please be measured in what you expect of us: a non-binding appeal from one of the people running the site
hello! this is just a thing i'd like to personally note. it speaks for myself, and where it does not expresses sentiments we've already placed somewhere else. this is not a moderator document or anything, and it will not be stickied.
i'm infinitely grateful that all of you have decided to join us here, and the community has had very few issues with moderation or general unpleasantness to this point. i'm also been greatly appreciative of the support this community has already given us both financially and with your time and energy in keeping the site up and well tuned.
with that said: please temper your expectations of what is technically possible with the website and be patient about what is. there are literally thousands of you to accommodate now, and a finite number of hours to do it with.
more specifically: we (the Admins) are four people, only two of which have actual experience running or maintaining anything in the same universe of what we're managing now. we're more comfortable moderationally, but on the technical side we are flying this by the seat of our pants. none of us are big on coding, so we're not really able to add to Lemmy's base functionalities. Lemmy itself has very limited base functionalities, many of which we're trying to work around or with and constrain us in what we can do or how. a lot of options we have at our disposal to make stuff run are binary, and a lot of the not-binary options are confusing.
we're sure this will get better eventually, but from that point follows this reality: we simply cannot currently (and may not in the future either, to be honest with you) accommodate a lot of what you might think we're able to do, or expect because Reddit had it either through an app or the base function of the site. this software hasn't had 15 years to mature in functionality and community addons like Reddit--and while it's their full time gig, the upstream software is still maintained by just two people who also run the flagship instance here. they have a lot of shit on their plate too; we're lucky they can even take time to get to our notes!
and that last point also brings us to a final thing to emphasize: this is not a full time job for any of us and our insistence is that it doesn't become one. i think doing this full time would be fucking miserable, personally, and i think i can speak for all of us in saying full-time working on this site is literally not something we can commit to. it has to be that way for this to be a solvent project.
if we split the balance of our donations equitably right now--all of which is site money, to be clear, we only use it for keeping the site online and paying for any labor we might source to someone else--that'd work out to just $500 per person, which is not even a week of compensation at a wage of $15/hr. collectively, we have probably put in well over full-time hours just to keep the site going this week, and we did that last week too. we expect we'll be doing this all month. that splitting also wouldn't account for our volunteers who do most of the technical stuff, who have probably put in even more hours than we have, and who i personally think would deserve compensation before we do. (our site would be kind of fucked without them right now.)
all this to say: please be mindful of whether what you're asking of us is even possible. we are trying really hard here and it's not like a lot of what is brought up is invalid (i generally agree theoretically with a lot of what people have been bringing to us), but at least during our influx we absolutely and simply cannot promise much of anything past "the site is online and moderated in accordance with our values".
Admins for doing a brutal amount of work for something they believe in
Mods for keeping their own areas humming along
Financial contributors for keeping the lights on
Everyone who posts and comments for making this a nice place to visit
There's this odd dynamic that turns up in all sorts of communities where people someone equate "person who volunteers their own time" with "person who has to do anything I want them to do". When stated that baldly it's easy to see the nonsense and yet somehow it keeps happening. Hopefully folks here won't fall into that trap.
well, about that… it catches fire about once an hour and it's been interesting to try to automate problem resolution with scripts and clever rate limits. More on our uptime/SLA plans here: 📢 Buzzworthy SLA Announcement 🐝 (in !support by me)
Be wary if burn out! Take breaks, step away when needed. Having you guys still around in the future is more important than trying to compete with Reddit's resources.
Take care of yourselves. The beauty of this whole deal is its not "one" it's "all" of us. All the servers, all the users. There really is no reason to jump on one instance and put strain on good people doing a good thing. So often, good folks tend to over extend themselves. I've seen it time and again. Spread out your accounts into those smaller instances. You can interact with all the content everywhere.
To me, that's the entire point of lemmy. You guys are doing what you want, and letting the rest of us play in your sandbox. It's on us to play nicely, bring our own pails, and not poop in the sand.
You guys here, and at all of the instances I've run across, have gone out of your way to give us r/efugees a landing pad. I've received nothing but welcoming assistance at every turn, even when I've vented about the learning curve . What more could I ask for?
One of the great things about this instance is that I don't think I've seen anyone complain about the setup in a way that reflects on you guys. There's a lot of understanding that it's early days and it's grown exponentially in the last few weeks. I think the mentality of this instance is what keeps and will keep people here. It's a nice space to be in.
I think that it's great what you've done here so far and I wish you all the best in your efforts!
Just a thought; If things ever calm down and you're so inclined to share, I would love a "lessons learned" type post from you and the team. You're possibly some of the foremost experts in the world at operating a Lemmy instance at this point and those of us with micro-instances running on random corners of the fediverse could certainly benefit from your hard-earned wisdom.
This is impressive thus far. Keep up the good work!
For anyone who hasn't had any experience running a server of any kind, it can be a lot of work. I've run Minecraft servers for my friends, first on hosted services, and then out of my basement. For like 5-10 friends. There were times I was giving up my entire weekend to get the MC server updated, research, get plugins and mods working, speaking with support people, and attempting to fix it all when it broke. When we were using hosted solutions, we technically split the cost, but every month I still had to go around semi-begging for donations (we were a bunch of poor college students/new grads). When I started hosting out of my basement, I bought the computer to run it. It was inexpensive, but still money entirely out of my own pocket.
So I cannot imagine what it's like to run a public-facing service that has thousands of users. One that grew massively literally overnight.
So I cannot imagine what it’s like to run a public-facing service that has thousands of users. One that grew massively literally overnight.
we've gone from running this on a potato to running it on something actually respectable, and also from ~$12/mo hosting costs to a baseline of around $100
This is the kind of community I've wanted to be part of for a very long time. I would much, much rather experience some slowdown and a bug here and there than what I have been putting up with from Reddit for many years. The fact that not only is this instance still up and running, but you've been getting it to run smoothly more often than not despite this massive influx of traffic is incredible for just 4 people to accomplish.
It has to be stressful, and it has to be especially stressful getting an unprecedented number of requests from people who have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. I hope that most of them are at least polite rather than demanding. All this is to say that I see you guys and I really appreciate the work that you've been putting in at such a critical time.
Really impressed with this place and how it’s run so far! I’m a software engineer and I’m currently taking advantage of a cross training programme to get passable at the infrastructure side of things. I’d be happy to donate a weekend or two here and there for the sake of BeeHaw if that’s any use to you? I can’t commit a huge amount of time at the moment but I really like this community and I’ll contribute where I can if it’ll help keep the lights on.
What are the main pain points with Lemmy’s backend? I’ll dive into the code when I get some time and have a poke around to get familiar if nothing else.
I feel like a lot of us Redditors are sympathetic to the smaller-scale management (if you can call it that) on Lemmy instances. The admins have surely had a rough week having to deal with the influx. It really just needs to work, which it does very well. Just know that you're doing great--and getting a bunch of requests just means we're enthusiastic :)
Absolutely we’re just happy to be here. You mentioned you have some volunteers that help out on the technical stuff. With the influx of users are you looking for more volunteers? I am sure most of us are still getting used to how everything works but I would imagine that’s not the case for everyone.
I'm still figuring out how to properly navigate lemmy in general, so I'm a week or two from being ready to moderate more than the "emergency" sub me and an fellow user set up for edc. But once I get more settled in, I'll volunteer :)
don't think the technical/backend admin team would scale well at the moment, but moderation is probably a huge time sink where you can help more efficiently right now. alyaza already posted the application form for moderators.
Funnily enough, you posted this to what appears to be one of the most understanding communities you could have lol
You and the rest of the team are doing a great job. Unfortunate I wasn't able to make my account on the beehaw instance (just kept hanging on signup) but happy to still be able to interact with the great group you've help put together! Sending love from the PNW 😄
I think a lot of us here see and appreciate all yall need to do. I saw the coding request a few days after it was posted - I work from home during the week and would be happy to donate some time to help keep things up and running. I'll keep an eye out - remember there are probably lots of genuine people here that would be happy to help!
As an old timer from BBS/Gamespy era, if you don't like the server, go somewhere else. At the same time, the server owner can do whatever they like to maintain their server AT THEIR OWN DESIRED PACE. Same for the FOSS projects and feature requests, if you are not satisfied, feel free to fork and do your own thing. I am very appreciated that the bot spam is getting taken care of even when viewing "All", it does require some coordination between instances as well.
Side note: Social media is not your life, it's meant for consume some boring time you have at hand while waiting for things.(like waiting for build, waiting for coffee, or waiting for your kids be released by school.) Server owners does now awe you anything, be appreciative and supportive. Before you say, "But...", ask yourself one question: "When is last time you put some of your own free time to help others?"
I am like just fucking amazed by this lemmy+fediverse to even be exist as emigration options, every improvement come with time, so calm down and ride the waves.
we’re more comfortable moderationally, but on the technical side we are flying this by the seat of our pants. none of us are big on coding, so we’re not really able to add to Lemmy’s base functionalities
This is how it is supposed to be fwiw, great to see that people are approaching this from the social perspective rather than technical. You should not feel pressured to be developers or programming experts to run a community, those are totally different disciplines. Hopefully the resources to manage instances improve so that becomes an easier task
This exactly - Lemmy is meant to allow community managers to focus on that portion while the developers facilitate their work. Speaking as a developer, there's a very distinct difference in the skill sets needed for each field, and there should never be an expectation for one side to do work in the other - trust me, some of my past coworkers are last people you would want managing a community in any capacity. Why should it be different going the other direction?
Y'all have done a wonderful job. I'm in this for the long haul. I've donated once and will again. I think I'll set up a recurring one this time.
I work in tech in a financial aid office. We regularly get slammed with last minute changes from the govt with little details on how they need to be implemented. So we deal with high volume, high detail (because money is involved as is auditing), and high intensity/speed. It's an ugly mix. I feel like y'all could be in a similar boat. All I can offer is hang in there. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. We support you and I bet you'll discover some crazy talent in these communities that has the intellect, time and energy to help out.
I can only imagine that making this work at all can be a challenge. The recent Reddit API intrigue and the user influx couldn’t have done any favors. My moderating and community management experience is much smaller, and I already know that was a headache. I’d figure that the team here is working on all cylinders to keep things running as they are. I look forward to chipping in what I can when I can afford to. In the meantime, for what it’s hopefully worth, you and the team are Witnessed and Valued. I for one am willing to keep patient through the hiccups along the way. We’re on to something exciting here and I look forward to its continued success.
Expectations are set. Been here only a few days and i'm here for it. It's been overall a great experience. Not just with functionality, but the atmosphere y'all have fostered. It works even with the quirks. I'm a firm believer in work life balance, so please, do what you must and stay sane. Really just saying thanks. I will support this however I can.
Massive props to y'all!!! I set up my monthy donation already. When you went down yesterday, I thought, nbd, they must be dealing with a deluge, I'll come back later.
Also just reiterating the thanks. I know nothing about coding or servers or running a forum, or even enough to know what questions to ask. But I do comment a lot, enjoy contributing, and upvote basically everything, so that I shall do!
As a fellow admin, I'm very curious what technical issues you have had, and what the solution looked like for some of them. If you have time to share of course!
no time to explain a lot right now, but I created an organisation on my personal Gitea where we'll probably make the configs public: https://code.tilde.fun/beehaw
most of the issues are nginx config (amount of workers, ulimits, open files, rate limits) and having to restart lemmy because it's overwhelmed and OOMs.
Thank you for your work and commitment 👍
I used to operate and moderate a forum about a specific tv show in my country. You're doing good work especially under these high pressure
I have no idea how running a server or instance works, but I can only guess that it is a lot of hard work, especially with so many of us wanting to join.
So all I can say is: thank you for your hard work!
I experienced very few problems and I was approved really quick! I really like it here and the feeling I get from the community. I learnt so much from you all and I think I understand the Fediverse a bit better now! :)
Hey, don't worry, I'm sure most of us really appreciate the work you do. Personally, "the site is online and moderated in accordance with our values" is more than sufficient for me!
That's what I appreciates about you alyaza. Your kind words and immense level of help in everything beehaw. Thank you. I agree entirely with your sentiments. Not a full time gig, not paid for it, but absolutely happy to help for a community that actually cares about it.
You (and the rest of the admins) are appreciated. Thanks for this space.
This has been amazing so far. I wouldn't let the request stress you out. If it's one thing I've learned from working in startups or small orgs is that it's just impossible to fulfill all the different asks, but at the same time, it's super encouraging when people do create asks because it shows that they are engaged.
Big thank you to all of you admins and volunteers for building this out.
I’m here because federated social media is everything that Reddit and the other big platforms are not, and I understand that comes with caveats. I am more than willing to put up with bumps in the road while you work this out, and I’m happy to contribute financially and technically (I’m not the best programmer, my field is cybersecurity, but I try) as and when I can if you’ll have me. Anything and everything you wonderful folks do is appreciated.
Thank you for putting all that time and work into building and maintaining the server and community. I think you've carved out a great place for yourselves here and I appreciate being part of it (in some way or another). I'd volunteer myself but unfortunately I can't help much with the technical issues and I'm very light on time for actual moderating duty, which I've also had to drop on Reddit. But I did set up a monthly donation to help with the costs of running this and I'll probably keep it running until I stop using Lemmy, which might be never.
Thanks for being honest and transparent and I can only emphasise that you guys have done a wonderful job so far. Take a well deserved break as soon as you can please.
There are at least dozens of us that sincerely appreciate you. I hope you see an increase in donations as I know it's a primary way many of us can contribute to the community.
Let me try this again: THANK YOU!!! so very much for creating a community with kindness at the core!
Thank you for your efforts to keep the community positive and the site running.
Please take care of yourself and watch out that you don't burn out. The one thing which is worse for a community than a stressed admin/mod is a burnt out one.
Your post sounds like (I am not a qualified professional, this is not a diagnosis!) you're currently in stage 3 (of 12, so 25% of the way to the end) of burnout, symptoms being Negligence of one's own needs (social contacts, rest and relaxation are no longer as important as before. One has the feeling that one cannot take time for this).
If that's really the case, try to hear your own needs and take a step back once you feel it's too much.
Roger that. Thanks for putting in all your time and effort! Please take care of yourself first and foremost. While we're all enjoying Lemmy, none of this is important enough that it should become a source of stress in your life.
Every once in a while, I run into a small UI issue I might grumble a little about; now I’m wondering if I’d genuinely want to start contributing my frontend dev experience and time to make a few things better.
Granted, I already have end-of-day side projects I don’t put enough time into, so the answer may be No…
I think you guys are doing a very good job. I think most people will understand it takes time to build a platform like this. Excited to see what it turns into over the years ahead.
I'm very mindful that a hobbyist project has now suddenly grown into something much more unexpectedly for you guys practically overnight. You're doing a great job handling the huge influx so far.
Don't worry about high expectations from fellow Reddit refugees like myself. Take your time and just do your best. I've had a great experience so far having smart, measured, mature discussions with other people. I can't wait to have more. The only things I'm missing so far are niche communities that I'm sure will resurrect themselves over time.
Features and new communities can come later as the user base naturally grows. I think I'll be here for the long haul and hopefully so will many others. You got this!
If there are bugs that pop up that need solving, I'd be happy to contribute. Feel free to DM me with anything specific, the main Devs definitely have a few big things on their plate.
For the moment I'm planning to start getting familiar with the codebase.
I am grateful for what has already been achieved, it already ticks most of the boxes i needed. I hope everyone continues to be kind to yall, and thanks.
Thank you all for all of the work you've put in to make Beehaw the amazing place it is! For the record, that last line is the extent of my desires from the admins/mods here, as long as it's maintainable for y'all. I've hit burnout multiple times already throughout my life, so please listen to those of us who ask you to make sure you give yourselves time to decompress and not work on things - it's so incredibly easy to fall into a mindset where you feel compelled to keep going until you have nothing left (especially when you care deeply about your work), but it's not sustainable and it will cause you a wide variety of harm.
I also appreciate you beginning work on placing boundaries and managing expectations. I know there are tons of folks making all kinds of requests under the assumption that since you're an admin, you make the software (since that's often how it works elsewhere), but those people are going to have to realize that the federated nature of Lemmy means that you have no responsibility for bug and feature development, just getting the software to run, establishing and cultivating the culture, and keeping the lights on.
I wish I could devote time and energy to helping with bugs and feature requests, but my day job and the homestead that I'm working on getting set up with my wife take up more of those than I have available, to be entirely frank. Maybe when a couple of my bigger personal projects are done I can look at familiarizing myself with the codebase and contributing, but for now I will have to limit it to sending good vibes and supportive words wherever I can. You've all done a fantastic job setting up an honest-to-goodness community here, and I look forward to seeing it carry on! Don't grind yourselves down trying to fulfill every request and expectation brought up to you; you have supporters here who see and appreciate you, and there's only so much you can do.
Really solid work from everyone on the team. I'm very grateful for what's been created already and it's good that you have clear and solid boundaries for the future. You should be proud!