to pull the plug
They literally can’t. It’s open source and publicly licensed. If they abandon the project (or even if we don’t like their direction), it can be forked (copied) and maintained by someone else.
I love tesseract! Thanks so much for mentioning it. This makes .ml more like Alexandrite.
Based on some comments here I think I will likely leave .world when they stop or try and change to sublink. It looks like that is the imminent goal. Tesseract makes it much easier to leave. Thanks again!
Yeah, Tesseract is fantastic. Though I’m sure you could use Alexandrite with .ml as well, provided the client and API versions are compatible. Tesseract has some additional discovery features and such too, I believe.
For all we know though, one might even be able to migrate from Lemmy to Sublink. Like I said, they could swap over from Lemmy and we might not even notice it. I don’t really see the problem.
Personally, I don’t give a shit about all this weird BS and infighting. I moved to Lemmy simply because my Reddit client was killed. I could give less of a shit about FOSS and finding 10,000 different platforms that everyone and their mother is now creating. I hope that lemmy.world doesn’t end up going away. All I want is a community to interact with, not a constantly fracturing platform with weird political infighting.
All I want is a community to interact with, not a constantly fracturing platform with weird political infighting.
This is part of why some people (myself included) are skeptical about Sublinks - I’d rather see us all gather around Lemmy, which already exists and is open source, rather than duplicate effort across different implementations.
However realistically speaking, over time more implementations will probably appear, because people won’t agree on what to build or how to build it.
In some ways that is good as well - it gives choice for users about what software to use, just as users can choose their instance and apps and such. But I think it’s a little early to start something new while Lemmy is still so new.
Is it?
I was under the impression that Sublinks was basically a drop-in replacement for the backend of Lemmy, just with better mod tools. If Lemmy.world switched to it, would normal users (not mods) even notice or care?
I think Sublinks would like to ultimately hijack Lemmy’s user base and take the project in a different direction. They’ll maintain a Lemmy-compatible API until they have a critical mass of instances/users using it and then do as they please. Based on what I’ve read, Sublinks people don’t like the Lemmy developers or at least the tech choices and way the project is managed.
I guess I can understand that, but I’m skeptical of their intentions too. And, as a Java engineer myself, I find it pretty annoying that they’re pushing a Java backend over the existing Rust one. Seems like a step backwards.
From what I can tell, it’s more worrying that .world is trying to essentially build up a new site like Mbin, from the ground up, in Java, rather than just working to make Lemmy better. It appears to be a severely underestimated workload for no benefit whatsoever, other than “better” mod tools, which could be folded into Lemmy either way.
Yeah, I agree reimplementing the protocol in Java instead of Rust seems like a downgrade. I think part of the reason for Sublinks is creative differences with @Dessalines, but even if the problem is getting upstream acceptance for patches (edit: and it isn’t) it seems more efficient to fork the existing code than to start from scratch.
But it’s their time to waste, so whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: I stand corrected.
I don’t see why the moderation tools couldn’t just be improved on Lemmy. The new moderator view has been very useful for me as a moderator. We already have Lemmy and Kbin. The Sublinks about page doesn’t say how it is going to be different/better than the existing options apart from moderation tools. On top of that it is made in Java instead of Rust? That’s just going backwards in my opinion… This post also does not state why you guys are interested in a Lemmy alternative. You could have named some issues you have with it and why something else would be better(just like the Sublinks guys could have done in their about page). I started my communities here and put a lot of effort in them. I can’t just switch instances without destroying most of the work done. The language used here really makes it sound like this instance is on borrowed time. Being able to transfer communities to another instance would be nice…
I don’t see why the moderation tools couldn’t just be improved on Lemmy.
There is no reason it couldn’t. The main problem seems to be that the Sublinks devs don’t like the Lemmy devs and they don’t want to bother learning Rust either and would rather rewrite the whole thing in Java.
They are of course totally free to do that, but it does seem easier to just improve Lemmy instead of building a whole new Fediverse service just to improve mod tools.
Honestly though if they need to learn Rust to do that, it might not be a good idea. I’d rather have a very good implementation in Java than a very amateur one in Rust. Depending on the implementing dev, of course.
Usually that kind of thing depends more on the dev and less on the language. Junior devs will write bad code in any language. An experienced dev can pick up a language and write good code quickly.
Also, if you want to consider the effects of junior devs on a project, the Rust compiler is much more likely to ensure that junior devs don’t do something stupid, since the compiler makes it harder to make mistakes.
Its not necessary to learn Rust to improve mod tools in Lemmy. There can be external mod tools implemented as api clients using any language, such as LemmyAutomod. Its also possible to add plugin support for Lemmy, which again can be implemented in various languages thanks to webassembly
Hi,
thanks for your ideas, moderation isnt just a community, its the whole instance. The moderation lacks for instance admins the most. For example reports, with the current setup it is impossible to search for one specific report or sort by community,person,reporter,types. The sort order is currently somewhere else where it should be, it sorts on the server by old => new and client side new => old. I dont know if this was wanted but it just creates additionally to the lack of sort or filter options a issue for instance admins, that want to look for urgent reports at the top of the reports.
The programming language is just a preference, i already said this to mutliple people, this was a choice of convinience and it is still a valid option for a rest api.
Hello there! I love lemmy.world - I moderate communities such as /c/Minecraft and /c/Relationship_Advice and will always be onboard for improving our platforms and reaching more people.
I also do not personally believe in yet another slicing of the communities into different platforms, and if Sublinks aren’t integrated into Lemmy - requiring new communities or separate accounts - I will not be following along. Of course, somebody else could always take over my communities in that event, but I just wanted to let out my opinion on this.
You might not remember specific details during that whole jump in workload, but during the first week of Reddit migration, some moderators from communities that fought really hard to build an user base migrated here - one for menopausal women in particular caught my eye, as the moderator did everything in her power to migrate users who weren’t tech savvy to a whole new platform. The reason this effort didn’t work and most of these communities reverted back was the extreme fragmentation and confusing nature of the early Fediverse. If, for whatever reason, we add yet another layer we are explicitly saying we only care about esse of use for tech savvy programmers. This is a fine stance to have, but make it clear and explicit if that’s the case.
As a final addendum, the political beliefs of the Lemmy developers never harmed any of the several opposition communities or servers - if that’s the root of the matter, I’m even more disappointed.
Still, as always, I will support the .world family of servers and there’s simply nobody quite as good, competent and dedicated as this team in the Fediverse.
I also do not personally believe in yet another slicing of the communities into different platforms, and if Sublinks aren’t integrated into Lemmy - requiring new communities or separate accounts - I will not be following along. Of course, somebody else could always take over my communities in that event, but I just wanted to let out my opinion on this.
Sublinks would work th same way as Mbin does. People on Mbin can currently interact with all the Lemmy content in a similar way Lemmy users do.
The reason this effort didn’t work and most of these communities reverted back was the extreme fragmentation and confusing nature of the early Fediverse.
To be fair, when the migration happened, Lemmy wasn’t ready. Federation was still flimsy, and LW was under constant DDoS attack. Lemmy is in a much better state now.
Thank you so much! We’re trying our hardest ❤️
At the end of the day we want to make sure the whole Fediverse keeps on growing in a safe way.
Sublinks will be API compatible from Day 1. So you will be able to interact just fine with Lemmy from it (and other activity pub servers, I believe). Also all mobile apps will work with it as well.
the political beliefs of the Lemmy developers never harmed any of the several opposition communities or servers
Hard disagree. Lemmy is full of authoritarian propaganda, and they’re quite happy to abuse and harass users. The devs might be on lemmy.ml instead of Hexbear, but they’re on the same team spreading their propaganda with a ML facade.
I’ve been told I’m “going to get the wall” (i.e. they’ll execute me against a wall, a death threat) and had an old account followed around with them downvoting everything I posted until I just abandoned it.
I still use Lemmy but I won’t even admit I use it unless it really cleans up a lot of the misinformation and hate, and I see certain devs as central to this problem.
I’ll happily move to a new platform to avoid them.
I’ll happily move to a new platform to avoid them.
Just to be clear, Sublinks is still a Fediverse application and presumably if lemmy.world switched, it would still federate with the instances it currently federates with, so you would not avoid anyone any more than you currently are.
If you want to avoid certain instances, go to an instance that has defederated from those instances (or make your own).
I want to start by saying I am extremely thankful for Ruud and the team and think that you did an amazing job with lemmy.world and I wish you success in the future.
That said, I am a monthly 30 dollar donator to Lemmy and I am not interested in Sublinks. I read through the threads and my take is that I think the motivation for the development of it goes against my personal politics and mischaracterizes nutomic and dessalines. While I appreciate the nature of open source to open up avenues for people to act as they think is best, I do not want to leave the Lemmy.
Ahead of a migration to Sublinks I hope there comes a cleaner way to move communities off lemmy.world. If I had known how the Fediverse worked 11 months ago I would have self hosted an instance and shared my communities that way as to not be defederated from people I want to be federated with. Additionally I think that having a single huge lemmy instance is not great for the architecture of the fediverse as a whole and even if there were no changes planned or being considered. I think that many instances hosting communities is preferable to having large ones like lemmy.ml and lemmy.world.
Again I totally get that this is provided free and as is and as such you are free to make the decision you think is best. Even though I am a difficult person, I very much appreciate you, your team and what you are trying to accomplish. Thank you.
I really hope there will be an option in Lemmy and Sublinks (and bin,mbin etc) to move communities between instances. But I think that’s not very easy. I agree that having a few large instances isn’t how the fediverse is meant to be. Ideally there would be a separate instance for each community.
It does sound very complicated. You’d probably need both instances to agree to the transfer somehow and then you’d need to transfer all the data (old posts from before the two servers federated for instance).
It would probably need to be built into ActivityPub if it should really work between different Fediverse services too.
Additionally I think that having a single huge lemmy instance is not great for the architecture of the fediverse as a whole and even if there were no changes planned or being considered. I think that many instances hosting communities is preferable to having large ones like lemmy.ml and lemmy.world.
May I ask why you didn’t move to another generalist instance? It’s a two clicks operation now to export and import settings from the settings menu
Because 10 months ago I chose to host c/veganhomecooks here. I do now use my own instance that I run out of Azure and plan to figure out a way to move my comm there but that is not easy to two click and move, I would lose all the subscribers and posts and it would not be cached on any other federated server. It is currently the largest and most active vegan focused community on the fediverse and do not want to leave it behind.
I see. Well, good luck with this. If that helps, I noticed that if you communicate openly with your community, explain a progressive plan, the transition can go quite smoothly (I moved communities from LW in the past).
Losing the posts sucks indeed, maybe we should bring this topic as its own thread to see if someone wants to work on a tool to allow export and import of posts.
I would have asked the same question, just do it earlier than later or then add a note, on where to find your new community if you want to move your community too. That is sadly a software limitation and would be irritating if a whole community can just swap instances.
Because I don’t want to make a lateral move to another instance hosted by someone like you and would prefer to do it myself. I work full time and it took me a few months to figure out how to deploy and maintain my instance before I put it to production.
edit: English is not my first language, I didn’t mean this to sound attacking. When I said someone like you I meant in general someone that I do not personally know and sometimes the way English speakers cloak language is not clear
