Can you code? We need your help to improve lemmy

As a workaround you can go into the database and query directly for users with rejected application and email provided. Then write a script to email them. Getting a fix developed, reviewed, merged and deployed will take a few days in the best case. And even longer now because we are busy with lots of things.

To work on bugs and test do I just need the UI and backend? Does the backend code have a embedded DB for local development? I can code, btw. I can figure rust out, great with JavaScript and JVM languages.

Likely need to define some basic rbac controls. They signed up, sure, but don’t receive a “user” role until after approval. Then in the home page, when signed in with no roles assigned, they get a banner saying they’re still pending approval and will not be able to post or comment.

The major concern will be retroactively applying user roles to the existing users.

Bit of a tangent here, but if you’re ever looking for experience designers to help out here and there, or to just give something a second set of eyes, I might be able to lend a hand or connect y’all with some bright and chill people.

You probably don’t want me making any PRs, but I know my way around Figma and a user test plan.

Hiya! Lemmy was actually one of the reasons I started learning Rust, but I do also know JavaScript, Python, a bit of Julia, C, C++, MASM, NASM, MIPS, a bit of TypeScript, and Java. I've worked on both frontend and backend although I think my expertise and comfort lies with backend primarily. I'm not sure if I'd be able to help with y'all's issue as I'm not familiar with the Lemmy codebase, but I'd be willing to try and help debug the issue and hopefully get it under control.

Thanks for posting and writing all this up. I'll take a good look at it if this is a Friday that work tickets decide to slow down.

A "quick fix" might be to test for a user unapproved status on login and provide it as a status (e.g. 404:application_denied). Then the behaviour can be either release all created but unapproved accounts after 24hrs elapse or perma-"ban" until approved like it is now depending on server preferences.

"Quick fix" as in it's seems quick but will take me a while to implement if I were to try and I won't have time for a few days to get serious and become familiar with the code.

I wonder if the RES devs might consider working on BES (or LES)?

I thought this was a mistake. I filled out an application early on and didn’t fill it out correctly. I expect that account was denied, but I did notice that the user was created the exact second I applied which was weird. I assume the username is now in a limbo state. Seems strange that lemmy would create an account before it’s approved.

I cannot code. 🫤

But it occurs to me that we need a couple of features - although maybe they already exist.

One is the ability to back up a Lemmy account and download the data.

The other is account portability - the ability to move an account from one instance to another.

But I suspect that #2 might be impossible.

Off topic but I'm really happy that the developers chose Rust to code Lemmy in. Low maintenance + high performance is the ideal combo for open source server software.

I have front end and back end experience but work has me kind of bogged down this week. If nobody has stepped up by Sunday I should be free to start taking a look at it at the very least.

I forget my password to my GitHub account, so ill just reply here. I agree - it is a bit hard to know if youve been accepted or not. I just kept trying to log in once or twice over an hour or so, but I doubt thats feasible especially for the cases of people who get denied and dont know why.

I am not quite certain on the structure of a Lemmy server, but I imagine there's a log of users that you can join to a particular db entry for acceptance status and denial message. Given that you host the server that this is on, I imagine you might be able to append some changes to the login page to access these fields.

My thought is that there can be a small text input added to the bottom of the log in page that you can enter in a username, and have it present the necessary data pertaining to acceptance status. Again, not sure how this would work in Lemmy structure land, but in MVC where Im competent, I would have an endpoint that returns data as json, then ping it with an ajax post request. Id imagine something similar could be done here

I'm a beginner with Rust, but a full-time web engineer with React/TS/PHP/SQL/etc experience. I'm a bit swamped at the moment, but I'm down to contribute eventually :)

Is there a way we can minimize the stickies? It’s a quality of life but would be great to read it once and shrink it so I get to my feed quicker.

I'd be happy to help contribute as best I can. I don't have much Rust experience but I'd like to learn more. One thing I'm noticing: I like that there are a good deal good first issue tags for the backend repo, but only one for the frontend. I'm not sure if there's really that far fewer intro tasks for the frontend or if they're just not tagged as thoroughly.

@Gaywallet what if you signed up without an email? I don't think I added an email address until later attempts.

What can we do to reapply with a decent effort?

I have Rust experience and will consider helping out. I've been wanting to help out Lemmy recently anyway.

as they didn’t write enough in their registration for us to really evaluate if they were a good fit for this instance.

I'm just curious, what do you consider to be "writing enough"? How strict are you with your applications? I'm trying to learn from beehaw for my own instance.

I don't really know Rust at all but it might be a good opportunity to learn. I come from a C# and Python background so I might see if there's anything I can tackle.

I’ll take a look at it and submit a post request with fixes within the next week

I am a software developer. I will look at it this weekend at some point. I'll try to help if I can.

I got my approval email, is the problem limited to denial notification?

I'm a react dev. I'm happy to contribute in my spare time, probably weekends and smaller issues. I noticed the client is built in inferno, which from a quick look appears to be fairly similar to react, so I'm sure I can be useful. I'll have a look tomorrow, can see a large list of issues so I'm sure I will find something to do.

I can't code, but I'd be happy to send donations to those who can to work on Lemmy. I'm not a rich man but I'll happily help how I can.

I would love to help. Senior software engineer with a lot to learn 😂

It seems like a lot of developers have responded already but I'm a c# developer with some experience in Rust so I'll see if I can help with any issues that crop up on GitHub.

My dev days are a little while behind me, but I have experience in project management, QA, etc. Happy to help.

Ex AWS enterprise architect, for the commercial competitor to ActivityPUB, bunch of massive user base infrastructure if needed.

I probably should start learning TypeScript. Foundry VTT and VSCode also use TypeScript. I haven't had motivation professionally. I might need to take it up as a hobby.

I professionally develop in C, C++, C# and Python.

It’s possible, once they have a good ecosystem of apps plus a lower priced tier (maybe around at macbook air pricing?) However, I can’t imagining it ever shredding the feeling of dystopian-ness of it