Announcements @discuss.online jgrim of Sublinks @discuss.online 1y ago

!IMPORTANT! Please Read

Lemmy doesn't provide any analytics. Give this post a like and/or comment if you use this instance. I'm trying to gauge usage by humans.

I'll let this census run for about a week to gauge usage.

Results might cause different changes to the services.

I'm doing this because the cost of running this instance is higher than most other instances due to reliability and disaster recovery implementations. I'm curious if I should back down many of these costs if we're not used fully. I don't see much activity directly in this instance.

I know that discuss.online wasn't listed on join-lemmy.org for about a month due to a bug with the Lemmy crawler. They just recently fixed it with their redesign. We are now listed but no longer featured.

tl;dr; is this instance dying? Let me know if you're here.

36 comments

I'm here and very much in favour of scaling down versus having the money run dry. As others have stated I prefer this small instance because it allows for freedom. I can perfectly block an instance if I don't like it, I don't need it decided for me due to defederation, that's the opposite of freedom. Do appreciate your efforts to keep the very worst out.
- Thanks a lot!
I to am very much here! but as long as there are backups I dont see any reason to have hot spare level of redundancy.

I like being on a smaller side instance so we get the best of both worlds where we can connect to other instances without a big fear of defed. I enjoy content on Behaww and Lemmy.world but the two dont always seem to get along.

Also, if you want to maintain some level of redundancy I have hardware running 24/7 on UPS with fiber internet that I would be happy to work with you on setting up as a backup.
- I use a managed database that costs $120/month alone for just the Lemmy db. I went a little overkill on trying to make this a great scalable instance. I'm paying like $600/month out of pocket running all these services. I have to bring it down... says the wife.
  
  Hell yeah lets bring that donw, but again Happy to assist on the hardware side if I can. 600/m is not sustainable the wife is right!
- It’s difficult, it’s getting to the stage where some sort of backup server is needed and that costs.
  
  compuverse.uk went down because of a hardware issue for nearly a month.
  
  Ultimately we might find users on one or two big instances. Which would be ironic.
I am here!
- Hello there!
New user reporting in. Rusty Shackleford.
- Welcome! Let me know if you have any questions! Don’t forget to read the sidebar on the homepage for lots of tips and information.
  
  Thanks, and will do!
I'm here!
- Howdy!!!
Checking in! Thanks for your work, this seems to be about the most stable instance across the whole of Lemmy.
I'm here and using this as my main instance! Willing to potentially toss a few bucks into keeping things running.
- There are links in the side bar for patron and others.
  
  https://patreon.com/discussonline
  
  https://opencollective.com/discussonline/donate/
  
  This is the most chill and hands off moderated instance I have seen and it's for the best. J & Guru have been great admins since the beginning and I know J had contributed back to the project as well in some of his dev work.
  
  Thanks!
Is there a way to help out with the cost of running the server? I could spare a few bucks if it helps.
- https://patreon.com/discussonline
  
  Or
  
  https://opencollective.com/discussonline/donate/
  
  If you want to kick in. I feel better about paying for a sub here over anything on YouTube or twitch.
Hello there, this is a really nice instance. thank you for running it!
- Thanks for being part of it!
I am here, too. Unfortunately I still have problems w/ Voyager app (can't upvote, don't get notifications and such) - my favourite way to use Lemmy... But I love it here anyway. :)
- I know, the app problems are super annoying. I wish Lemmy would just release 0.19 rather than sitting on it like this. They’re giving app developers two months to update and only a handful have done it.
  
  I understand that a few apps are waiting on 0.19 imminent release before updating. (Incidentally Voyager should work fine even with the latest RC but because of the way authentication works on 0.19 the native app is best rather than the PWA (a PWA can’t technically support both <0.19 and 0.19))
  
  The other app issue is that several are essentially no longer being developed or at least very slowly developed eg Liftoff! Which hasn’t seen a commit in over three months
  
  Adding in various instance issues with lone or missing admins and servers going offline, it’s a wonder Lemmy is still around.
Thanks to all who responded!
Reporting in. I prefer smaller instances to avoid all the drama and ddos attacks the big ones have... plus it's better for the ecosystem. Scale down as necessary, if growth is needed, it will come slowly.
- That's true. I don't have big instance problems. I should enjoy the peacefulness of it.
I stopped using discuss.online as my home instance after it was unavailable through Sync for a month. 😕

And to be honest, it hasn't seemed like discuss.online has a plan for growth and long-term sustainability? Like others have mentioned in the comments, I would have preferred to find an instance outside one of the big main ones to use as my home base. But as I've been using lemmy I keep finding different ways it feels like even with federation, it's just easier to be on one of the big instances -- especially for better search and availability of content.

Besides that, not having any revenue model other than donations doesn't seem sustainable to me. And the wide array of technical issues (e.g. integrating analytics if they're not already included) that pop up from lemmy still being so early in development seems to be beyond what a single administrator can reasonably handle.
- I brought on an additional admin to help me out. This site will last. In fact, I'm working on a massive improvement to the Lemmy space. I have several volunteers from Lemmy.world helping out, too. It'll make many of your points less concerning once it launches in about a month. I'm not quite ready to share to a broad audience what it is.
  
  That is a fair point about the searching and ease of use. It would have made sense if people spread their communities around more; however, everything is in one place, so why not go to that one place? Everyone is either self-financed or earning through donations. I assume some of the instances won't last.
  
  I have a desire to grow. I bought ads on YouTube and other services to try to gain traffic. The problem is communities don't want to be on more minor instances, and people follow communities. There isn't much I can do about it. I've tried to create interactive communities and find mods to grow them, but it's not working. I plan to keep running it; I'm excited about what I will bring to the community. I want to see it all succeed.

36 comments