Captain Aggravated

I have a cabinet full of empty jars. Mostly mason jars. It slowly fills as I finish a jar of jam or something I canned last year, and in September and October when it’s time to make new batches I’ll fill the jars again.

Are we talking “nations that have an official Lemmy instance” or “nations in which some private citizen or resident just happens to host a Lemmy instance?”

You got any code written for Python 3.8 that won’t run in 3.13?

I’ve weighed in a few times on the “choose a server” thing on various federated platforms. When signing up for a Fediverse service, you’re presented with the following contradiction in terms: “Choose an instance. Your choice does not matter. The choice is yours.”

There are two ways to fix this:

1. We embrace “the choice doesn’t matter” and the new user gets assigned an instance automatically. I think this will require some kind of formal agreement and a badge of compliance among server admins, a kind of verified checkmark. Enforce a common set of moderation rules, maintain some technical requirements like uptime and version updates etc. and agree to accept anyone who clicks the random button, you get a checkmark and randomly assigned users. The Windows software install wizard asks you “You want to go with the default settings or you want to make some decisions for yourself here?” Operating system installers do the same thing, and the “something else” choice is often last or less prominent. Because most people just want it to do the normal thing, but sometimes people have a reason to pick something specific. “Join a random server” is a big prominent button, “or, pick a server manually” is a hyperlink just below it.

2. Make the choices meaningful. I see this one happening the most on Peertube where storage and bandwidth are both significant costs, so the instances there are more likely to segregate by type of content. “We host arts and crafts” “We host video game let’s plays and speedruns” “We host travel and nature videos”. Even if you have eclectic tastes, that choice has meaning and thus isn’t as paralyzing.

The very best we can do is have vigilant grown adults in charge. We can likely agree that child bestiality or other word combinations that feel illegal to even type should be isolated, but on the spectrum of “Hitler was right” “Mao was right” “Che was right” “Washington was right” do you say “Nope we don’t accept that kind of shit around here?” There are people who will draw the line in the same place from either side of it. Like I say, that line is somewhere in the middle of that slap fight over there and that’s not a unique problem to the Fediverse; it’s a problem with humans, and I don’t think you can solve it, only sidestep it through totalitarianism.

You’re quoting@faythofdragons@slrpnk.net and not me.

I’m…not?

If I understand the way the Fediverse works correctly, global content viewed by members of an instance gets cached on that instance. So even though this thread is “on” lemmy.world, because I’m participating here there’s also a copy on sh.itjust.works and that copy gets passed to me.

Among the instances sh.itjust.works is defederated from, there’s one called “rape.pet”. I’m okay with The_Dude saying “No, you can’t get there from here” to shit like that.

Hence why I said “my sedan that [pretty much stays on normal roads] has never had a flat.”

I drive a pickup truck and I go to pickup truck kind of places with it like lumber yards, industrial suppliers, landfills and other high FOD locations. I get more flat tires because I drive where the nails are.

My sedan goes to the grocery store and a few restaurants and has never had a flat.

To the guy in here going “UX != UI!!!” Sure, but you can’t design UX, especially for the unwashed masses. “Tried cutting toenails with lawnmower; severed foot. 0/10 bad user experience.”

Lemmy has a “have our cake and eat it too” problem. It offers two mutually exclusive promises:

• Each instance is its own independent self-contained little Reddit with their own communities, culture, code of conduct etc. so that individuals can find a place that suits them or make one if none is available, and

• All the servers are part of one great big federated system where all users have access to content on all instances so it doesn’t matter which instance you sign up for, you can access it all.

In practice, the former is more or less true, the latter really isn’t.

First there’s the obvious topic of defederation, which makes the “join one server, access all of them” an outright lie. On the one hand, I think everyone here will agree this platform requires defederation to function so that we can kick out instances like lolli.rape or whatever, which thank you admins and mods for dealing with. But what about Hexbear, or Truth Social (which as I understand it is running on Mastodon software). The only honest answer to “where do we draw that line?” is “somewhere in the middle of that slap fight over there.”

It is intellectually dishonest to say that Lemmy has this problem and Reddit doesn’t. Post in r/mensrights and an automod bans you from r/twoxchromosomes. Do basically anything anywhere on the platform and get banned from r/conservative. They managed to implement “It’s a different platform depending on who you are” on a monolithic service.

All that crap aside, the average user has a more limited perspective on the rest of the fediverse than his home instance. Often, the UI defaults to viewing only local posts, you have to tell it to give you a global feed. You can browse a list of your local communities, you can browse a list of global communities, you can’t browse a list of communities on a given foreign instance. ‘Show me everything on lemmy.sports’ or indeed ‘show me a list of communities on lemmy.nsfw.’ You cannot create (or moderate?) communities on instances you aren’t a member of. It is, if only slightly, easier to participate on your home instance than elsewhere.

Either your choice of server does matter, or it doesn’t.

If it does matter, we shouldn’t have so many general purpose instances, it should be lemmy.music and lemmy.art and lemmy.uk. Then newcomers are presented a meaningful choice. Are you mostly interested in discussions pertaining to your country? Your hobby? Your career? Sign up here to mostly participate in that, and no matter which you pick you can visit the rest of the Lemmyverse, too."

If it doesn’t matter, then design it such that instances are entirely transparent to users; eliminate the possibility of !linux@lemmy.world and !linux@lemmy.ml coexisting, and make all instances lemmy1.world lemmy2.world, issue credentials centrally and then just spread the load in the background.

I don’t think you can have both at the same time.

I could see a “choose for me” button, kind of like installing an OS where you can go with the automatic stuff or set it up yourself. I think you’d need several instances to get with join-lemmy.org to volunteer to be one of the ones that would sign people up for.

Folks who want to sign up for a specific instance in order to create or maybe moderate a community there almost certainly won’t go to join-lemmy.org for that, they’ll just go to that instance.

There may need to be a "Hey could we cool it with the fukpolitik’ agreement to be on that random sign-up list; I’m not sure I’d drop random folks into ex-Hexbear or whatever.

So is a large part of lemmy.world cached on sh.itjust.works’ server? Does Pixelfed, Loops or Peertube work the same way? I could see images or video being more of a burden to serve like that. Or does AP sync the metadata like thumbnail, video title, description, comments etc. and the video itself is torrented straight from the host server?

I’ve gone on this diatribe about PIxelfed’s onboarding process, where they have a website that says “This page will help find the perfect server for you” and then is designed to present as little meaningful information about each server as possible. Looking at join-lemmy.org, it’s marginally better. “You can access all content from the Lemmyverse from any server, so it doesn’t matter which you choose” 1. not strictly true and 2. if it doesn’t matter why make the choice?

Here’s a question I have, because I’m honestly not sure: Let’s say most of the communities I’m personally interested in are on example.lol. But my account is on sh.itjust.works. How much am I burdening sh.itjust.works by mostly reading and posting to example.lol? Would I be decreasing people’s operating costs if I just opened an account on example.lol so most of my interaction was on my home instance?

<Tantacrul>

Okay, are you ready for the pain?

First, we go to pixelfed.org, and click on “Servers.” We are treated to a page that says “Find the perfect community server. Signing up on an existing server is the easiest way to get started, let us help you find the ideal server to join!” This alludes to creating your own pixelfed server, which the vast majority of users are not going to want to do. We’re talking about a public who has been accustomed to downloading an app, opening an account on the app, and having access to all the content in that app. The idea of hosting their own server at this point shouldn’t really be an idea we’re bringing up here.

We tehn get filters for “sign-up process”, because you have to apply for and be approved to some servers, filter by country, and filter by language. I mean, okay. Then we get Server Catagories: All (87) Art (1) General (8) Regional (13) Adult (4) and Uncategorized, (61). I suppose this is more honest than defaulting everyone to “General” but it’s also lazier than a dead house cat. When the vast majority of them are categorized as “Uncategorized” it gives me the feeling that the people running this shitmound don’t care about it, so I absolutely shouldn’t.

Then we get a section called Network Health, which has data that is not pertinent to choosing a server, including total photos shared, total users, active servers, and average users per server. Neat stats I guess, not relevant to choosing a server to sign up on.

The choices of server are a grid of choices that look like this:

The name/URL of the instance is at the top, with an $8 checkmark next to it which is a different glyph from the check marks in the left column talking about all the evil stuff they don’t do, so I think we’re just used to seeing check marks after names on social media, so we put them there. I can’t find one that doesn’t have that check mark so it’s completely meaningless.

Then we get a cover photo, which 9 times out of 10 is a variant on the Pixelfed logo so here’s yet another opportunity to distinguish severs squandered.

Just below that is the name/URL of the server again in a different color, just in case you didn’t read it the first time. This is just 100% wasted space.

Below this is the first 80 characters of a description that was almost certainly written to go somewhere else and has been echoed here. Several of them read “Pixelfed is an image sharing platform, an ethical alternative to centr…” Which must be some kind of default text. Many also use an identical cover image to Pixelfed.social, the instance run by the creators, so I’m assuming this is also a placeholder default. The dead cat is at it again. Those that don’t use the default boilerplate often have a description that starts with their instance name, for example “Pixelfed.art is a community driven platfrorm designed to showcase and c…” So including the cover image, pixelfed.art’s entry contains the string “pixelfed.art” a total of four times, and nearly no other information is conveyed.

Below this is a button that either says “Create Account” in white on bright lilac, or “Apply to Join” in subdued purple on dark purple, which makes the option look greyed out. People will already be unlikely to click there, and the change in shade further discourages people from trying to sign up. I suppose telling you this here in the main directory will prevent “Oh dammit you have to apply to join” but there’s just something wrong with making it look greyed out or unselectable.

There’s another button that says “More Details,” which leads to another very sparse page which shows a large version of the useless and uninformative cover image, information you probably don’t care about like the server location and establishment date, and a link that frustratingly says “More Details.” We just clicked on that, why do you want me to click it again? When you click it, you don’t get more details about the server, it scrolls down to a list of general features of the Pixelfed platform. Marketing cockshit that people’s eyes just glance off of because this is where marketing departments put all the lies.

Oh, did I mention when you click on the uppermost of the many copies of the server name, the top one in white, it takes you to the same place that the More Details button does?

This page promises to help you find the perfect server, and then offers virtually no information that would help a newcomer choose gram.social over pixey.org.

</Tantacrul>

I would suggest removing a lot of the redundant details such as the More Details button and the second copy of the instance’s name below the cover image. That would free up room for a couple more lines of description for each here on the index page.

Eliminate the Uncategorized category, maybe add a few more like “Arts, Crafts and Photography” “Lifestyles and Activities” “Fashion and beauty” “Casual, Food and Pets”. “I want to upload pictures of my cat, which category do I choose?” “I want to promote my paintings. Which category?” “I want to show off my travel pictures.”

Add a text search bar so that people could search by keyword.

As this is a list that instance admins have to apply to be on, I would suggest some requirements and/or heavy suggestions for that process:

• Do not allow default boilerplate cover images or descriptions. Make them post something. You’re an image hosting platform, you should be able to find an image the defines your community. !woodworking@lemmy.ca runs contests with their members to pick theirs, I won it once. Do that.

• Strongly suggest against using a variant of the Pixelfed logo unless that variant describes what your instance is about. Like if you have a sports-oriented instance, the Pixelfed speech bubble P logo appearing inside a sports ball is more acceptable than a P with “pixelfed.sports” next to it. Better yet, an action shot of a sportsball player making an exciting sportsball play with maybe a logo in the corner.

• Require admins to choose a category, to eliminate “Uncategorized.”

• For descriptions, provide a style guide that warns against things like mentioning the name of the instance again in the description, and steer away from all the bleeding heart hyphenated marketing wank.

BAD: Example.lol is a community-driven, open-source, cage-free, low-gluten, carbon-offset, high-estrogen, no-pressure, fuel-injected, tax-free, non-mandatory place to share photos.

GOOD: Share photos of your arts and crafts projects with our avid community of painters, woodworkers, blacksmiths, seamstresses and more!

The aim here is to present INFORMATION that can help someone new understand why they should - or should not - sign up for your instance. We’re almost perfectly failing to achieve that.

Well, if you’re not more greed than man, hardware sales might be enough for you.

My old desktop, a Ryzen 3600/GTX-1080 mini-ITX build. After using a Pi 4 with Kodi for awhile it’s nice to have a media machine that can run Crysis.

So why run an instance in the first place then?

I don’t think .rape is a valid TLD, but as you say we’re in the worst timeline.

But federating with other instances IS links to content, not hosting content.