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.
If I had a nickel for every time a FOSS project was killed by shitty lead devs, I’d have a lot of nickels.
If I had a nickel for every time a FOSS project got forked and left the old leads in the dust… I wonder who’d end up with more nickels 🤷
Me because that takes more effort than just being a bastard dev from hell. But I’d like to see it happen this time.
The lineage of most modern browsers (except Firefox), or Linux distros, is like fork fork fork eggs fork and fork. 😉
Well written y’all. Happy to be here and thanks for continuing to advocate for our ethos!
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 those new admins and users. That’s fine, it’s their software, they can do what they want with it. It just means 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 ❤️
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.
Are there enough admins and developers fed up with Lemmy to maintain a fork?
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.
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.
The best language is subjective, but performance-wise most traditional web-oriented languages are dogshit slow and will incur huge costs both in hosting and performance mitigations. Things like rust, go, or C will ensure long term performance.
traditional web-oriented languages are dogshit slow and will incur huge costs both in hosting and performance mitigations
Also, for volunteer-run websites like Lemmy sites, costs are very important as hosting costs is essentially the whole cost, since the volunteers aren’t paid.
For companies who pay devs a salary, the hosting is negligible compared to the engineer salary so it’s more efficient to just scale up and spend less time optimizing.
I wouldn’t recommend C or C++, even the NSA is asking people to stop using them in favor of memory safe languages. The equivalent in performance, is Rust.
An option is to add a plugin system or API that allows integrating mod/filter tools written in other languages.
Email systems already do something like this. Postfix and others support milters (mail filters) which run as a separate process and communicate via a socket.
So I’ve been working on a personal project link aggregator/forum that incorporates a lot of ‘useful features’. It’s not something that is prime time ready yet, but one of the key killer features I want to get operational before showcasing it, is exactly what you say. A method to allow plugins to be created an ran by admins and maybe mods. There is a lot that needs to go into the security of this though, and so it’s not just a here run some code type of situation for users.
Mod tools are sorely needed on this platform, but I also don’t want to be dictating how users of my software must use it. That is, what I may think are problems certainly may be, but how to solve it won’t be the only way I say it should be. To that note, my plugin system (WIP) is a toss up between Lua scripts in a sandbox for mod programs/automodding, or the more basic
exprlanguage for Go.So right now for Lemmy or other alternatives I’ve aware of, this capability does not exist. For my project in this space, I don’t want just another Lemmy. I want a BETTER Beehaw.
This would be something to bring up to @Penguincoder@beehaw.org since it falls outside my area of expertise.
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.
I think the definition of best programming language here is not popular and hyped but “the one I use”. I really believe Java is worse than Rust for contributors. We’ll see how it goes.
Then again, a java codebase would be much more accessible to someone who has only coded in JS.
Despite their names, Java and JavaScript are very different languages and they really don’t have much in common, so this doesn’t make much sense.
JS only has “Java” in the name, other than that they’re pretty different languages (basically: JS is a clusterfuck, Java is a “get paid by the line” hyper-explicit enterprisey invention with deployment horror stories).
Really? I mainly code in JS and to be honest, Java gives me C# vibes.
Definitely. I just mentioned JS because i think there are many people who only code for web. Or have js as their first language.
I concur; the best language is the one you know to get the task done. That said, Excel VBA isn’t the correct language to use to write a Super Mario Bros Clone. I mean you can, but that doesn’t make it the best language to do so.
In this case, the problem absolutely is that Lemmy is written in Rust. The developers constantly state there are only two devs for 40k+ people. IF Lemmy was written in another programing language, regardless of using the ‘best’ one, there would likely be more able and willing development contributions. Then again with an attitude like this regardless of chosen programming language; I doubt it.
there would likely be more able and willing development contributions
As I said in the linked comment above, I’m not convinced that this is actually true and we’ve yet to see evidence that it is true.
the problem absolutely is that Lemmy is written in Rust … Then again with an attitude like this regardless of chosen programming language …
I mean, didn’t you just say it there? The problem isn’t with Rust, the problem is with people, the resources available, the devs willingness to implement what you ask for and such. The problem sounds to me more social than technical. I really don’t think the programming language is what is standing in the way here 😅
As I said in the linked comment above, I’m not convinced that this is actually true and we’ve yet to see evidence that it is true.
The Piefed developer responded in this thread here that two devs have begun making substantial contributions to Piefed, so that there is now 3 developers total on the project. I personally suspect the fact that Piefed was created in Python was not an insubstantial contributing factor in aquiring that help.
I mean, maybe? It’s a very small sample size. But all the best of luck to them.
I really don’t think the programming language is what is standing in the way here
Ok; the developers attitudes certainly are.
I mean, didn’t you just say it there?
Yeah. Pay attention to when I said it the first time so I don’t have to repeat myself.
Sure thing m8, no need to get upset (your tone sounded a bit angry/annoyed) - happy cake day btw, never saw that before! :)
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
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…
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.
you did not mention the other fedi project that is similar to lemmy in functionality (kbin/mbin), have you tried working with them instead?
I did not know about this Piefed feature, that’s really cool!
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.
Can you explain please
I don’t want to be too negative here, and to any mods that read this, if this is too negative, feel free to remove this post. But in the time that I’ve been a Kbin user, this is what I’ve personally witnessed.
The Kbin developer has a tendency to disappear with no communication for months at a time, likely caused by taking on way more load than one person can handle without burning out (He is virtually the only developer of Kbin, is taking on developing the Kbin mobile app, is the only admin of the largest Kbin instance, Kbin.social, and the only moderator of multiple communities there, which have languished in his absence, as seen in the posts on m/Kbin and m/Kbin Meta).
He appears to have an extreme lack of trust in others, wanting instead to take on all responsibility himself. This becomes an issue when he disappears, since he is the only one with merge privileges on the Kbin github, resulting in many PR’s for hotly requested features languishing until he suddenly reappears, having been silently working on some aspect of the backend without informing anyone else, making collaboration difficult.
That difficulty appears to be why Kbin was forked into Mbin.
As an example of the trust issues: Even though the Kbin community has repeatedly asked to be able to help him manage Kbin.social, either as an admin or putting in requests to moderate his communities filled to the brim with spam, nothing has changed, and it’s been business as usual.
Before his most recent absence, he mentioned he was going in for a minor surgery that would leave him laid up for a couple days, then went radio silent for over a month, leading people to fear the worst. When he reappeared recently, his explanation for why he didn’t post a quick “Hey guys, I’m okay, but won’t be around for X time,” was that he didn’t want to “Cause chaos.” 🫤
🥰 aww that’s such a cute feature 🥺
it’s on the big list of possible alternatives that we’re investigating
Piefed Seems like a nice place; how much of a thrash would it be to migrate Beehaw there?
Unfortunately, I don’t think Piefed is currently ready for such a large community, but progress seems hopeful.
Maybe @rimu@piefed.social could comment here (if that ping federates) :)
That ping did not federate :)
I agree - PieFed is almost ready. But not yet, and it would be rash to migrate to PieFed today.
The state of PieFed currently:
- In the last week two new developers have started making significant contributions, so now there are 3 of us. Once they get more comfortable there could be a radical increase in development velocity.
- I’ve been making steady progress through the key issues that will enable me to declare the ‘beta test’ phase complete. I expect the beta test phase to continue for another couple of months.
- piefed.social is subscribed to over 700 communities and handling the load of federation very well (max 50% cpu usage), on a server costing 6 € per month. The number of weekly users is about 20% of what Beehaw has but PieFed is built to run very efficiently so I do not anticipate issues there.
- mod tools on piefed are being worked on right now but are not ready. I am aiming to eventually complete the wish list at https://beehaw.org/comment/397674.
Some differences between Lemmy and PieFed
- Comments with -10 score are collapsed by default.
- Communities are organized into topics. See https://piefed.social/topics.
- Image-heavy communities can have a tiled/masonry view, like https://piefed.social/c/pics@lemmy.world
- People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it.
- Hide all posts based on keyword filters.
- Keyboard shortcuts.
- Upvotes in meme communities do not add to reputation.
- Better UI design (somewhat subjective!)
- Improved hotness ranking algorithm (subjective)
If you have not tried PieFed yet, I urge you to do so as it’s the only way to really see it’s potential.
Heya Rimu; thanks for commenting on this discussion. We’ve been tracking on piefed for a while, but as you noted it doesn’t yet seem ready. Your software contributions and efforts for the Fediverse community are certainly notable however. I can’t speak for the rest of the Admin team, but I like what I see with piefed code, actual open source development community, and a roadmap. There are a few issues in addition to the ‘large crowd’ that Beehaw might bring though, which I’d rather not blast in public. Please reach out to me on Matrix (Handle in PF).
Once again, thank you! Love what you’re doing for safety and moderation tooling. Would love to help contribute, but have my hands in a lot of cookie jars ATM.
EDIT: Those shortcuts better be VIM shortcuts… I mean, it’s only six key combinations to quit right??
A bit late but i love what I’m seeing, specially like not having to resort to external sites for the tiled image view like we had to at Reddit, useful for both pics (more likely wallpapers in my case) and memes (my most common use case :P ). Looking forward to see it grow :D
In the last week two new developers have started making significant contributions, so now there are 3 of us. Once they get more comfortable there could be a radical increase in development velocity.
That’s awesome to hear, man! Thank you for creating this project, and for your efforts in making the Fediverse even better! ^^
The lemmy devs don’t think they need to do anything because they don’t think transphobia is a problem. They don’t care about giving you effective mod tools because they don’t think bigotry needs to be stopped.
We see this shit time and time again. This nonsense faux “free speech” commitment and just general unwillingness to allow people to create safe spaces if they choose is endemic to new platforms, communities etc. that simply don’t care to put in the work because they aren’t personally bothered by the issues. New mods always act like it’s a virtue to “let the community figure it out” even when 1 or 2 people cause outsized issues.
All of this is to say I believe in the beehaw vision and will gladly follow y’all where you go.
Yeah, I’m getting very sick of these “free speech” types. Like, I don’t want to create an echo chamber, but, seriously, we don’t to hear the goddamn Nazi point of view. Platforming that sort of thing normalizes it. Mainstream platforms won’t even permaban stochastic terrorists like LibsOfTiktok. In fact, social media platforms carry much of the blame for the divisiveness in society these days. That’s why the Beehaw project is important. We need to show the world that there’s a better way to do things. That it’s possible to disagree with someone without being at each other’s throats, entertaining dissenting opinions and perhaps reconsidering one’s stance on things, and growing as a person by widening the pool of experiences one is exposed to. For example, I used to be a vague “libertarian” type, but my position has evolved to the point where I’m a left-wing anarchist now. People can change for the better. Again, I’m not saying we should listen to the ultra right wing’s point of view, but I bet there’s tons of people out there in their own little bubbles who have never left their homogeneous communities and have never heard the stories of the marginalized. We may not be able to change everyone’s minds. But if we can change some, well, that’s a win for all of us.
I don’t want to create an echo chamber, but, seriously, we don’t to hear the goddamn Nazi point of view.
I’ve been avoiding comment on most of this thread because I really don’t want to be seen as the instigator even more; however I wanted to comment on this specifically. Absolutely agreed with you on this point. I utterly hate the go with the flow, echo chamber style of discussions. I mean sure, if you’re talking about how to make chocolate chip cookies, there’s not really that many different ways to do it. Your recipe, will echo mine, for the same results. But in a lot of areas in life, there really are a lot of different takes. Your experiences and views and other nuances shape your ideas and expression on any given topic. They won’t be the same as mine. And if they are, and all we talk about is 100% stuff I agree with; well, I ain’t learning a damn thing am I? I’m just reinforcing my stance. Conclusion shopping. It is really important to have a different point of view that can be well explained and defended across the spectrum of what that may be.
There is no defense for treating people (human beings) as lessor than you because you disagree with their existence. Be it Nazi’ Transpobia or otherwise. That’s not a difference of opinion. That’s a fundamental difference of what it means to be human. There is no echo chamber telling some wanna-be dictator POS’ Nazi sympathizing fuck, to fuck off.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh *****, this is a Nazi bar now,” he continued. ”And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down. - Michael B. Tager
If 10 people are sitting at a table and one of them is a Nazi, then you have 10 Nazis.
Beehaw wants zero of those people, echo chamber be damned.
I also find that the people advocating for people not to live in “echo chambers” are actually advocating for everybody else to be open minded. Because they’re not actually concerned with whether people are closed minded or not. It’s just a useful cudgel to make themselves look reasonable.
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.
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!
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 😄
Thanks so much for the kind words 🥰
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!
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
That wasn’t an analogy, it was a description of a rainbow gathering! :D That’s a real place!
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 ;-)
