This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion.
Per this thread, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works two months ago, around the time that the reddit exodus was happening. Lemmy was blowing up, those instances had an open sign-up policy, and this meant that admins of other instances (like Beehaw) that wanted to heavily moderate their communities became quickly overwhelmed with the number of users from these two instances. Beehaw defederated to make the workload more realistic.
Two months on, I’m wondering if this defederation is still necessary. It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot, and maybe the flow of users from these outside servers would not be as overwhelming as it was before? I respect the decision of the admins one way or the other - I know that the lack of moderation tools was another factor in this decision. I’m just curious if this is something that has been considered recently?
Stay defederated. On top of all the great points already made, I don’t understand people demanding instances behave a certain way. If you don’t like the way this instance is handled go find another one.
Who’s demanding anything? Surely we can discuss it amongst ourselves as a community?
Yes, instances can do whatever they want and users should seek instances that match their needs but:
- Per the thread OP linked, it’s suggested this could be temporary. “this is also not a permanent judgement” is my context in saying as such.
- The post did not feel demanding. Though perhaps you’re making a more general reference?
Edit: context
Edit2: Not intended as advocation for refederating. I’m content with the content available to me so I don’t have a strong opinion.
My understanding is admins of some of those communities actually agreed with the decision because of the lack of proper moderation tools to handle their new scale. Some are basically un-moderated as well.
Speaking for Lemmy World - we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated. We follow the reports closely and if we notice they aren’t picked up by that community’s moderators we reach out.
And yes, we were also told initially that it was because of a lack of moderation tools but now @Lionir@beehaw.org seems indicate a “cultural” difference. But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Having accounts on both instances, I can say the “cultural” difference is the moderation style, and user expectations:
- Lemmy World: Reddit-like rules, a huge influx of Reddit refugees who think every comment has to go against the parent one, free registration which makes it easy to create an account and go troll mode on federated instances.
- Beehaw: Very open-ended but at the same time strict “be nice” moderation with minimal rules, users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
- Lemmygrad, Hexbear, Exploding heads, etc: I think the cultural differences are obvious there.
- Other instances: they have much smaller user bases than Lemmy World, so even when there are cultural differences (dbzer0, lemm.ee, etc), they are not overwhelming (yet) the mod team on Beehaw.
we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated
The problem is not just having moderators on LW, but moderating LW’s userbase on federated instances. Some number of LW’s users seem to be hostile towards Beehaw, and there is little LW can do about that other than banning their accounts, which I don’t think would be that much better for anyone.
users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
Didn’t have to be an essay, it just had to be something that answered the 3 questions it asked about why you want to join beehaw.
And yes, we were also told initially that it was because of a lack of moderation tools but now @Lionir@beehaw.org seems indicate a “cultural” difference. But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Yes, there are differences in site culture between Beehaw and Lemmy.world that make the need for moderation higher.
Appreciate the insight. I have heard many variations of what went down/what the reasoning was and it’s all sort of unclear to me to be honest. But ultimately I think if instances weren’t supposed to defederate, then the option wouldn’t exist. Mistake or not it’s their call!
But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Have you asked them?
Here are my two cents as an outsider looking in. I spend ~15-30 mins a day on Lemmy (usually while doing other things), so I see a decent amount of content but I am not at the leading edge of posts. When I look at posts, I rarely, if ever see spam. For the most part there is civil conversations and those that attempt to derail them are downvoted and, in some cases, banned.
Does this mean that moderation isn’t a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue. Personally I would like to see you guys refederate, as that could only increase the quality of discussions throughout the fediverse.
See I have the exact opposite experience outside of beehaw and a few key communities I browse on Kbin.
Does this mean that moderation isn’t a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue.
This is contradictory. You are admitting your experience is anecdotal yet also saying it clearly shows there isn’t a problem.
Can someone explain the defederation thing to me? I thought that was “cutting the cord” yet I see people from lemmy.world commenting here.
Can someone explain the defederation thing to me? I thought that was “cutting the cord” yet I see people from lemmy.world commenting here.
People from Beehaw canot see them though I will say that is very strange. It shouldn’t be happening at all as far as I know.
lemmy.world is just hot garbage imo
I’m on Lemmy.world every day and I’ve never seen any of that. I don’t doubt it exists, but it’s definitely not a problem on any of the communities I’m subscribed to.
I’m not jumping on you - I’m just pointing out lemmy.world isn’t a total write off. There are about 20k monthly active users on that instance and about 20k of those people are polite, reasonable people who post interesting content.
With any large community like that there’s always going to be some people who’re problematic, but either the moderators on lemmy.world are deleting them before I see them, or else it’s happening on communities I don’t subscribe to (probably a mix of both).
I think Beehaw should re-federate lemmy.world as soon as the moderation tools are better. In particular the cross-instance moderation issues should be sorted out. The key to a functioning fediverse is to ensure that everyone across instances can work together to tackle bad content. Many hands make light work.
I don’t really care about “growth”. Lemmy is a community not a corporation. What I care about is when someone starts an interesting discussion, are there “enough” people who take part in that discussion? I see threads on Beehaw (and even on Lemmy.World) that get zero replies. That sucks.
I replied somewhere else in this thread but we - the admins of lemmy world - have always been supportive of the beehaw decision to wait until better tools come along for moderation. We went through a few growing pains with LW but I’m happy to see how far we have come already and we keep working to make things better. Our legal page with the rulesets is actively being maintained and defines what we stand for: https://lemmy.world/legal.
Lemmy.world feels the most Reddit-like in my experience. Beehaw felt… different even when I was browsing it from Lemmy.ca in April and the entire Lemmyverse as a whole had maybe a couple dozen posts a day. There were real neat and in-depth discussions by people who were capable of feeling and caring, and no propaganda spam that many instances had. We had a few bumps along the way but overall I’m still very happy about how things are.
We handle our reports daily and urge our users to keep reporting anything that goes against our rules.
