this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
29 points (100.0% liked)

Rust Lang

148 readers
1 users here now

Rules [Developing]

Observe our code of conduct

Constructive criticism only

No endless relitigation

No low-effort content

No memes or image macros

No NSFW Content

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/24889

[Disclaimer: Lemmy newb here]

There are currently 3 Rust communities across 3 instances: programming.dev, lemmyrs.org and this one (lemmy.ml). I know it's still very early for the migration from /r/rust, but it would split the community if there are so many options and nobody knows which is the "right" one. Currently this community has the most subscribers, but it would make sense if the Rust community finds its new home in one of the other instances.

  • lemmyrs.org seems like the logical solution if instance-wide rules are paramount and "non-negotiable"
  • personally I would love a programming-centric instance and programming.dev seems like a good way. Rust is not the only language I'm actively using (unfortunately :)). Maybe there can be community-specific rules that "enforce" the Rust CoC and the Rust community can find a home there?

Either way, the current situation has the most negative impact.

Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (8 children)

A few things:

  • Instances are like their own self-hosted Reddits with communities being the sub-reddits. We have (had?) r/python, r/rust, r/golang along with r/programming; we can do the same here with topic-focused instance (like this one). I can imagine there being instances like lemmygo.org, lemmypy.org etc if the Reddit exodus continues.
  • You don't need multiple accounts to access communities (sub-reddits) from other instances (reddit). A single account on any instance allows you to access communities from any other instance. The UX/UI is a bit wonky, but it works.
  • As @[email protected] pointed out, micro-communities like cli, wasm, networking etc can potentially become big enough and/or have specifics that are more suitable to exist on a topic-based instance.

Personally, I don't have any preference. I will simply subscribe to the community which is the most active on whichever instance.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

The downside to individual servers, and micro-communities, is the cost and maintenance of lemmy instance. Its more scalable, reliable and cheaper to have a bunch of relatively low-churn communities exist on one bigger instance.

The upside is that the rust community gets to own its own data. If programming.dev decides to shut down tomorrow, and posts and comments made there are gone. Lemmy doesn't mirror or cache... all that data lives solely on the server ran by somebody.

I'd vote lemmyrs at least for now until a governance and stability model is figured out to ensure these conversations don't go into /dev/null like /r/rust (sort of) did.

If say the Linux Foundation or a similarly large open source foundation (Apache, FSF, OSI, etc) decided to host a larger "open source" server, I'd consider moving there to improve discoverability and lessen the burden on the rust community itself

[–] jeltz 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agreed, there are advantages of having an own community. Especially until the people running e.g. programming.dev have a proven track record of being reliable.

[–] snowe 2 points 2 years ago

Hi, creator of programming.dev here. What could we do to prove reliability to you? Would open graphs and metrics of the current state of the service help? Would current server costs and how much has been covered by donations help? Would knowing the names of everyone with access to the server, on the admin team, or access to the domain name help?

It seems to me like a user stood up an instance of lemmy and because it has rs as part of the name you might be treating it like the Rust community's, but to me, it's exactly the same as programming.dev, except it has a lot less chance of staying running.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)