Beehaw, Lemmy, and A Vision of the Fediverse - Ruminations on the past and visions of the future
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It's honestly pretty frustrating to see the Lemmy Devs' responses whenever basic moderation tools are suggested.
While I think Beehaw does get a lot out of the wider federated community, it's really hard to make the case to stay when the devs are practically begging Beehaw to leave.
It sounds like (if I understood correctly) Beehaw is looking at an alternative platform that can still federate, which sounds like the best solution in my opinion.
It will certainly be very interesting to see what the future holds for Beehaw.
I think it's reasonable to say that most users and admins came to lemmy looking for a reddit alternative in the Fediverse. At first glance, lemmy ticks this box pretty perfectly.
Once you dig deeper though, it's obvious the devs don't share the same vision as some of those new admins and users. That's fine, it's their software, they can do what they want with it. It just means maybe it's time to move onto something better, maybe that's going to be sublinks.
We were explicitly looking to not replicate Reddit - while both are link aggregator websites, we didn't particularly like the general vibe present on Reddit. I think a lot of folks on Beehaw agree with that premise, but functionally speaking there's not a huge difference between the platforms or communities. A lot of the difference seems to be about the vision and philosophy of what the place can and should be.
Given the goals and focus of beehaw, I honestly expected you to defederate from the rest of us. Thank you for not, and sticking around as a positive force in our community ❤️
Thanks Beehaw admins for continuing to have a vision for a better internet and for reminding me once again that there really are online communities that try to be and do good.
I don't post or comment a lot on Beehaw specifically, because I often feel like I won't have the energy or head space to write something that really contributes to the community. It's a strange sort of impostor syndrome related idea where I feel like the quality of content on Beehaw should be so high that I might not reach it without really trying. After all, I want the community to be the best it can be(e).
That being said, I do read a lot of what's going on here and I especially appreciate the frequent posters on the communities I subscribe to. Taking into account the issues with lemmy as illuminated by the Beehaw admins here, I feel some sense of urgency - I want to protect Beehaw, its content and its community of kind people from disappearing, or having its continuation be threatened, simply because it exists on lemmy.
I guess in the end I just want to say that I really appreciate that the admin team is taking steps to preserve the wonderful community they have built and cultivated. While I haven't been that excited about Beehaw potentially moving to a different platform, you make a very good case for it and I'd honestly be happy to follow Beehaw wherever it goes :)
I really appreciate you taking the time to write this up. I want to assure you that not everything has to be perfectly worded and your presence and words are always contributions whether you feel they are or not 💜💜 After all, you cannot know what someone else is thinking or how much they appreciate what you've said, especially if they worry about their ability to contribute too!
As for the community itself, don't worry, we're not going to let it languish or disappear. I can't speak for the entire admin team, but it's one of the highlights of my life and will do everything in my power to keep it healthy. With that being said a community is not a one person job and I'm glad people like you are around to contribute 😄
I can’t speak for the entire admin team, but it’s one of the highlights of my life and will do everything in my power to keep it healthy.
Same here!
Thanks so much for the kind words 🥰
Running an instance myself, the lack of mod-tools is very frustrating for quite some time now. I totally agree with pretty much all improvements beehaw suggested in the past to solve these issues. It's a shame how this topic is handled...
Well written y'all. Happy to be here and thanks for continuing to advocate for our ethos!
I always appreciate how much thought, effort, and time you all put into these documents and the community and everything; thank you from the bottom of my heart. There's no place I'd rather bee, and whatever direction ends up being taken I'll gladly come along.
There was an event I used to go to every few months. When you got there, you'd head up to the registration tent to check in but the first thing said to you was always "welcome home!" and the second was "do you like hugs?". That's how it feels here, like walking into a tent of people who care that you're here because they want you to share in the positivity they've found.
There's definitely something about walking down a trail in the woods carrying a bunch of gear a mile or two when suddenly you start running into hippies coming the other way, welcoming you home and telling you you're almost there. And then it becomes trail-side camps, and then the big tent.
I think I need to go find a council. :D
Not trying to belabor this analogy but I've been thinking about what you said all day and:
You're totally right, but every, every interaction I've had with another bee feels like they're the kind of person who'd turn around right after walking past you on the trail and say, "you know, I forgot something back there. Can I help you carry anything?"
And I'm completely here for it
Make sure to let us know where to migrate to before this place potentially shuts down, I wanna stay with this community.
Same here! It's been lovely to learn from all of you, and I'd love to keep doing exactly that.
I haven't commented on anything in quite a long time, but I've been checking in now and then and I just wanted to say that wherever Beehaw goes, I'll be following. Really immature behaviour from the Lemmy devs.
Really immature behaviour from the Lemmy devs.
IKR? I've been working with developers for 30 years now and I've never seen this level of egregiousness. In my opinion, the Lemmy devs are way out of line here.
Hope to see you more, silly bean!
having come from reddit, where I was ignored or didn't feel safe commenting, Beehaw is a breath of fresh air. and it makes me hopeful.
I don't really participate in Discord servers anymore (after watching several explode) so this is a lot of my social interaction. I'm still not super confident in my ability to engage (especially on topics I don't know a lot about, but I like learning, so I like to read those threads regardless) because similar to what someone else mentioned in the thread, I don't know that I have a lot of value to add.
I really enjoy my time here, is what I'm trying to say. I told my partner immediately after reading this "wherever they go, I'll follow" and I meant it. this is also my first experience with Lemmy, but I'm not attached to the software. what works for the community works for me.
just trying to offer words of support! you guys 1000% deserve it. so happy I came back.
Thank you admins for being so transparent with the users and putting in the hard work! The energy and thought you put into this community is outstanding and I really appreciate it!
Are there enough admins and developers fed up with Lemmy to maintain a fork?
The problem with this, in my opinion, is Lemmy is written in Rust. From what I can tell, there aren't enough Rust developers to pitch in AND there are better languages to use in a web application.
I really don't think the language is the problem here. I wrote some thoughts here https://feddit.dk/comment/6556927
I'm a professional software developer using Rust so I guess you can either call me "biased" or "qualified to answer", but take that how you will.
But I suppose time will tell if some other threadiverse implementation in another language takes over.
A fork wouldn't help anything at all, the problem is that nobody is working on the patches not that the devs won't accept them
Probably not. There are several alternative projects being worked on with varying states of completeness and refinement. But the alternatives all seem to have off set visions for their projects.
Y'all already know that I'm staying with Beehaw wherever it goes (so long as I'm not the only one!)
You're not alone ;-)
IMHO you might be overthinking things a bit, while missing some other parts.
First, Lemmy is a NLnet project funded by the EU. The lead devs don't work for free, and proposing "bug bounties" could be seen as competition and/or not in their personal interest.
Second, Lemmy is two layers in a tech stack:
The focus of Lemmy devs is on the server side, with the rest basically a MVP to keep ongoing funding (NLnet funding is tricky on its own, the main two devs have little room to do anything they didn't get pre-approved for, if they want to get paid).
There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it means they are not "project leads" or "community leads", and they won't care about it either.
What Beehaw seems to need, is one or two additional layers to the stack:
This is not something the Lemmy devs are able or willing to do, so Beehaw and similar projects will need to add them, or find them somewhere else.
I would suggest starting bug/feature bounties for whatever is needed, on a forked repo of Lemmy; take from upstream whatever works, and leave Lemmy devs to run their own show. Maybe call it "Beemy" or something.
That would be great to hear from the devs in response to why can't you work on feature? If the reason is because someone else is setting the software priorities so the devs can get PAID; okay got it. Instead we get the contradictory answers of:
or
So which is it?? The Lemmy devs priorities are their own and their priorities don't line up with most of the community; or their priorities are beholden to what NLNet says so they don't get paid??
So which is it?? The Lemmy devs priorities are their own and their priorities don't line up with most of the community; or their priorities are beholden to what NLNet says so they don't get paid??
Both.
NLnet works like:
Until community donations, or commercial services (which are compatible with NLnet), exceed what they're getting paid by NLnet, they're beholden to prioritize tasks that NLnet has agreed to pay for.
If those tasks "don't line up with most of the community"... well, tough luck. The community is free to contribute or donate more.
Yes, adding or changing tasks is possible, but it still requires NLnet approval to get paid.
PS: in those threads there is mention of not addressing lolicon "pornography" as a priority... keep in mind NLnet projects are EU funded with an EU perspective, and multiple countries in the EU consider lolicon "fictional non-realistic" drawings as "not pornography". For the realistic ones, maybe @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com could weigh in on the blocking statistics.
The focus of Lemmy devs is on the server side, with the rest basically a MVP to keep ongoing funding (NLnet funding is tricky on its own, the main two devs have little room to do anything they didn’t get pre-approved for, if they want to get paid).
That's not actually true. You can discuss with NLNet and change your tasks midway.
You can discuss it, NLnet is under no obligation to approve any changes. Their philosophy is one of "we'd sooner return the funds to the EU rather than waste them on low return projects/tasks".
I've done some research about projects NLnet funded (considering to apply myself), and some of the postmortem read like horror stories. People would ask NLnet to change tasks as a project evolved, NLnet would refuse, meanwhile people would spend their time on what they thought was best for the project, only to later find out NLnet considered some of the tasks unfinished and refused payment, ending up with people effectively carrying a project with extras, only to get paid for half of the original tasks and none of the extras.
If I were to work with NLnet funding, you can bet I would focus strictly on approved tasks and be wary of changing any of them.
If I had a nickel for every time a FOSS project was killed by shitty lead devs, I'd have a lot of nickels.
you did not mention the other fedi project that is similar to lemmy in functionality (kbin/mbin), have you tried working with them instead?
There's also Piefed (Federates with Lemmy and is sympathetic to Beehaw, created with Python and Flask), and Sublinks (Drop-in replacement for Lemmy created with Java).
Also, I would personally be a little wary of choosing Kbin, as the developer's behavior over the past few months has been concerning. Mbin would likely be the better option between the two, but that's just my 2 cents.
I did not know about this Piefed feature, that's really cool!
🥰 aww that's such a cute feature 🥺
If I can ask a noob question in this highly philosophical and technical thread— what’s your intended client experience for Beehaw? I’m using Voyager on iOS and will be sad to lose it if Beehaw migrates (or even doesn’t migrate to v19), though there may be a similar client for one of the other platforms under consideration.
Surely y’all aren’t all using a web front end, right? It seems there may be value in choosing a platform that has community support for clients as well as mod tools.
We've been in support of and worked with several apps for a front end client. Ultimately it's not something I've spent a ton of time thinking about, because it feels secondary to having the necessary tools to ensure our community can remain healthy by keeping the niceness and kind behavior. Front end development doesn't require explicit sign-off by the developers of the platform, either, so it's a space easily rectified if someone feels it is currently lacking.