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 🤘😜🤘
After mulling this post over for awhile:
- .world has many instances in the fediverse and existed long before Lemmy.world. Ruud has never, to my knowledge, posed anything like this post about another potential fedi service. The other fediverse services have coexisted without need to position them against each other. This difference in approach implies intentions, if not outright actions with the illusion of user input.
- The prevalence of Linux users on this platform is common knowledge. So much so, it is a common complaint from users that feel excluded or uninterested in Linux. The use of Linux implies a distrust for Microsoft, and for the most part megacorporations. While the survey creator (sublinks) may receive anonymous data, Microsoft is absolutely correlating information that comes across their server and selling that data. In my opinion, this should have been an obvious thing most of the Linux community will not participate in, (myself included as one of the most active users and a mod). And it reflects poorly on the FOSS nature of sublinks. A FOSS survey system is needed badly for effective engagement.
As many of us in the social sciences background know...Please explain the intention of this statement. I don’t mean to be cynical, but to me, this implies I have been part of some science experiment of unknown intentions and implications; at the extreme end of possible meanings. I thought we were a FOSS community, many with a self hosting interest. A social sciences interest and background has entirely different motivations and raises concern for me.
Please, if you dont want to participate in the forms, be so kind and DONT participate in it. And dont bash others for beeing not an linux elitist that only touches FOSS stuff.
The last point is a “pun” a “joke” or in german a “witz”. If you dont understand it and only search tinfoil conspiracy theories than please not here.
If you are really that deep invested into alliens that want to learn about your species by spying onto you through non FOSS software, then please dont use the internet, go out, have friends and put your tinfoil where it belongs, as a wrapper for some cooking.
You answered none of that user’s questions at all and used your post to tear them down.
You know that in the FOSS space Microsoft does not have a good standing. Asking people on a FOSS based social media to give anonymous answers about another FOSS project through a Microsoft service is a bit of an oversight.
Sadly, we dont want to invest the ressources and money to have a platform that is secure, resistant to ddos or bot attacks and beeing really annonymous. Microsoft forms is possible the best choice, as otherwise we could relate your ip, ( in the web logs ) from lemmy and the ip that you have used for accessing the formular website we would have hosted. So that would be even less anonymous than with microsoft forms.
Yeah fine power tripping here nothing else to see folks . also they aren’t “foss elitist” you said the survey was “anonymous” and they explained how its not.
Huh, when do i see that i have banned him? is it again lemmy federation issue here? Like always?
It is anonymous for our POV, the other way around if we / sublinks hosted that form, we would have more data than with microsoft, for example we could corelate the ip you accessed lemmy.world and the form website we hosted, so we can identify directly what user voted that.
In that perspective it was a better choice to use microsoft forms, for ddos protection and anonymous from our side, as we dont get any personal information, not even the ip from your submited form.
.world has many instances in the fediverse and existed long before Lemmy.world. Ruud has never, to my knowledge, posed anything like this post about another potential fedi service. The other fediverse services have coexisted without need to position them against each other.
Seems to me that’s because (with the possible exception of Lemmy vs. Kbin) this is the first time there have been two Fediverse services of the same type. (After writing that I fact-checked myself: it turns out there are two Twitter-equivalents in addition to Mastodon, Misskey and Pleroma, but they’re not noteworthy enough to have their own Wikipedia pages, so…)
Anyway, it seems to me (given that Sublinks is intended to be API-compatible with Lemmy) this is less of a “position them against each other” (as in competing for users in a walled-garden sort of way) issue and more of a “choose among several equivalent implementations the one you like best” issue.
.world has many instances in the fediverse and existed long before Lemmy.world. Ruud has never, to my knowledge, posed anything like this post about another potential fedi service. The other fediverse services have coexisted without need to position them against each other. This difference in approach implies intentions, if not outright actions with the illusion of user input.
I see my name mentioned here, but I don’t understand the remark. Positioning fediverse services against each other? The team has posted this to get input to assist the Sublinks development team in getting moderation tools in their software. I think it’s good there’s many options in software to choose from. Lemmy, Kbin, Main, Piefed, Sublinks. I also run mastodon, but also similar platforms like firefish, sharkey, akkoma etc. Users can choose. Nothing is positioned against each other. They all work together as 1 large Fediverse. And, the more instances, the better. The fediverse ideally should exist of many instances instead of a few large ones. (Yes, I agree that having 1 big Lemmy server isn’t ideal. But that’s another discussion.)
Aaah, so the plan is to run sublinks on, say, sublinks.world and keep lemmy.world running with lemmy? Like you do with the mastodon alternatives?
I don’t know yet. I think that’s something we need to discuss with the team and get input from the users. (Yes, I did register sublinks.world :-) )
Hey Ruud. Overall the post comes across as if it has odd intentions. It does not clearly state the purpose of the post but it explains a bunch of what it is not. In corporate America and American politics we are constantly getting these kinds of messages. It almost always means everything that is addressed in the message is about to happen. The person that wrote the information is trying to tell the reader how to think instead of providing information and allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions.
You have mentioned your other servers in the fediverse in the past, and it was always in this type of informative, “draw your own conclusions” type of post. I appreciate that, and can respect it.
The proper way to introduce sublinks would be in a similar vain, to simply state that it exists and what its merits are versus Lemmy. If change may be coming to Lemmy.world, simply explain the reasoning behind those decisions. It is great if you can involve the community, but the involvement should be following the principals and alignment of the community to engage with them. Microsoft as a service for providing my personal details is not aligned with my values. Perhaps if I lived in the EU I would feel differently, but in the USA I have little choice but to avoid these companies entirely.
A survey is often a tool used to gauge how to administer a change that will be unpopular, and this usually means the change in direction addressed in the survey has already been decided.
My concern could be completely misplaced. I have not punched a hole in my firewall for Microsoft or agreed to their terms of service to see the content of the survey. The only information I have is what is posted here.
My concern has nothing to do with the obvious joke. I am concerned that this post does not describe its purpose clearly, it implies major changes are coming, and it promotes feedback in a way that does not align with my principals as a very active user here. On a separate note, the comment about sociology is curious for its unsolicited randomness. Do you run any scientific experiments in the background or allow other to do so?
I default to a skeptical line of questioning , but I am not trying to be negative or accusatory. It is mostly a desire to learn and understand what is happening under the surface.
Whelp, I’ve spent enough time here to make a decision. As of right now, I love it here, and I don’t see that changing. I’ve decided to go premium, in an effort to support things. I will withdraw that so fast though if I see any reason to do so.
if this sounds like a corporate press release to you folks, we still punk 🤘😜🤘
dude that sounds even more corporate 😂😂😂😂
Just kidding, xoxo <3
fr fr no cap skibidi rizz 😜
Deadass slaps, fam.
We DO NOT plan on moving away from Lemmy as a software platform at this time.
Well that is concerning.
Clock is ticking
Ticking for what exactly?
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.
Why? Am I not up to speed with something?
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 it seems more efficient to fork the existing code than to start from scratch.
But it’s their time to waste, so whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We have never rejected any patches from lemmy.world admins or from sublinks developers.
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”.
If the Lemmy admins can’t make a living from it, that’s the Lemmy community’s fault.
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.
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.
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.
Yes but that requires someone else to do the work. If Sublinks takes off instead, why stick with Lemmy?
Anyway it’s all conjecture right now. We have lemmy, things are working just fine.
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” "
It?
Uh, yes, I, too, am 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!
is this a quote? I could have sworn I’ve heard this before.
Grandpa Simpson
Ah yeah, I remember it fully now with that tid bit firing up the neurons.
Will there be a user survey too?
We will be looking into that after the current form is over.
Thank you for your great idea! This could give sublinks just a little bit better understanding on the overall situation.
We DO NOT plan on moving away from Lemmy as a software platform at this time.
At this time
Hmm.
They just wanted to head off anyone assuming that, due to adding support for other platforms. And leave it open in case lemmy tanks in some way at some point. All we can know is our current intentions, we can’t know what our intentions will be if things change in the future. We can guess, but only so accurately.
Hmmmmmm…
Is there an alternate survey site that could be used other than Microsoft? The site is pretty much impossible to see in dark browser mode as well (light grey text on white background).
Aside from that though, what is the difference between Lemmy and sublinks?
I’d like to know this as well. Perhaps better mod tools?
They say they plan for better mod tooling, but so far it’s still not released so it’s difficult to know how it will be different or better (and whether Lemmy will get better tooling by that point also).
Better mod tools, a non toxic development environment and a more common and well known programming language. A seperate team for UI/Design and API, so that the development goes faster and goes to multiple checks before it gets released. It is lemmy api compatible, so your iphone or android app will still work.
Sublinks has a roadmap too, to give everyone a glimpse where everything is and what is planned. And Sublinks developers welcome everyone that want to support the project, even non developers that want to input their ideas or personal experience.
Sublinks will add some moderation tools for mods and instance admins, to have a better control over their instance and to reduce spam, trolls or illegal content ( not pirated but that BAD porn stuff )
EAT IT, CORPO
;)
edit: this is where you grumble “fkn punks”
Come on over to lemm.we kids! We will stay on Lemmy and don’t curate your feed ❤️
You mean lemm.ee, huh? :)
Yeah 😞
Thank you, corporate press release overlords.
Can you help me understand what the first 6 questions have to do with the survey subject of moderation? They seem to collect personal information without direct bearing on anything.
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.
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
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
Ahhh ok, i wish you good luck with your instance! If you need some tips or help i know a good guy on the LW team ;D .
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 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.
It’s probably not worthwhile to transfer the data. I would say the subscriber base alone get’s you pretty fare.
Are you planning on sharing the results of the survey? I think the Lemmy folks would be interested in it too.
Microsoft 365? Lol.
Microsoft 69/420
