DarbyDear @ DarbyDear @beehaw.org

He/Him, with a tendency to ramble on about any given topic.

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2 yr. ago

Yeah, I've been there. It's just so aggravating, but I try to find comfort in knowing that at least I wasted a small bit of their precious bandwidth!

I hadn't even considered the quantity of ads on those sites... Any time I accidentally find one, it's a long column of text that starts off with a bunch of filler roughly related to whatever I was searching for, maybe a couple of lines with an answer (right or wrong is a different matter), then breaks down into a bunch of self-contradicting nonsense. I just don't see the ads because of uBlock Origin, so I never see how bad they are. AI generated sites are completely aggravating.

Just letting you know that, even if you weren't looking for it, you're seen and felt. Some of the things you talk about really hit close to home for me - I'm stuck working to support the life I actually want. I bought a house not long ago in the middle of the country, which is exactly what I want now even though I wanted a swanky place in the city when I was younger. No time or energy for the things I love, and not enough money to drop out of my job and just enjoy life with my family and animals. I wish I had a secret to tell, but if I ever figure it out I'll try to remember to pass it on to you. For now, I'm going to keep grinding.

On a tangentially-related note, do you have any of your music available online that you can link to? I love music, just never kept up with learning to play and create it, so I just try to appreciate it wherever I can find it until things change enough that I can settle a bit and pick up making it.

My understanding is that this is the plan - the only reason for defederation is because that is the only tool available at this time, and the admins for Beehaw find it most important to continue pursuing their goal to form a community rather than replacing Reddit or growing for the sake of growth.

Yeah, I respect yours as well - I think this is just a difference in opinion about what the core focus of the fediverse should be. For me, it's that there are more granular instances that aren't beholden to others and can determine for themselves what they want their corner of the system to be while still having a connection to others.

If I understand you properly, you seem to be more of the mind that the fediverse is meant to be focused more on robustness and taking control out of one central authority, and the welfare of the system as a whole is tied to the aggregate strength of its instances.

Please correct me if I'm wrong and you would like to though, and thank you for the discussion either way! I mostly wanted to be an example of someone that doesn't think that's what the purpose is since you had mentioned there will be folks that disagree. In the end there is no right or wrong stance, just opinions on what's more important.

For the record, that XKCD is exactly what I was thinking about when I mentioned the community collision issue!

Thank you for reaching out and being open to collaboration! I'm not an admin or mod, just a member of Beehaw, but I wish you continued success and luck with your endeavors running lemmy.world!

I definitely see your point, but I'm going to speak as one of the ones that would argue that it goes against the concept of decentralized communication 😉

I can appreciate that you think that there is a responsibility to the fediverse as a whole, but I feel like that responsibility comes second to the goals and intentions of the instance in question. As you suggested, Beehaw didn't request to become the go-to instance for gaming/tech/news. My idea of the fediverse response would be that, since Beehaw's technology community is defederated, then those instances should either spin up their own or go to another instance's. That may turn into a different instance's technology community becoming the de facto one, but that's a consequence that Beehaw has to accept with the decision to defederate.

I will say that this bumps into the issue of community collision - that is, communities with the same name and/or subject across multiple instances, and I admittedly don't have a good solution in mind for that right now. As it stands, I'm actually interested to see how all of this pans out - this is the sort of issue that only comes to light when a specific set of circumstances is met, and I think some precedents are going to be set throughout this process. It is also likely going to be a significant push for the improvement of moderation and administrative tools since that's the major limiting factor here, so I think this whole situation is an overall positive for the development of the fediverse as a whole.

Thank you for the transparency! I definitely understand the original decision to defederate (especially looking at the troll's post, which was linked to in The Dude's side of things), but I also look forward to better, more granular moderation and administration controls to come out so that refederation can happen.

I would also like to give kudos to the admin team and users over at sh.itjust.works - there's some good discussion going on over there in the thread linked here. I love that, despite the fundamental difference in views on how an instance should be run, it seems to be respectful on the whole. Even the people that firmly disagree with Beehaw's vision essentially leave it at "I think it can be done better, and want to demonstrate how." I think that's perfect, and encapsulates the benefit that Lemmy has over centralized platforms. There is also no support for the troll that triggered this situation to begin with.

Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but it's generally not a great idea to give advice on someone's situation when you haven't gotten a full grasp on the background and relevant information, especially when it comes to mental/emotional stuff. For example, you're correct that the general politics in the U.K. is more left-leaning than the U.S. but that's not necessarily the case for trans rights - it's picked up the moniker "TERF island" in some places. Elsewhere in this post, OP mentioned that their partner has been assaulted for wearing nail polish. Where they live could very well be the equivalent of the deeply-conservative part of Florida when it comes to feelings towards the trans community specifically.

From an admitted non-expert, the way I understand it is this: A roguelike is turn based, procedurally generated to some extent, has some form of time/turn crunch tied to a carried resource (food/hunger is pretty common), and has leveling involved as part of the core gameplay loop. The idea being that you try to balance out luck (with the items/equipment you find, enemies that spawn, how well you're doing in a particular combat, etc) with skill (knowledge of the game systems, knowing how to build, knowing when to cut your losses and run, when you have enough resources to gain some levels, etc.). There is also perma-death: Once you die, your run is over and you have to start fresh.

A roguelite involves some of these aspects, but plays things much looser. Typically there's some level of perma-death in that a run is over when you die, but there's also a meta-currency to allow for progress/power upgrades between runs (like increasing starting health per run by using items that have a chance to drop during a run). They are often not turn-based, and don't necessarily have the same time crunch. The similarities lie in the fundamental idea: balance luck introduced by randomization/procedural generation and skill from game mastery, and if you fail then you have to start a new run. Different folks will have different criteria for the two terms (I saw a purist say that it's not a real roguelike if it has anything other than ASCII graphics), but that's how I summarize them.

Exactly - the best way I can think to describe it is that I no longer feel like I'm going to be locked out of discussion because I took too long to actually read what the conversation was about. For me personally, that turned into me becoming a terminal lurker, but others wind up skimming headlines or pieces of longer comments and trying to rush to respond. In the latter case, that wound up translating into shallower, briefer discussion points in an effort to keep up and try to be seen. Overall, it seems like Beehaw is steering more towards longer-form, slower discussions (as demonstrated by the long posts written by the various admins and mods). I won't say this is an objectively good or bad thing, it's a matter of personal preference, but it's definitely more my speed since I try to be deliberate with what I post and tend to take a while to digest what I'm reading and try to form a more substantial response. I do definitely see why that wouldn't be what people might be looking for though - it's kind of the difference between quick-witted banter or more meandering navel-gazing (for lack of better descriptions).

I agree. Beehaw has a different goal (which is thoroughly explained in the stickied FAQ post), and it is not to be a Reddit replacement. I'm actually a fan of the environment and goal here - I've actually found myself responding to posts from a week or two ago because I actually wanted to contribute, whereas I wouldn't bother on a Reddit post more than a couple of hours old because it would just get drowned out by a flood of low-effort content.

Count me in the "support" column. Beehaw has always been very open about what it is and isn't, and all of the people who are bringing up how freedom of speech is more important than anything can find some level of explanation in Gaywallet's post/essay "Beehaw is a community". Beehaw admins/mods don't have the tools to moderate more even-handedly, so the decision to defederate for now and re-assess when more resources are available makes perfect sense to me. I'm also in the camp of "smaller and higher quality is more important than growth at any cost." This is how you can have a community where dissenting voices are allowed, such as how I've seen opinions I personally disagree with allowed to be discussed in more detail than they probably would be elsewhere. I also saw a post by someone that I believe was from one of these instances (it was either deleted or isn't viewable due to the defederation), and it was pretty clear that they were purely operating in bad faith - essentially saying that the users here are silenced and oppressed by heavy-handed moderation. For context, they also made a post elsewhere that shared information that essentially boiled down to "North Korea actually isn't bad, it's all imperialist propaganda!"

In the end, the federated nature of Lemmy means I can just create another account elsewhere if I feel the need to interact with the defederated instances. Jerboa (my main way of using Lemmy) makes it pretty quick and easy to add multiple accounts, so it really wouldn't be much of a hassle.

I've mentioned my thoughts on this a few times now, but you've summed my opinions up nicely! I tend toward longer, overly-drawn-out comments and replies, so it was kind of pointless for me to comment on stuff on Reddit. It went entirely against what was promoted by the culture on Reddit, which developed as a result of turning comments into a popularity contest. If you didn't have a gimmick (ShittyMorph, poem_for_your_sprog, shittywatercolor, etc.) then you were basically stuck using jokes, references, and acerbic jabs to try to get attention (as evidenced by karma). Even downvote farmers fell into this pattern, they just did the opposite of what the typical person would do, which resulted in even more toxicity.

Just wanted to chime in at the end here and say thanks for mentioning us. I literally live a 20-minute drive from the nearest grocery store, out in the country, so bikes aren't exactly practical like they were when I lived in denser areas. What I try to do (to try adding to the conversation) is accommodate where I'm able. I have an electric car (2018 Bolt) that I use as my daily driver (my pickup is strictly for situations that the Bolt can't handle), I'm setting up a homestead to help eat as locally as I can, and I eventually plan on getting solar and switching off of heating oil. However, even my situation isn't feasible for everyone - my income is higher than the median in my state and I have the land to accommodate a homestead, so the only thing that can be done from my perspective is try to implement policies and infrastructure where it'll have the biggest impact to help offset the impact of those that can't take advantage of it, and see if there are ways to help those who live in rural areas even if they can't be applied to urban areas.

Close Talker by Nelward

He's got an interesting set of styles that I have trouble categorizing, but has grown on me ever since I found him a couple of years ago.

That's both frustrating and appalling. This is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because I can't even remember how many times I've seen the sentiment that "oh the conservative states have made their bed, let them sleep in it" without regard for the members of the queer community who still live there. Sometimes, that's even followed up with "just move out" when those members are brought up, completely disregarding whether that's even possible on a financial or emotional level. Every situation is different, and there is no correct answer. The best we can do is support people who are making decisions in good faith, as long as those decisions don't harm others.

I know it's not what you meant, but I immediately thought of this guy with Trump hair

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?

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.