To support decentralization and spread, should lemmy.world close registration at some point to prevent a performance overload due to too many users? Of course, if registration is disabled, there could be a hint placed somewhere near that from other instances you can interact with content on lemmy.world just like you had registered on it. There could be a link to join-lemmys instance overview.
I think no.
I’m having the same issues with pages not loading as everybody else - but this is a critical moment for Lemmy. A site like this only works if it has a lot of users - the more signups the better.
I understand that new users can sign up for other instances, and still see and interact with lemmy.world content - but I think adding any barrier to entry at all will potentially discourage a huge number of new users. As a rule, new users have no idea how lemmy, federation, instances, etc work - and telling them they can’t sign up and to consider another instance will probably end with a lot of them just giving up and sticking to reddit.
The server issues will pass, but stunting our growth at such a critical stage might not. It’s bad enough that beehaw defederated at a time like this.
What’s to stop .world “defederating” and cutting all the new users off completely.
It’s an odd platform and one that feels like it could all fall apart to someone completely new to it all.
Well Ruud who runs .world also runs Mastodon.world which is a fairly large mastodon instance, so he is somewhat of a known quantity and has experience running large Fediverse servers. His mastodon server has handled a large population and donations happen through Open Collective for transparency as well. He also runs Calckey.world though that is much smaller.
I honestly think during the sign up the registration to a server needs to be randomized to spread the load. That and allow the user counts to be global and not just to your instance and you then have user load balancing.
If we could also migrate our data between servers with a backup server option. When lemmy.world goes down, just switch to a different randomized backup server.
The danger in randomizing servers is that some smaller servers not only have less than 99% uptime but are also just run by random regular people who couldn’t handle the increased load and/or have no desire or ability to keep the servers running long term. It could maybe work if the randomization occurs from within a vetted list.
Account migration is a feature that has been noted for the future and would indeed be very important since it would essentially make the entire network bulletproof. Being able to move instances and/or link accounts across multiple instances would create the necessary redundancy and reduce fears of choosing a smaller instance as home.
I couldn’t get anything to load in my phone browser half the time either and my updoots never register. Then I downloaded the jebora app and when it disconnects from the server it flashes at the bottom so you know when it won’t post.
Now I can see everything on the site all the time
As an immigrant from reddit myself, the multiple instances and where to call my home was the first big hurtle by far. With that, my biggest concern was if the instance I was joining was going to allow me to see everything in the fediverse since instances can be blocked.
Right now I have a kbin and Lemmy account. Because although the Lemmy account I’m on isn’t being blocked by anyone, I’m finding it difficult to find some instances where on kbin the same search yields the results I’m looking for.
I’m in favor of simplifying the signup process with auto-assigning an instance. [Edit: For users coming from https://join-lemmy.org/]
For people who start using the fediverse or lemmy, the concept of federated instances is hard to understand. It also does not matter that much at this part of their journey. How about randomly assigning new users to instances which are open? This could also help with load balancing between instances.
The idea is to make entry as quick and easy as possible. Once users familiarized themselves with content and communities, they can reevaluate their ‘decision’ which instance they want to make their home. At this point, they have a better idea what this is all about.
Choosing an instance right from the start should still be possible, just not be the default mode. Make it a small link at the bottom ‘advanced mode’ or whatever, just don’t scare or burden newcomers with unecessary complexity.
To answer the question directly: I think each instance can make that decision for themselves, and open or close registration accordingly. Both is fine.
Not all instances are going to be equal in terms of things like stability and uptime. It’s going to be unfair and frustrating to users who might randomly end up on a bad instance. It might work if it only chose along the top x instances or something, to ensure a bit of reliability for new users.
It’s going to be unfair and frustrating to users who might randomly end up on a bad instance.
That’s true. On the other hand, we currently entrust this decision to people who know the least.
I think we should weigh the benefits of an uninformed decision against the benefits of making signup easier.
It might work if it only chose along the top x instances or something, to ensure a bit of reliability for new users.
Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Not sure if top x is the right measure, but you’re right reliability should be a criterion.
I do think there should be a hard limit to the number of total users in an instance. Otherwise as you said the content will get centralised in a specific instance. But that limit should be much higher than what lemmy.world now has. Also closing new registration at this time would be detrimental to the overall ecosystem. This is just my personal opinion.
Having the user count far exceed what the servers can handle is also detrimental to the ecosystem.
People aren’t patient. And the current instability we’re seeing will just make people give up on Lemmy after a brief attempt to settle in.
You raise a valid point. But finding new communities is much harder in smaller instances. So there is a chance the user will not find content they are interested in.
Isn’t the intent of federation, however, that every instance should have access to every community? So even those small instances be able to access the same communities.
Not seeing something means you’ve intentionally defederarated them (or maybe they’ve defederarated you?)
Or a server is dying somewhere.
At the early stages no. It is vital we keep it open to get as many people through the door to promote fediverse. Eventually some people will create accounts in other instances.
Yes. Encourage people to use federation FFS.
