We suspect this may have to do with their older Lemmy version as we're noticing it on some other instances as well, but not .ml which is running the latest.
We were previously on 19.5, so this is a double update. You can see the changes here. Most of the update is some back end stuff, we are also looking into some federation delay with instances that haven't updated yet. The Federation delays appear to have been resolved on our end.
Defederation is the nuclear option. Until now we had removed any communities we weren't comfortable hosting, and treated users on a case-by-case basis based on how they behaved in our communities, which worked for a while but became untenable.
When we started this project the admin team felt that welcoming outsiders into our (wholesome, sane) Star Trek communities was the net-positive action. But as I said it became too much to handle so we unfortunately had to cut the cord.
This instance has defederated from hexbear.net for violating our rules against propaganda as outlined in our Terms of Service. If you are unfamiliar, federation means two servers sync and host each other's content. Defederation stops us from syncing their content to our server.
I'm not against hosting a comics community, but it's also not like /c/StarTrek is overflowing with OC and I'm sure the mods would be happy to have comics content (and you happier with their 10k users).
Per instance guidelines, submitting on-topic content to relevant communities is not considered spam. But if you want to stay subscribed to /c/STO and block ValueSubtracted's "spam" StarTrek.website has a block feature you can find on their userpage.
@ptz@dubvee.org Tagging you here because you're basically the only other person who contributes to this community.
I hear you, but "drawing folks into the fandom tent" was not what Quark's (or the instance for that matter) was created for. Quark's has always been "General off-topic chat for the crew of startrek.website.".
That said, if you or anyone else wanted to create a community with that or a related stated purpose (and promised to grow and actively maintain it in line with instance values) I would be more than happy to entertain the idea. But you can't have mine lol
The admin team doesn't make instance decisions based on what's "popular". It's actually against our mission statement. Though that doesn't mean community input is ignored.
But that being said, admins can see who's voting and we can see that the downvotes are not coming from users with much/any history in this community. So we are not taking their feedback strongly into account.
I think she's saying she's upset we don't remove enough content from other communities (federated with us but not originating) on this instance. Which is correct, the admins here generally leave content on other communities alone if they are actively moderated.
Ok nevermind she's apparently saying /c/StarTrek and /c/Risa are "spam"?
EDIT 3: **Due to some bugs we're delaying this feature until Lemmy 0.19.6 is released! **
The goal of c/Quarks has always been to help foster a sense of community for StarTrek.website, but it is just a generic "offtopic" community and does not really have an identity of it's own on the Fediverse.
Thanks to the new feature in Lemmy 19.4, we can create true "local only" communities. And Quark's can be what it was originally intended to be, a place for our users. This will allow us to better discuss what kind of experience users of this instance wish to have (not just provide) without all the dorks on less cool instances coming here and ruining our weather control network.
EDIT: to those of you concerned about missing out on "trek-adjacent discussion" @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website has indicated they plan on loosening the "on topic" rule of /c/StarTrek to include more of that.
EDIT2: If anyone is interested in growing and operating a community on our instance, please feel free to reach out or comment here!
The downvotes are all coming from accounts on other instances, which as @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website suggested, makes us think it's most likely people browsing "All" and not appreciating seeing twenty discussion posts (not that that justifies it).
This update should increase the thermal capacity of your takes by .05%
Maintenance was successful
Like many other Lemmy instances, we turned one this week! If you enjoy the Voyager app experience but prefer to only login locally (not that there's any reason whatsoever to distrust vger.app) or not log in at all, we now have an option for you!
https://vger.startrek.website/
(actual footage of a vger.startrek.website user)
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A friendly reminder that we also have mlem ("old reddit") fronted installed too for those that prefer browsing in a familiar interface on desktop.
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We do plan on updating to Lemmy 0.19.4 sometime this month so keep an eye out for that!
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If you've noticed the site hitching lately it's because we were reaching our storage limit (again, oops) so we purchased significantly more storage that appears to be helping.
Big nuqneH to our Patreon supporters for keeping our little corner of the Fediverse on the air a whole year and also allowing us to add features like these frontends and wiki (editing is open to all!) If you'd like to pitch in we have just one plan and it's only $4.
This has been on our todo list for a while, but turned into a harder nut to crack than I initially assumed. Thanks for the additional info. I'll comment here and make a new post when this gets sorted.
EDIT: It's sorted
It's startrek.website but looks like the "old Reddit" UI
Also, it's working again.
I just noticed today that old.startrek.website isn't loading properly. The fact that zero people have said anything to the admins makes me wonder if anyone's using it at all. So speak up if you are! I will be happy to fix it for you, but otherwise may just uninstall.
EDIT: It's fixed, we'll leave it for now
> http://old.startrek.website/
We had been waiting at 0.18.5 for a while because 0.19 came with some federation bugs (and obviously it would be extremely embarrassing if this instance had issues in that department).
The biggest changes for users are a new scaled sorting method that should prioritize posts from smaller communities (no more Risa dominating the entire feed), the ability for users to block whole instances, and the ability to import/export accounts with other instances (or just back up your account).
Also I'd like to apologize for the downtime; we expected this to be a simple update taking only a few minutes, so I didn't post an alert in advance, but then were some issues that caused us to go offline for several hours.
Lastly, after the update I found I had to clear my browser cache/cookies in order to log in, similarly, users using apps have been reporting they needed to remove and re-add their accounts. You may find you need to do that too!
EDIT: The app Liftoff has a bug preventing login on any Lemmy instance over v0.19.0
EDIT 2: We've updated to 0.19.3, mostly just bugfixes in this one.
I kinda realized this isn't Reddit, so as long as things stay polite and organized there's no reason us Admins need to gatekeep the wiki. We're paying for it, might as well let people use it right? Anyone with a valid can register as an editor.
Ideally we'd like our wiki to serve as a sort of fan-resource hub and on-boarding for newbies (both Trek and Lemmy/fediverse), but feel free to make anything there your heart desires (the Admin team reserves the right to keep things tidy).
Also, the permission system around Bookstack (our wiki software) is a little complex so if you're running into a permissions issue, don't hesitate to reach out to @williams_482@startrek.website, @ValueSubtracted@startrek.website or myself so we can get it sorted.
We'll be testing out a monitoring tool that should help us identify/isolate minor outages as they arise.
Sometimes it's hard to tell when a crash/loading situation is on our end, or a temporary slowdown (usually caused by a spike of fediverse activity), or just general Lemmy-is-still-pretty-new weirdness and this should help us stay on top of it more quickly.
Appreciate those of you who have been alerting us on Mastodon when you're seeing an error!
Check it out here → wiki.StarTrek.website
Goals for this wiki:
To serve as a hub and bridge for fans to find and connect with online resources of the broader Trek fandom and Fediverse. Think: stuff that's not a good fit for Memory Alpha or Wikipedia.
Some cool pages:
- Instance Mission Statement (new! 👀)
- Archive of c/StarTrek's episode discussion threads (includes old Reddit threads and USSBurritoTruck's "Canon Connections" too!)
- Social Media accounts of Trek actors (needs help expanding!)
- c/StarTrek's "where do I start?" guide for Trek babies.
Want to contribute?
We're accepting pitches for community resources that people may want to contribute. Here are examples of sorts of things we're looking for, but we're open to any idea, it doesn't even need to be about Star Trek!
- Guide to the best LGBT episodes
- Other good Star Trek websites (Ex Astris, TrekMovie, etc)
- Where to stream Trek
- S-tier blank Trek meme templates
If you'd like a page of your own, or want help expanding/maintain existing pages, comment here or message an admin with your idea and we can get you set up with a Wiki account. Cheers!
--- ps- patreon shill link
This is thanks to a project called mlmym (Github link) for those of you old enough to remember the good ol' days...
FYI- you'll have to log in separately (still using your regular startrek.website account).
Thank you for everyone's patience while we were migrating hosts . I know I said "a few hours" and it turned out to be over a day. Clearly I need to work on my Scotty estimates. During transport the team found a backlog of extremely low effort memes caught in the pattern buffer and we had to go through the copies one by one determining which were the evil versions.
You may notice some wonkiness/slowness the next 24hrs as we get re-federated with everyone. Basically every other Lemmy instance will bombard us with traffic for a while.
Our new host is designed for Lemmy in particular, meaning in the long run we should see increased stability, improved load times, and better scaling as we inevitably become the dominant Lemmy instance!
EDIT: We are back, see this thread in /c/Quark's It's read-only so that we don't miss anything while all our isolinear chips get backed up. Apologies for the inconvenience and we'll resume full-power systems ASAP.
This should fix the bug some users were experiencing where /c/DaystromInstitute posts were occasionally eliciting feelings of overwhelming bliss.
Release notes here.
This should decrease the variance we've been seeing in the impulse manifolds, bringing it back to within acceptable parameters. I'm told if any of you notice intrusive thoughts involving Intendant Kira Nerys you should report to sick bay immediately where they should be able to help you intensify them.
You may have noticed this message when sending a DM on StarTrek.website:
What does it mean that "sending private messages are not secure"?
Basically it means that DMs (unlike passwords) are not encrypted before being stored in our database. If I (or the server admin of the sever the person you're DMing) wanted to read DMs, it wouldn't be easy per-se, but it's far from impossible.
Are you reading DMs?
We are not digging through the database to read DMs (we don't care enough to put in the effort also its wrong) but we can't stop other Admins on other instances, and if law enforcement or someone got their hands on our server, there's nothing we could do to prevent your DMs from being accessible to them. Just FYI.
So what's element.io?
Element.io is a secure messaging service that uses the decentralized Matrix protocol. The Lemmy devs like it so much they put a spot in your profile page to make it easy to share your profile:
It's a neat service but has nothing to do with StarTrek.website or Lemmy. It's also far from the only secure messaging platform (Signal and Telegram are two popular ones that allow for it).
--- Hope that clears up some confusion, feel free to ask any questions! !Cheers
SysAdmin @startrek.website A chimpanzee and two trainees in a trench coat