In recent days, the discussion around Lemmy has become a bit...spicy. There's a few points of impact here. To list some examples: Beehaw being frustrated enough to ponder leaving the software Sublinks being started out of uncertainty with the lemmy roadmap Drama about inability to delete images and lemmy dev reactions to the priority request [...]
I think something is being lost in communication here. Nothing is being destroyed.
I keep seeing this disconnect, I think it needs to be emphasized: Lemmy maintainers have been focusing (and continue to focus on) safety and moderation improvements. Anybody can verify this by looking through PRs/commits/RFCs on GitHub.
I think I understand where the disconnect is coming from - there have been a few responses in some of these threads by Lemmy devs where they tell people to be less rude and demanding, and to contribute if they desperately want some feature. Perhaps as an observer, this sounds like “we do not care about mod tools” or whatever, but reality is just different.
Perhaps it would be useful to do a more in-depth post about all the stuff Lemmy devs have worked on and are currently working on? I mean things like:
I feel like there is this meme developing in Lemmy that maintainers are putting out a message of not caring about mod tools, which anybody with context will know is completely false, but I think most Lemmy users (and even many admins!) just don’t have this context.
I agree. A lot of the friction here is due to miscommunication. That said, if what I said kept being misunderstood, then I would make a priority to improve my communication style.
This shit is hard. If one has ASD like I do, it’s even harder. Personally try to be very exact on what I say, even when speaking casually, and pepper smilies and caveats to try to ensure people don’t take what I say the wrong way. And even then I’ve stepped in it a number of times.
My perspective is that lemmy found perhaps a very unexpected success, and caught the devs flatfooted and this is how the stress of that success is manifesting. In short, they walk the walk, but can’t talk the talk.
There’s a saying where I’m from, that the Queen doesn’t just need to be pure, she needs to appear pure. And those two things are completely different skillsets.
I know i have been defending lemmy devs for a long time and i agree with all this the only gripe i have is nutomic seems to think he have hit it big and doesn’t need to give a fuck about anything and seems to tell anyone with even the slightest criticism to stop using lemmy these past weeks and i can’t simply act like that isn’t wrong. I agree beehawe admins can fuck off and they are entitled assholes but this behavior is making me rethink my stand .
I am very sad about the situation with Beehaw specifically.
I think it’s a very unfortunate case where all parties have the best intentions of building something great with Lemmy, but through different circumstances, relations have soured and involved people no longer think they have a shared vision (which in my opinion is actually not true - I believe that Beehaws vision fits in very well with the direction Lemmy is going, especially with private communities being planned soon).
I am still hopeful that things can be improved, but we will see.
I’m not sure why Beehaw is coming up specifically in recent day (did something happen that I missed? E: Yes, a new write up from the Beehaw team, see Blaze’s reply), but their moderation issues and needs came up as early as June and July of last year, but was definitely being talked about by September between Beehaw admins and users. Here’s the thread I remember on it.
Another thread on one of the major CSAM content attack events against Lemmy (the one that took out vlemmy.net as you probably will recall) highlighted their desire for a better platform.
I’m OOTL if anything specific happened between the Lemmy devs and Beehaw admins this week that caused more beef, but the mindset that the development of much needed moderation features was progressing too slowly was with the Beehaw admins for many months now.
https://docs.beehaw.org/docs/important-questions-decisions-and-reflections/beehaw-lemmy-and-a-vision-of-the-fediverse/
Thank you for the link! I can see yeah it appears like drama on the face of it, but from what I see it’s nutomic continuing to be defensive (as far as I’m concerned it’s their right to be) and the write up is a mere extension of genuine uneasiness expressed last fall, it all just adds up to mean that Beehaw and Lemmy’s goals still haven’t fully aligned in the last 6 months.
I’ve donated to the Beehaw project because I support their vision, if they separate entirely from Lemmy on a new service I’ll be happy for them for it, but I will stay on Lemmy.
You are welcome!
Yes indeed
I do agree we should conteibute to lemmy rather than start building our own at a whim which beehaw admins don’t seem to understand or care about as they have’nt put forth a PR or anything . We can always fork lemmy if the devs shat the bed but i think beehaw admins has their own egostatical problem and as i have said my only problem ia nutomic and dessalines ( sometimes ) have turned into snowflakes and can’t accept any constructive criticism and asks others to fuck off i think they have decided they have hit it big to not care about anyone anymore and that irks me like a lot.
Strong agree.
Hopefully there can be some renewed collaboration in the future.