this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

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Are there any plans to add attachments to Lemmy, as in not just image attachments/uploads? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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This platform could be a viable alternative for forums (cuz we know in which state they currently are), but the lack of general attachments (any mime/file type) is what I believe stands in the way. I have an electronics forum I run (a local one, nothing too serious) and I believe Lemmy can make it more intereactive (not die out) because people from all over the world will get the feed and not just people that are online on the forum at that time.

Still, we frequently exchange PDFs, schematics (not always in image form), archives, etc., which makes Lemmy useless if there are no plans to implement something like this, even if disabled by default.

So, are there plans for anything like this being implemented?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Storage is the issue, all of these instances are volunteer based so we want to avoid burdening them with storage costs. For example when renting a VPS (as many Lemmy instances do) the monthly rate jumps pretty quick with storage capacity. Some instances do allow small local uploads, the one I use allows 100kb and that limit is based on operating cost.

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

I was actually thinking about creating my own instance if I plan on migrating my forum to Lemmy. I don't mean to freeload, especially since I do pay the hosting fees for the forum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Goes along with the whole idea of Open Source. If you don't like something, change it yourself. I'm not an expert admin or programmer, but I do have some limited experience. I've actually taken advantage of the do it yourself potential of FOSS a few times myself, hosted some servers, modified some software. Nothing big, but little tweaks here and there. It's very empowering.

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

Still, I think an option like this should be in the software, so I'll try and open a feature request first, if it doesn't work, I don't plan to fork it to be honest. I have to maintain it myself, not to mention if people start contributing, it'll become a full time job maintaining that thing. I just can't do that right now. I'll probably just give up on the idea. Cuz even if I don't accept any pr's from anyone, I still have to manually implement the changes every release. And even if I do write a script to do it, eventually it'll break and I have to mod it and... just too much work on top of maintaining the forum with the free time I currently have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been thinking: What if we add ipfs into the mix?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Still, you need hardware (disks). Speed is a problem, but not the main problem lomg term.