The Beehaw project is entering some significant challenges

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.

furrowsofar,

Thanks for the heads up. Short answer for me is that I joined for a civil place on the Threadiverse not a walled garden. So if you guys leave the Threadiverse I will have to find a new home.

So I think you all will need to decide where to take this community. I will understand whatever you all decide. Just please communicate it clearly when the time comes.

Thanks for all of the hard work you all have done and are doing.

lemillionsocks,
@lemillionsocks@beehaw.org avatar

I feel the same way. I understand that beehaw follows its own path and goals and it’s genuinely what I like about this instance. I love the moderation and the fact that you all dont put up with BS from users trying to bait you into semantic wars or drama about free speech. I like that the main rule is just be(e) nice and that as a major instance on lemmy it does help set a tone.

That said I dont know if I’d follow beehaw off the fediverse.

HappyMeatbag,
@HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org avatar

Short answer for me is that I joined for a civil place on the Threadiverse not a walled garden. So if you guys leave the Threadiverse I will have to find a new home.

It hurts to admit, but my initial reaction is similar. A completely defederated Beehaw is much less appealing.

TheCompassMaker,

I think everything laid out here is perfectly reasonable. Lemmy hasn’t made it easy and easy doesnt seem to be on the horizon for that development team.

My personal thoughts is that I don’t think that the currrent implementation of lemmy is going to reach a point where the capabilities of the platform is going to meet the requirements of the beehaw project. Definitely not in the near term, and low probability in the scale of years.

If the worse comes about ill probably follow along to where ever beehaw ends up and ill just set up an lemmy acc elsewhere.

I don’t envy the situation

// the commenter gives yet another unsolicited solution

I think it would be interesting if yall and other like minded instance admins were to start a federation pact/ code of conduct which would layout the requirements for federation. In my opinion, fostering the kind of online community that beehaw strives to be (as I see it anyways), requires acting outside of the capabilities of the lemmy the platform. Granted, this would require a critical mass of instances willing to sign to such a pact but this may ease the workload from a moderation point of view.

Nimfi,
@Nimfi@beehaw.org avatar

Honestly that second idea sounds really nice, i wouldn’t mind beehaw being federated with a fewer number of instances/only federating with those that had similar values about moderation and code of conduct.

I personally don’t need a huge/endless stream of content, i’m fine with the feed being quieter if that means it’ll be safer and easier to moderate for the admins.

keet,
@keet@kbin.social avatar

As a kbin.social user, we would all be diminished if Beehaw were to defederate. If I were to ever move instances from a kbin to a lemmy platform, it would be over to you guys. I hope that you guys are able to find the help you need to keep going as part of the wider fediverse.

UnfortunateTwist,

Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.

As a relatively non-marginalized person, I think it’s important to focus on this. Beehaw has grown beyond the marginalized group. If Beehaw were to leave Lemmy, the non-marginalized would be fine and can switch to different instances. The marginalized would follow Beehaw for that safe space.

It comes down to the purpose of a safe space. There’s the group of people that want to avoid bigots, and there’s the group that want to be a light unto the world, to effect change.

An example of a little bit of positive Beehaw has had outside of their community would be the influence it has had on me. I’ve read posts from the LGBT+ community that enlightened me to things I’ve never thought about. But I’m also not a bigot, just naive.

The negative is what has prompted these discussions: the bigoted trolls. It’s just not sustainable for the small Beehaw team to moderate everything.

My view is that it’s of utmost importance to maintain the safe space for the marginalized. Of those marginalized who want to connect outside the safe space, they are free to engage in Lemmy/Reddit and spread their light.

What would I do? I would find a new instance and continue to be receptive to LBGT+ discussions that come up on Lemmy. I don’t feel right asking Beehaw to stay on Lemmy at the cost of keeping marginalized people safe from bigots. They deserve to be able to talk about things without having bigots come at them; to be able to laugh and cry and vent and have others understand—especially with the US Right becoming more brazen in their persecution of this community.

Just my 2 cents.

loops,

Take my 2 cents too. Well put.

RadioRat,
@RadioRat@beehaw.org avatar

Online gathering spaces not hostile to trans and gnc folks seem to be evaporating. It’s concerning with KOSA in the works in the US.

HappyMeatbag,
@HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org avatar

You make a very, very good point. I’m glad you posted.

Also,

But I’m also not a bigot, just naive.

is so much me it’s ridiculous.

tburkhol,

Another non-marginalized person here.

Restricted spaces are necessarily smaller than non-restricted. Less content. Less interaction. Less everything. If hateful content is really rampant, then that can be a valid tradeoff, but separate systems are never equal, and it is always the minority/marginalized system that suffers. You’ve described exactly why: “I would find a new instance and continue to be receptive to LBGT+ discussions that come up on Lemmy.”

As I look elsewhere in this thread, the comments I see people reference as “against Beehaw goals” are just people being rude assholes, not misogynist, racist, or homo-/trans-phobic. Creating a space where everyone is polite and universally friendly seems a very different objective than creating a space where marginalized people feel safe. If that - universal friendship - is the real goal, then Beehaw very definitely needs to close off interactions with non-vetted, pseudonymous users, and accept that it will look like a virtual ghost town. In that case, it doesn’t matter whether it stays with defederated-by-default lemmy or moves to some other forum platform.

The middle ground, where you accept that some people are just rude, but still provide a forum where marginalized people feel they can share their experiences without threats or repercussions, needs strong, active, focussed moderation. Have to be able to block users and communities from other instances, delete posts/comments that originate from other instances, and do local moderation of communities hosted on other instances. Have to have enough moderators to respond quickly to user reports, and probably an automod-like system to catch serious issues before users do. It sounds like that is not within the current capabilities of lemmy. So, I can see why the admins think that the lemmy framework is incompatible with their objectives. Probably, a lot of the people who joined post-Reddit are incompatible and uninterested in those objectives.

I can see where the lemmy framework worked when no one used it, and I can see why it would immediately fail in the face of hundreds of thousands of new users. If millions are coming, it will only get worse. No doubt, the admins are aware that they’ll lose 80, maybe 90% of their userbase if they leave Lemmy, but it’s not so long ago that their userbase was only 10-20% of what it is today.

If I lose this little window into cultures I would not otherwise see, I will be a lesser person for it, but I can accept that it was not meant for me in the first place.

UnfortunateTwist,

Thanks, you put into clear words a lot of my jumbled thoughts and expanded on it. It’s a tough choice for the Beehaw admins with pros and cons either way; a tug-of-war on whether the community is strong enough / has what they need to handle this far from perfect world. It would be a loss from the wider Lemmy community, but based on a few outspoken comments we can see there are also people with a “good riddance” stance.

I think Beehaw needs to do what’s best for them first, as an administrative team and for their core community. When they’re stronger, I’m sure we’ll feel and see their presence on the wider stage. After all, time is intrinsic to progress.

Irv, (edited )

Is a forum site a possibility? I honestly miss internet forums. It does kind of sound like what you’re looking for beehaw to be.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Beehaw without federating would be essentially that, of course other software options are available.

MJBrune,

The Reddit style ranking system is a bit silly for a forum with lower activity. In fact it could make marginalized peoples feel more marginalized if their past simply gets buried.

Rozauhtuno,
@Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

There’s a front-end for Lemmy that basically turns it into a php forum.

Penguincoder,

The issue here isn’t the front-end and can’t be fixed with a new coat of wax.

jarfil, (edited )

What would be the main issues? I can think of some, and it pains me to not be able to help fix them, but maybe others could.

Edit: I think we’re experiencing Lemmy in different ways. Through an app like LiftOff, there is no “frontpage” for posts to fall off since it’s infinite scroll, and sorting by “Active” bumps several-days old posts above recent ones, no matter the amount of votes. It also gives the option to sort by votes, but that’s just it, an option.

…and I’ll just leave this here, waiting for more info, seeing as I’ve come just in time for the post to get locked. 🤷

d3Xt3r, (edited )

The Reddit-style presentation of topics and ranking comments isn’t really conducive to lengthy, quality discussions that persist over a period of time. The Reddit-style works for following current events and posting links to new things etc, but as a result, old topics - topics even a couple of days old - falls off the engagement radar. Once it’s gone from the front page, it’s gone from people’s consciousness. This is bad for a small community with few posts that value quality of discussions over blind sharing of links. For instance, say I create a topic called “share your favorite vegan recipes” - I may get some replies in the first couple of days, but then the topic will fall off the frontpage and completely die. This is further exacerbated by the voting system. On Reddit/Lemmy, topics and comments which have a higher number of votes get more visibility, and this creates two issues - one is it encourages group think and creates an echo chamber, the other is that it drowns out less popular topics or comments. This sort of intentional drowning of posts and comments actually may be a good thing - and even necessary - on high-userbase systems like Reddit, where a single thread could have thousands of comments - but it works against low-traffic communities like Beehaw, where every comment is valuable (unless it’s off-topic/spam etc of course).

Whereas in a traditional forum:

  • A topic gets bumped to the top when someone posts a comment, which encourages threads to live longer
  • There’s not as much importance given to the “newness” of a post
  • The lack of votes on a topic would give equal importance to all topics
  • The lack of votes on comments would encourage people to actually chime in if they agree or disagree with a comment, instead of just blindly voting
  • Forums also allow you to show a categorized homepage, where you can have several sub-forums appear on the homepage all at once. This is a better approach than blindly unifying the entire feed in one page, because this allows threads in low-traffic subs to keep their visibility and compete against high-traffic subs. For instance, consider a current news sub which may get a lot of posts ever single day, vs a niche sub such as gardening. With a unified feed, you’d almost never see posts from a gardening sub, unless you went into that sub.

With all the above reasons, forums are therefore more conducive for encouraging discussions, over a place which simply acts like a feed aggregator. Traditional forums are the solution to the doomscrolling issues that plague modern social media. Plus, they offer better moderation tools, with better granular permissions granted to mods, so you could grant various levels of access. Also, you can place several restrictions on users to reduce spam, for instance, you could grant a user rights to post a topic only after they’ve read all the rules, and maybe participated in a quiz or something. You could grant additional rights to people who’ve gotten a certain number posts in their bag. You could have a “trusted poster” system where a user could have mod-like abilities. There’s so many ways a forum is a lot more flexible than a system like Lemmy.

So overall, I think Beehaw’s ethos and vision would align better with a traditional forum, over a feed-aggregator style forum like Lemmy.

verbalbotanics,

After reading your post, I’m more on the side of following beehaw to the format that suits them best. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t finding those quality posts here after a while, and what you said about them being quickly pushed out in favor of new content makes a lot of sense.

Although I came here through the rexodus, I agree that the Reddit style format still carries a lot of problems that I’d rather not keep, and it’s important to have a quality space I can post (also because I’m trans and need those spaces too)

I do still feel a need for the dopamine rush of cat pics and memes, so I’m not sure if there’s a way to hybridize that with a forum? If not, there’s always burner Lemmy accounts (or Tumblr lol) for that

forestG,

The Reddit-style presentation of topics and ranking comments isn’t really conducive to lengthy, quality discussions that persist over a period of time.

I don’t know whether @Penguincoder had all these in mind, but as far as lengthy & quality discussions go, everything you wrote to support this sentece, in my experience, seems 100% correct. There was a time, when forums when used more, during which a discussion on a subject would carry on for weeks, even months, between different individuals. Taking the time, thinking over the subject and coming back with a response after days was not at all uncommon.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

Reddit grew to a point that the focus became constant refreshes and the most recent 6 hours of postings… and reposts became the normal means of revisiting a topic. And when a topic gets more than 1500 comments, a repost resets that. It’s just a machine that rolls the clock constantly in favor of “new”.

Penguincoder,

Tracking on this; I am not alone on the team or community here, but I agree with everything you said. I don’t like nor want that in your face, featured, hot ranking content. I want to go view the content that I want and sometimes that is reviewing the discussion I had 3 weeks ago with new eyes and information. I prefer a community like that, but I also really enjoy something like HackerNews. No clutter, presents quality information that’s relevant, and only a few flamewars.

Seathru,

Wholeheartedly agree. Beehaw’s vibe always felt more like a forum than a feed aggregator. I think that format would fit it better.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

Lemmy and Kbin both lack a lot in moderation and anti-spam measures. Both apps are taking about having features to specifically throttle new local members. And anti-spam in terms of server to server doesn’t really exist at all.

Pseu,

And Beehaw doesn’t have a huge amount of activity, so the prioritization provided by a Reddit-style ranking system is less useful. I think going to a typical forum/messageboard system just makes sense.

GunnarRunnar,

Honestly, I wholeheartedly support this move. For a couple of (obviously subjective) reasons:

  • Lemmy/kbin isn't ready. If Beehaw staff were able to fork their own version of the base code with their moderation etc. design preferences in mind, this would be another thing -- though even then it might not be enough to be worth it with the headache of fediverse moderation.
  • Closed system/community is more personal, hence more productive and less noisy. At least before it outgrows itself.

What I'd hope but is also more work and potentially creates conflicts, is that the new platform provides good moderation logging etc. Which I think is key feature to ensure trust and self policing.

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Makes sense. Beehaw was always its own community first, federation seemed to be some extra stuff on top of that. Staying on lemmy with less federation or even a few forum software makes sense for the goals of the project.

You’d lose the people who wanted different, but I don’t think being a major social hub for everybody was ever the intent.

mvrkws,

Losing Beehaw would definitely hurt Lemmy. This was not my first home on Lemmy, but I quickly saw that all of the good communities seemed to belong to this place.

However, I would probably never have found this place if you weren’t federated. I would naively assume others are in the same boat as me.

I did initially come to Lemmy only as an alternative to reddit, but I’ve stayed because of the ActivityPub protocol. I’d probably not stay active on Beehaw on another protocol, and I’d definitely still keep a Lemmy account on another instance.

I do understand your concerns, and what you wish to achieve. Personally I would have just hoped you tried to achieve it here for longer. Though I do get the struggles with moderation.

Whatever you decide I wish the best for this community in the long term! I hope that regardless of it staying here, or moving elsewhere, it thrives and keeps the content and discussions that its members would like to have.

MiddledAgedGuy,

I like what Beehaw is, and I fully support whatever decision is made in the best interests of this community.

The idea of defederating, for me personally, feels too limiting. But even if Beehaw goes this route, I think I’ll stick around and try it out. Either it’ll be fine or it won’t. And if not, no hard feelings!

bl4kers,
@bl4kers@beehaw.org avatar

Sorry to say I won’t be following if you leave the Fediverse

Nia,

I’ll still be hanging out on Beehaw regardless of what happens or where it ends up, but in case a migration does happen, are there any good instance recommendations for us that want to keep Lemmy accounts as well but want to have a nicer more moderated experience?

A good bit of the other instances I’ve tried seem to moderate as a last resort or final straw, which just ends being not very effective overall.

Nimfi,
@Nimfi@beehaw.org avatar

blahaj.zone seems nice

NightOwl,

I went with lemmy.one because it is run by /r/privacyguides and is federated with lemmy.world and beehaw with it being the two instances I wanted to be able to participate in.

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

I like slrpnk.net

trailing9,

Which features would you need to continue staying federated, possibly limited to white-listed instances?

jarfil,

As a Reddit App-ocalypse refugee, I’m not going back to a centralized forum, much less without an app. Even Lemmy’s level of "hub-"alization is somewhat unnerving, but Beehaw has been a good compromise between moderation, federation, and app accessibility.

I would rather you could work out the kinks of the platform, instead of switching to another. I think Beehaw is highly positive for the Lemmy space, and that it would be best for everyone if the platform could be adapted to include meeting Beehaw’s needs.

Amamsa,

Serious question; would it help if some of us left beehaw? I’m part of that influx and i first joined lemmy.world. Then i understood that it would be better to spread out among other instances and i created a few more accounts, one of them here on beehaw, because i really like the spirit of it. But if it would help, i would be willing to leave beehaw to help you cope with the load. If enough people would feel the same, it might lighten the load? Another option might be to close the instance for new people, until these issues are solved? I’m sure people would understand the reasoning for doing so?

If you would leave the fediverse, i would not follow. I’m not that big on social media anyway, the fediverse being the only exception.

Penguincoder,

Serious question; would it help if some of us left beehaw?

No. As noted in the post, the largest aspect of issues are other users and content federating to Beehaw. Less users on Beehaw won’t address that.

sculd,

If there are moderation issues, wouldn’t it be easier to recruit more moderators?

The current number of moderators is small and I am sure a lot of people might want to step up to help.

Penguincoder,

If there are moderation issues, wouldn’t it be easier to recruit more moderators?

No. The tools needed for successfully moderating Lemmy federated items, is severely lacking. The primary devs do not seem interested in making this area a priority either from their own efforts, or others submitting PRs for such. More moderators won’t help when the ability to moderate isn’t there.

GhostMagician,

Makes me wonder if a fork will happen in the future. Wonder if offerings will be much different a year from now, and if options like kbin will be more polished by then.

ShittyKopper,

Everyone wants a fork. Nobody wants to be the fork.

We need a small group of motivated and skilled developers to get together and decide “we’re doing this”, and actually go beyond announcing an empty Git repo. (i.e. actually have some usable code to show for)

Dealing with a codebase as janky and large as Lemmy is unfortunately beyond my skillset, otherwise I’d love to get involved myself.

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

All fediverse code is weird. Lemmy is extra weird on account of being written in a systems language

ShittyKopper,

Picking a fedi server software is just picking how much (and what kind of) jank you’re willing to tolerate. The features are always secondary.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

Everyone wants a fork. Nobody wants to be the fork.

Rust and ORM makes changes incredibly slow and even recent editions like sanitizing for JavaScript exploits have been buggy.

We need a small group of motivated and skilled developers to get together and decide “we’re doing this”, and actually go beyond announcing an empty Git repo.

Lemmy had one major thing that kbin and other apps did not have in 2023… a working API. And that happened to be what Reddit decided to start charging for in May. Kbin is right now adding an API, but it isn’t compatible with Lemmy. Lemmy could also use a streamlined API, there is opportunity right now to make a combined Lemmy and kbin API since federation normalizes a lot of the features between the two. I hope people see this opportunity that is open right now and the one big strength.

ShittyKopper, (edited )

I don’t think an API is the thing that matters here. There are quite a lot of things you can’t hack on with a client alone and actually needs server side support to function (actual moderation tooling is a prime example)

Also most APIs aren’t “designed” per se and just expose the internal representations of the projects they’re of. A “common” API would either be too “wide” enough to be unusable (hello, ActivityPub C2S) or would severely limit experimentation and innovation (good luck on building microblogs in the Lemmy API) without having so many extensions that essentially end up being a third, completely different API.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

I don’t think an API isn’t the thing that matters here.

because of the negatives in your statement, it isn’t clear what you mean.

I think the API is why June 2023 there was a huge surge of users coming to Beehaw and Lemmy platform. There were tons of forum software out there, and even kbin, but Lemmy took off because it had an API

ShittyKopper,

fixed that part, words are hard

The thing I’m trying to say is that “having an API” does not matter in the long term if the API does not expose the functionality needed to use it properly.

And TBF if someone joined Lemmy only because it had an API and nothing else then they’re gonna be in for a very rude awakening sooner or later as the troubles of federation that previous (mostly microblogging) platforms have encountered and attempted to solve (not to mention novel problems due to the community oriented nature of Lemmy) start to show up.

This is only going to get worse, and throwing “more API” into the fire won’t fix any of the important problems at hand.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

Your entirely reply seems to dismiss the entire purpose of an API.

An API is a way to allow other developers to work almost entirely independent, and even create compatible servers with wildly different implementation - while still servicing clients.

You seem to be advocating a model that predates API, back in the 1980’s or something. As right now kbin users are having to resort to scraping content off off HTML pages as a form of API.

ReversalHatchery,

I don’t think a fork would be a solution to this problem. The problem is not that the maintainers don’t accept contributions, but that no one is making the necessary contributions.

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