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.

HalJor,
@HalJor@beehaw.org avatar

FWIW, I’m appreciating the space for what it is and don’t see the immediate benefits of federation. Hang in there.

d3Xt3r,

Would be cool if Beehaw switched to old school forums, like Invision or phpBB. Invision have now moved to a hosted forum model, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to set it up.

toothpicks,

Forums are cool!

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

I don’t get the prevailing hatred of old school forums on the threadiverse. Forums are great!

GoldenCow,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Empricorn,

    Are you 12? I’m not rich and I don’t use Beehaw, but you should understand what an insignificant amount of money $4701.66 in modern times truly is…

    GoldenCow,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    ShellMonkey,
    @ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

    And an instance that from what I gather is host to several thousand users would require some significant hardware and support infrastructure which may consume $4,000 in a couple months of operations. Your situation may be unfortunate but to many trying to support a large community it’s a pittance.

    Empricorn,

    Because I live in the US, I’m a “colonialist” and rich? lol You’re misunderstanding. That’s a lot of money to *me" (as a non-rich person), but not to a corporation. Even a non-profit one could probably make that in a weekend with a few phone calls…

    geophysicist,

    Both of you are great examples of why beehaw is thinking about defederating. Please try to be polite, as per the rules of this instance.

    apotheotic,

    I presume they would use the remaining balance to continue to fund the beehaw project in whatever form it takes

    MJBrune,

    That money is to support beehaw the community not beehaw the lemmy instance. The lemmy instance only gets the money because it supports the community. So if the lemmy instance becomes unnecessary for the community then it gets shut down. The community can use the money in another way. Currently that money isn’t earmarked for anything.

    furrowsofar,

    Frankly as far as I am concerned they can do what they want. It is all for services rendered in my mind. I am not sure that many of us can fully understand the effort these people have put in. Very few of us, maybe none of us, are really pulling our full weight in terms of moderation effort and especially market rate man-hour costs. If we were, I am not sure this they would need to be thinking about changes.

    alyaza,
    @alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

    If you leave lemmy what exactly are you planning on doing with the $4,701.66 balance?

    this would just go toward whatever service we use since it’s all just site infrastructure money

    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.

    dawt,

    Thank you for being upfront and honest about the challenges you’re facing. I’d like to also put my vote in for going whitelist only rather than moving off the fediverse altogether. However, I’m a big fan of beehaw and would likely follow a migration, but only if there’s a good mobile experience on the new site.

    Quexotic,

    I’ll follow if it’s time to go. I understand. Thank you.

    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

    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.

    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.

    negativenull,

    Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think moderation grows exponentially with numbers of instances. A single comment may need moderation on each distinct instance. The more instances, the more moderation needs for that comment.

    That seems unsustainable. I understand the conundrum.

    jarfil, (edited )

    Comments/posts get moderated at the community level, any instance subscribing to it, will also receive the moderation notification to update its cache, so it doesn’t need to be moderated again. In theory, an instance “could” ignore moderation actions for a community it’s subscribed to, but that makes little sense.

    A problem comes when a community decides not to remove a comment/post, then it gets spread to all instances that subscribe to that community. Only in that case federated instances need to apply additional moderation.

    Federated instances subscribed to a community would have the option to either block the user, the comment, the post, the community, or the whole instance (defederate). Fine grained options like blocking a single user’s every comment on a post, or on a community, or on an instance… or blocking every post by any user from an instance that they send to a community, or… etc. would be additional options… but Lemmy is lacking most of them.

    So moderation isn’t inhrently an exponential problem, but right now is limited to a blunt tool that mostly relies on the good faith of everyone for things to work… and it’s been shown over and over that there are people acting in bad faith.

    negativenull,

    Thank you for that thorough explanation!

    spaduf, (edited )

    It’s a shame how much of Lemmy’s recent downturn appears to stem from slow and misprioritized development. At this point significant instances are dropping like flies and users are leaving in droves. I do not have high hopes for the future of this platform.

    Cube6392,
    @Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

    I think the threadiverse as a concept has a lot of promise but neither of the threadiverse apps are primetime ready yet, and there’s sort of some priority setting issues that make me feel like these two are proofs of concept that some future app will fully realize

    cubedsteaks,

    I’ve been using Lemmy.today and have yet to experience a downtime issue.

    loops,

    I’m not sure what it is really, but postmill exists. Another of my favourite post-reddit sites uses it; raddle.me.

    mooncabbage,

    I would probably follow beehaw elsewhere as long as it was safe to do so for me. I think this is something important to keep alive wherever it may be. I also think for anyone who wants to stay on lemmy and would miss beehaw, if you can create your own. It may not be the easiest thing thing for everyone to do but I’m sure there are more people out there who want a space that has the simple fundamental rule of be nice. We need more of this online and honestly trying to keep it within the confines of lemmy alone doesn’t make sense. Spread kindness and let the spirit of beehaw grow far and wide.

    shortwavesurfer,

    I can understand, but this would not be fun at first. I subscribe to a number of beehaw communities because they are the the biggest in their niche like technology. The beehaw communities are often even bigger than the same communities on instances like lemmy.ml.

    Empricorn,

    Every single part of Beehaw seems ill-suited to the fediverse. I joined (like many) after Reddit shit the bed by banning 3rd-party apps. I wrote a thoughtful (mandatory) application essay and… silence. Never heard back. Later, I reacted to a particularly bad take in a Beehaw thread and was told that I wasn’t “being nice” like the rules required… Bitch, I’m not even a part of the your “community”! You chose to federate with the rest of us! I guess what I’m trying to say is byeeeeeeeee! Go start your own little puritan community somewhere I don’t have to encounter it…

    apotheotic,

    You know how on reddit, and many other platforms, subcommunities within those platforms have rules? Like some subreddits had a no image macros rule? If you posted an image macro to one of those subs, and get warned or your post is actioned, that entirely on you and not on the community. it doesn’t matter if you’re “part” of that community, you should abide by the rules of that community when you post in it.

    Of course, you’re welcome to wilfully ignore or go against the rules of the communities you post in, but aside from being just a generally dick move, you also put yourself in the sights of the moderation of that community.

    Bitch, I’m not even part of your “community”! You chose to federate with the rest of us!

    And you chose to post in this community - abide by the rules or the moderators have every right to tell you you’re breaking the rules, or take action if it continues.

    I think, based on the attitude you’ve displayed here, I can see why you were not deemed a good fit for the community when you applied.

    ShittyKopper,

    The wording in the parent comment also seems to imply the Fediverse is just Lemmy/kbin, which is a weird self-centric take I see here (i.e. on Lemmy) a lot.

    A lot of the broader fedi that has access to adequate moderation tooling are doing just fine and don’t seem too “ill-suited”. It’s really just Lemmy that’s like this.

    I’m not entirely sure I’ll attempt joining “the new Beehaw” wherever it may set up shop (y’all are a bit too serious news-y for my liking, personally), but all the federated interactions I had with the folk from Beehaw had been quite positive, and it’s kinda sad to see y’all go. But I can definitely understand the reasons why, and I do have my own gripes with Lemmy (both the software and the unfortunate community it has picked up) as well.

    Very_Bad_Janet, (edited )

    I understand what you said about community rules. But the funny thing about the Fediverse and how people receive their posts is that it's not uniform. I'm in kbin on a phone and I don't see who is posting from what instance unless I click further. Same for the community or magazine someone is posting in - I can see that on my feed but once I click on a post I cannot see it. I've joined many communities and magazines and they are only identified by the topic name in my feed, not the instance. I cannot see any community or magazine rules from my feed or inside the posts.

    Just saying that easily identifying a group's rules is more of a challenge in the Fediverse (this is not an argument to ignore rules).

    apotheotic,

    Mmhm, I can empathise with that. Although, it does still fall upon the user to ensure they’re abiding by the rules of the communities they interact with, but regardless of that responsibility, I do understand its tricky.

    MJBrune,

    One, there was a point where the application system was bugged and some applications were lost so they had to stop processing applications. This is an issue on lemmy not on the mod team. Additionally, because lemmy is not setup for the sort of application process the mod teams want, there is no way to notify a rejected application. Your application might have been rejected.

    Two, by replying here you are choosing to encounter this community. Don’t be surprised when you get moderated for not following rules.

    Three, no one will miss these sorts of interactions. It’s not puritan to want to avoid something that takes away from your enjoyment rather than adds to it. Clearly at one point you thought so to and wanted to join. Perhaps though you only wanted to be a bad actor in the community and the application process worked as intended.

    Rentlar,

    Your conduct here is indicative of why you might not have been accepted into Beehaw or had mod action taken against you. I can understand your frustration, but federation (as it is right now) is a two-way street: The servers share posts, but users are expected to behave according to the rules of the server they are posting to.

    You are capable of not posting in Beehaw, and you are welcome to block Beehaw communities as you wish, if you don’t like Beehaw’s rules, mods, or expectations we have on your behaviour.

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