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Proposal to create a collective to own the topic-based Lemmy instances (raphael.lullis.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

If a moderator is from a different instance, can they effectively moderate? So isn't it a problem if all moderators would be from different instances?

I remember after the exodus community discovery in Lemmy was hard, and it made sense to create instances like these. But nowadays with Lemmy Explorer and with multiple community promo communities I think it's not really hard to find the topics you are interested in.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

If a moderator is from a different instance, can they effectively moderate? So isn’t it a problem if all moderators would be from different instances?

Reports are still not federated

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4744

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would assume the "rendezvous" instance would collect all posts from all communities it is subscribed to, and show them to the users as if it came from a single instance. So moderation would be limited to the moderators of the actual instance behind it.

The explorer makes it easier to discover them, but would be even better if that's automated.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

"rendezvous instances" is a perfect term for them...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If a moderator is from a different instance, can they effectively moderate?

Yes, I haven't had any issue moderating things from communick.news, even on communities that are not here.

But nowadays with Lemmy Explorer and with multiple community promo communities I think it’s not really hard to find the topics you are interested in.

This approach does not address two issues that would be resolved by separating "community instances" from "people instances":

Centralization of communities around the big instances, creating a "too big to fail" scenario. Last I checked, more than half of the top 100 communities are on LW.
Political/Ideological differences among larger instances causing needless fragmentation of the communities. E.g, there were discussions before about moving communities from .ml because some people didn't want to be associated with the Lemmy devs. Some were in favor, some were against. By having the communities on neutral ground, not only this whole issue is sidestepped, it also makes it easier for both sides of the table to be able to join one single community and make the overall fediverse stronger.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, I haven’t had any issue moderating things from communick.news, even on communities that are not here.

Reports still do not federate, that's the main issue with federated moderation

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pinning threads is buggy across instances.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Also

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't like this kind of community/user instance because 2 instances have to deal with the same problem. E.g. a rogue user can troll on most community instances until they are banned by their user instance.

The instance fragmentatios is not as big issue as it's quite easy to create new accounts. There was a thread about this some days ago here, I also use different accounts on different instances for different topics.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I understand your concerns with moderation, but I don't see how what I am proposing would make things more difficult?

What would stop a troll to create different accounts on all the other different instances, or create another account whenever they get banned?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

but I don’t see how what I am proposing would make things more difficult?

Now when a user reports a troll, the report goes to the moderators of the community. But in special cases the admins of the user instances should deal with banning. So the admins of the community instances have to deal with reports, but the solution is at the hand of the user instance admins. It's the same as dealing with users from other instances, but an edge case.

My recommendations would be something like this: (I'm just a random user, so it's just my point of view)

Shut down the fully inactive instances. Noone will even even notice it
Merge the semi active communities to a handful of instances, like sports and technology... . I've seen active communities move instances, it would be possible, take a look how [email protected] migrated to [email protected]. Give enough time for subscribers to notice and subscribe to the new one.
Allow registration of moderators on these instances, so they can work around the current limitations of moderation tools. Maybe an invite only solution or something like this.
You could find help more easily if you look for admins for 3-4 instances instead of for 18 instances.

This would be useful for you and other admins, because you would have to admin much less number of instances. They would be still considered small instances, compared to big one, so you still not at the "too big to fail" level. For users it would help community discovery, there are overlap between followers of similar topics, e.g. I have friends who follow both European football and NBA at the same time, I read both selfhosting related topics and about general tech support, etc...

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I am not planning to close any instances. I am not working on them based on their current activity, but I am keeping them for a scenario where a mass migration away from Reddit actually happens.
When I say admins only, that can be extended to moderators as well.