There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring.
Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.
In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps.
Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee.
Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running.
Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion.
All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful.
Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base).
The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around.
Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future.
Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
Hey all,
Apologies if this scares anyone, or feels like a cold/calculated move, or one in which your feedback isn't being taken into consideration. That was not the intent. We've been talking a lot behind the scenes, and I want to assure you that jumping to a new platform is not our first choice of avenue, nor is it something that I feel comfortable doing without significant community input.
I've been swamped with a lot of real life stuff lately and so I haven't gotten a chance to write up what's been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while now, which is the start to a conversation about some of the issues we've been struggling with. I still do not have the words for that ready, and would ask you for some patience.
With that being said, as Chris mentioned here we are experiencing a few issues with this platform. More information about these issues will be forthcoming soon. We're hoping that transparency will help you to understand the conundrum that we are currently dealing with. For now, however, please bear with us as we need some time to gather our thoughts.
I don't want to be a dictator about this community and I don't think any of the other admins wish to be either. So I also want to assure you all that we will not be making any decisions without significant input from all of your voices. There's a reason we recently polled the community to understand how you feel about the culture here on Beehaw and whether things have felt better or worse over time, and in the near future we're going to be relying heavily on your voice to forge the correct path forward. Beehaw is a community, and we greatly value your voices.
Beehaw has been online for over 18 months, it was well established when there were only 30 Lemmy servers and then Reddit API change came along in May... the sign-up page and application process couldn't even cope with hundreds of users per day.
Then 1000 new instance servers went online in just a couple months where your 18-month established presence was suddenly getting all kinds of server to server action.
You have been on the front-line of a lot of people motivated by hate of Reddit. Not love of Beehaw.
I'll admit the wording of the post made me react as if these potential changes were imminent. I will respect any decision the admin team makes, and I encourage you to continue to stick to the core ideas of Beehaw to which you've written extensively about, while being able to balance your own lives and mental health.
The idea I'll throw in the ring is to introduce one of the Automod programs (example), which can help keep the designated safe-space communities more tightly moderated, and address some of the issues of moderation granularity. For example, a user/instance whitelist could be instated as to who can post to the protected communities, with all other comments removed. An application process can be instituted to add to the whitelist.