this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.

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[–] dezmd@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Looks more like you are interested in more influence power, and control for yourself.

What qualifies you to be in a leadership position that directly affects content control?

Your instances are not being used the way you wanted, so you propose structural and organizational changes that, suprise, benefit your administrative influence from your instances.

You're so focused on the details of your solution, you don't seem to be holding or acknowledging any objective perspectives.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 6 hours ago

benefit your administrative influence from your instances

They are not going to be "my" instances.

acknowledging any objective perspectives.

Oh, I thought it was pretty clear: my objective with these instances have been to build the infrastructure necessary to get people out of Reddit. I want to gain from the growth of the network, where I expect to profit from getting customers on my hosting business.

I don't need/want to make money out of these instances, I am just commoditizing the complements.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Why?

That just locks communities off. Wh ich you could readily do before Lemmy, just host a forum. Discourse is a pretty damn cool software for it. Close registrations, close visibility, and allow users in on a per-user basis. That's also a lot how Tildes works, and I remember people here don't like that very much.

[–] rglullis@communick.news -5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

From your response, it seems that you did not read the blog post. The instances are still going to be connected to the Fediverse, the idea is just to keep user registration closed. Users from other instances will continue to be able to follow and interact with it.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Now it makes even less sense.

So instead of one admin being able to take it all down we have multiple, and we also don't allow local users. But we have multiple admins, so these instances would be uniquely able to process very large numbers of users on account of having more than one admin? There's still the problem of course of how to handle someone being an admin on a technical level, and I don't see a solution to that. Could go and notarize shared ownership of a bare metal server I suppose?

But still, what's the point? It doesn't improve anything, in fact it actively makes it worse. If you want communities to be resistant to server removal, you'd need a way to... federate the community. So that even if the original instance is gone, everyone keeps interacting with their local federated community-copy and these keep federating to each other (copy). As in, there's no original any more, but good luck keeping all of that consistent. 😅 In particular because that still doesn't solve the problem because now you got people able to either moderate each others copy (good luck with that power trip bonanza) and no central admin to remove the mods, or they cannot moderate each other, in which case good luck figured out how to block on a per-post basis depending on laws in your particular country getting the content federated over.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Dear Lord, I had no idea one could be so lost and still be so confident when making an argument.

I am not trying to be mean, it's just that you are arguing against things that are completely made up.

So instead of one admin being able to take it all down we have multiple

Shared ownership is a policy to prevent single-points-of-failure. Every large-ish instance has multiple admins. This is even a requirement in the Mastodon Covenant: your instance is only listed on the joinmastodon site if the instance has at least two people who can independently access the admin panel.

Could go and notarize shared ownership of a bare metal server I suppose?

You don't need any of that. As long as the collective has control over the domains and that backups are created and available for everyone, admins could simply move the instance to a new place with a new deployment and a DNS change.

It does not mean that every admin needs to have direct access to the server, and it does not mean that the server will go down if one of them goes rogue. Every minimally competent organization has security processes in place to avoid that.

But we have multiple admins, so these instances would be uniquely able to process very large numbers of users on account of having more than one admin?

I can't even imagine how you go to this non-sequitur. The idea of having multiple admins is only to ensure that these instances are not under control of a single individual and would not be represent a systemic risk to the overall Fediverse.

If you want communities to be resistant to server removal

Another non-sequitur.

So that even if the original instance is gone, everyone keeps interacting with their local federated community-copy

How is that working out for the communities on feddit.de, and the many other instances that disappeared in the last year? Did you notice they are gone?

In particular because that still doesn’t solve the problem because now you got people able to either moderate each others copy

Another non-sequitur. Are you sure you have a clear understanding of how federation works?

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 11 hours ago

Are you sure you have a clear understanding of how federation works?

I'm not sure they do, I was confused by their comment as well.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, sorry if that wasn't clear, the entire second half was theoretical about a better way of doing this.

A type of federation where there is no "home" for a community any more. It exists equally on all servers, so any being removed would have ~0 effect.

I mentioned that basically because I feel that's a much better solution to the problem than shared ownership + locked registrations. Sorry if that wasn't clear, not my primary language.

[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

A type of federation where there is no "home" for a community any more.

This is not federation anymore, but an entirely different architecture. Nostr works like this, but it also has its flaws.

[–] damon@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 7 hours ago
  • Your key is your identity. If it's lost or stolen, you can not revoke it. That alone will make it virtually impossible to be used as an official application protocol for any organization.

  • Usability is even worse than anything on ActivityPub

  • Moderation is entirely punted to the end user.

  • (not technical, but relevant) it is completely dominated by Bitcoin maxis

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Community collections should be a thing. Something like /cc/Technology could pull in lemmy.world/ other instances and collections of communities. It makes it easier if one instance dies, an instance de-federates itself, or just wanting to consolidate all the different /c/Technology communities across instances.

It would also be nice if communities had the option to vote on their admins once in a while. Having individuals lord over different communities is a problem in reddit.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Excellent! Thanks. Ill take a look at it sometime. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/818

Last time I checked, there was still discussion on how people want this to work. Because its easy to say, but hard to get everyone to agree.

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[–] underscores@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

New users to lemmy usually aren't going to join communities if they can't register there. And people who are really invested in a topic will want to have that domain for their account. You're cutting off a lot of the users that would grow your communities.

I don't mind the idea of a collective to handle a bunch of instances, but I feel like you're going about it the wrong way. When the same person make a bunch of instances about a variety of topics, it looks as if they aren't that invested in any specific community. From my experience, the most active communities start off with a few people who care almost obsessively about that topic.

Also the idea that communities can be 'neutral ground' doesn't make sense to me. People will leave or join based on how the admins and mods run them, whether or not the users are hosted there. In some situations it might work out fine, but if anyone thinks it's caused by how you're running your sites, they may defederate from the whole collection.

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[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 22 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I personally am not a huge fan of this idea. Instances are at the end of the day communities of their own in a way. One community may want to discuss a topic in one way and another community may want to discuss it in another way. This seems to be a way to centralize all discussion around a topic in one community, but we should rather go for decentralized communities.

But hey that's just my opinion, if others like it, go for it.

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[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think there may be a challenge or challenges that you haven't pinned down yet. First is: what problem does this solve?

Second is, how will people know that they are housed under the same roof, so to speak? A small instance dedicated to NBA basketball may be interesting, but if it seems disconnected then people would be wary. Small specialty instances can be shut down without warning for all sort if reasons.A consortium of instances may help with this issue, as long as it is immediately clear through common branding that they are part if the same group.

Third is that different communities have different needs.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world -1 points 13 hours ago

Also, if we assume that the entire idea is to have more than one admin, then what change does that actually include?

You now have 3-4 people that can go and randomly delete the whole server instead of 1? Do you know that right now, only 1 person has the credentials to the admin account of whatever server you're talking about?

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think this sounds like a good idea. A problem when starting a community is that one wants to find a stable home; it might make sense to set up camp at, say, hardware.watch, but without knowing who operates it it might feel more uncertain than lemmy.world.

And then, as a result, if lemmy.world ever disappears or has problems, it'll take way too many communities with it.

If these topic-specific instances had some sort of collective ownership, I guess we could more effectively guarantee for their continued survival, and it might be more tempting for existing communities to move over there.

I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of some admins - would !football@lemmy.world be interested in moving to [!football@soccer.forum](/c/football@soccer.forum), given the right organization?

And a piece of constructive feedback: Vague community names like !main@soccer.forum is probably less likely to attract attention than something specific like !nba@nba.space - when searching for a community, people look up the community name rather than the domain.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of some admins - would !football@lemmy.world be interested in moving to [!football@soccer.forum](/c/football@soccer.forum), given the right organization?

I'm not the main mod of !football@lemmy.world so it's really not my decision to make, but moving the community to a domain with the word soccer in it is a tough pill to swallow. As silly as it may sound, there's a lot of people that don't like having football referred to as soccer.

Moving away from lemmy.world and their annoying VPN restrictions would be nice though.

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I had a feeling that would be an issue!

On the one hand, football@soccer would be a good compromise.

On the other, we're right, the Americans are wrong. Simple as that. So I sympathise with the lack of willingness to compromise on the matter.

[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Americans are wrong

Don't forget Australia, NZ, S Africa, and a few other places like Japan.

[–] UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

How accurate is this map? If the Irish call football soccer, it would be most shocking thing I've learnt in 2024.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Just checked, they call it football. Like everyone with half a braincell.

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 3 points 12 hours ago

I'm sure the Irish call it football when they speak English, but what about in Irish? If Google translate to Irish is trustable,

English to Irish Football = Peil

But also Soccer = Sacar

So maybe there's two accepted variants. But where does Pail come from anyway? Let's translate it back to English:

Peil = Very big potato

So most of the world plays football, some strange corners of it play soccer, and the Irish play very big potato.

I'd love if a native speaker could confirm this. #Irish #Gaeilge #football @gaeilge@a.gup.pe @football@a.gup.pe

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

moving the community to a domain with the word soccer in it is a tough pill to swallow. As silly as it may sound, there’s a lot of people that don’t like having football referred to as soccer.

Sounds silly indeed, but I agree (https://feddit.org/comment/2048090 )

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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (17 children)

It seems kind of slimy.

If you don't want the communities, stop squatting them. Having no users seems like just a way to keep costs down so you can hold onto more urls and is bad for the general ecosystem anyways.

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[–] MxRemy@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't run any instances, but that does seem potentially like a pretty neat idea.

I am really curious about the unexpected behaviors of your instance members though! What are they doing, just treating it as a general instance and not really engaging with the local theme?

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Closed for registrations = no instance user accounts

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 7 points 1 day ago (9 children)

If a moderator is from a different instance, can they effectively moderate? So isn't it a problem if all moderators would be from different instances?

I remember after the exodus community discovery in Lemmy was hard, and it made sense to create instances like these. But nowadays with Lemmy Explorer and with multiple community promo communities I think it's not really hard to find the topics you are interested in.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago

If a moderator is from a different instance, can they effectively moderate? So isn’t it a problem if all moderators would be from different instances?

Reports are still not federated

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4744

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