this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I'm trying to get some feedback on our potential move.

Let's start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.

A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.

We decided that our 'Northern Star' or guiding principle would culminate as 'Be Nice' with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.

We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.

One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.

During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.

Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.

After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.

Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.

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[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 8 points 11 months ago

Don't care, do whatever you like.

[–] wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net 7 points 11 months ago

Reading through the lemmy.world responses is just disheartening.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 11 months ago

blahaj and beehaw are my two favourite places on the internet so id definitely miss y'all ❤️

[–] MargotRobbie@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

I don't think lemm.ee is federating correctly, but I'll give my take here if some one can sees it.

Beehaw will go the way of every other reddit alternatives, because the existing community is not enough to sustain the critical mass of activity needed. In fact, with the current instance policy, Beehaw is struggling to sustain itself as is with federation, which will only get worse if you defederate.

I'm not sure why Beehaw refuse to use Lemmy's white-list federation feature and selectively pick and choose who to federate with instead of going full scorched earth.

It's ultimately up to the admins at Beehaw to make this choice, but I would like to say, grass is not always greener on the other side, defederation will harm Beehaw more than it helps.

[–] swade2569@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I find that one of the drawbacks to this federated landscape is knowing when to make a new account and where. There. Are. So. Many. Options.

If Lemmy and AP are so limiting why not be part of its development and growth? Development doesn’t seem to happen fast on these platforms, and for good reason. “Move fast and break stuff” is a terrible mantra in my opinion, and I’m glad for things moving more slowly.

In either case I have enjoyed the discussions over there and it would be a shame to see it defederate. Best of luck to you and the team either way.

[–] hai@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

Let me start by saying that if Beehaw would be missed for all of us, but I doubt people would move with it if it left ActivePub. That being said I’d recommend sticking with Lemmy, sure it doesn’t have all the features yet — but it’s still young (and is still growing).

[–] spez_@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

I think you have to do what's best for your people. You have a very particular set of goals with Beehaw, and if the fediverse isn't the right place for that then it's fine to move on. I'll be curious to see what you all decide to do, and, if you do leave, what you end up creating!

[–] Satiric_Weasel@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

I would be sad, but I'd understand; and I would be grateful to all of the admins that made Beehaw possible on Lemmy; and hope Ai saw you all somewhere else out there on the web.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Didn't you defederate from a lot of instances anyways? And recreate every major community to have yet another copy talking about the same subject and splitting the readership/people?

If I were you, I'd pull the plug and do it properly. All I've seen is beehaw causing confusion with (new) users on other instances and I alone have explained like 5 times why people can't see some posts or their posts can't be seen by other people because of defereration and that it's a complicated 3-way triangle how Lemmy handles that (with the originating instance of the community, the home instance of the user and the instance the other user is on.) And you're confusing your own users by letting them believe they're on the fediverse and part of Lemmy, while they're in fact part of maybe 10% of the Fediverse. It adds to the confusion that every community exists twice or more times and users have to handle that. Your own admins complain a lot. And it causes you pain.

I think you were better off with a discord server or a closed forum. And it'd spare you and everyone being constantly annoyed with each other.

In theory connecting people is always a good thing. But I don't see how that would work out here.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 11 months ago

TLDR don’t want you to leave.

[–] Stoneykins@mander.xyz 4 points 11 months ago

I mean if you want to know how it would effect me it wouldn't. Posts from beehaw don't even come up, flooded out by more active communities, unless I go directly to the beehaw comms. I functionally use it as a seperate website anyways now, if I ever feel like checking it.

I don't really understand your overall goal talk tho. You want to be nice in an intentionally vague way, but you feel like federation is somehow limiting you from achieving this vague state of niceness... Is it just moderation difficulties (not to downplay them) or is something else about leaving the fediverse door open problematic to being nice?

To be blunt the solution to your problems seems to me the same as every single other time beehaw federation is talked about: the community you want to achieve will require many more moderators than a typical community of equivalent size, they will need specialized mod tools, they will need to be high quality skilled highly vetted mods, and you will need exponentially more of them the more users appear on beehaw. Federation doesn't directly stop you from doing any of that, but it does lead to faster growth, which leads to too much work if you aren't constantly adding moderators to match growth.

You should be asking yourself how big you want beehaw to be, and how big of a beehaw you think can be achieved at all.

Sorry I didn't mean to be this rambly when I started writing ignore it if you want

[–] derbis@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Can you be more specific about the downsides?

I joined this instance because I was looking for a lemmy instance and to be on the fediverse. I mean I can still do that on a different instance, so if that's the way you decide to go it isn't the end of the world.

I guess the core group has its motivations that are not necessarily shared by every user, although presumably our ideals are aligned. This is the first I'm hearing that the association with Lemmy is incidental.

Whether I'd stick around or not, I'm not sure. One thing I like about the fediverse is that it presents a real shot at being a free-culture alternative to corporate social media, and I think losing federation with one of the most successful instances would be a loss for that movement.

If you do defederate, would you continue to use Lemmy as the software for the community? Being able to use the mobile apps is convenient and honestly that's probably the thing that has me logging in as much as I do.

[–] 0xtero@beehaw.org 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As a relatively new Beehaw user (I deliberately waited for the reddit exodus to subside before applying), I understand the reasoning. The "default" open nature of ActivityPub creates moderation challenges for a "well tended garden" - much more so than a more controlled space. I also understand the software (lemmy) itself is somewhat problematical, both politically and from technical/maintenance perspective.

I wouldn't be against moving - and I'd follow. The Beehaw groups are active and contain lot of good quality discussions, I'd assume that wouldn't change outside fediverse.

I'd be still free to access the fediverse through other kbin/lemmy instances if I wanted to participate and I wouldn't close my Mastodon account just because Beehaw decided to move somewhere else, so I wouldn't personally lose very much - and I would stand to gain a "safe haven" - a more closed discussion forum I could always turn to when the noise of the outside world gets to be too much.

For the sake of everyone moderating Beehaw and our communities, I'd completely understand. Fediverse is a very rowdy bar and as volunteer bartenders, it must be somewhat tiresome for you.

In the long term I'd worry about building a too small echo chamber without the required diversity for Quality Discussions and I'd also worry about "hiding" - it would be harder for fellow disenfranchised cretins to find us - and perhaps we'd lose good members. I know the Beehaw strategy priority is not centered around growth, but nevertheless, some kind of strategy would have to be devised to monitoring the long term health and diversity of the community.

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