good morning, Beehaw

this morning we have a survey for you, which will run for approximately three days. it contains three questions on site policy (plus an optional explanation field), and two questions about the site’s current vibe (plus another optional explanation field).

you can find the survey here.

some caveats to this survey

you likely have some priors for how this “should” work, and i would like you to leave those at the door. to be up front:

  • this is not a referendum—it is more like a Wikipedia vote if anything. we’re looking for a consensus or a synthesis of the community’s opinions with the practical limitations we’re working with, not a first-past-the-post winner.
  • this is not (currently) a democracy, and you should not expect public results from this. we talked this part over as an admin team and we don’t see much value in publicly releasing the results of a survey like this. if we do release the results publicly, we’ll be announcing that before it happens.
  • the same caveats just mentioned will apply to any surveys like this into the foreseeable future. i’m sure everyone understands that in online spaces it is very easy to manipulate surveys like this; accordingly, it is not a great idea to take them at complete face value until you can audit votes. since we don’t have a foolproof, private system for doing that yet, these caveats are necessary to make any kind of vote involving site policy work.

(we do eventually want to create a foolproof enough private system, but this is way on the backburner and i’m guessing most of you prefer having an imperfect way to chime in on the site’s direction than none at all until this system is created)

    • millie@beehaw.org
      25·
      10 months ago

      Honestly, I think defederating from some of the major instances is a big part of the reason it’s as nice here as it is. Beehaw doesn’t need to be a giant to have a place and a purpose, and it doesn’t need to be the only Lemmy instance anyone uses either.

      I think we all need to get past this nonsensical idea that everything has to be the biggest to be worthwhile. Nobody goes to a nice local restaurant and wishes they were at McDonald’s. It’s okay to just make something good and let it be. It doesn’t have to explode to monumental proportions, and when it does that’s not really that great a thing.

      Federation is an amazing tool in large part because of defederation. If instances aren’t using both they might as well all be screaming down the same meaningless content firehose, as far as I can tell.

      • Auzy@beehaw.org
        17·
        10 months ago

        I totally agree. I came here to get away from the toxicity which is growing on Facebook and other sites.

        If we’re going to survive, we can’t be yet another social network which grabs people who shout the loudest

      • magnetosphere @beehaw.orgEnglish
        6·
        10 months ago

        Agreed. Having an enormous user base isn’t inherently a good thing. We’re used to thinking that it is, though, because most of our experience is with for-profit websites. For them, that’s how success is measured.

        It’s great if you’re selling advertising space on your site, or if you want the maximum amount of potential customers for other products or services… but for sites like Beehaw, too much is simply too much. Constant growth isn’t worth the trouble.

        The concept people need to adjust to is that we’re interested in quality over quantity. We need enough users to keep the site active and interesting, but beyond that, things just get more complex and harder to moderate.

        • millie@beehaw.org
          6·
          10 months ago

          Absolutely. I feel like the constant competition for growth within capitalism pushes so many toxic ideas on us and this is just one more example. It’s all ego over substance and it doesn’t help anyone. 15 foot high pickup trucks with 3 feet of bed space. Same thing.

    • Auzy@beehaw.org
      18·
      10 months ago

      I’ve noticed some of lemmy in general is turning super toxic. At the beginning it was so positive, but it now feels like the wrong people have been attracted in some servers

      Not sure which servers, but the reality is, if something isn’t done, there is no point of me being here (it literally feels like the fatpeoplehate/thedonald crowd has started moving here)

      In fact, the positive environment was one reason I donated to beeshaw originally. We need more places like this. Everyone does

        • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
          19·
          10 months ago

          But defederate the main lemmy instance? Self-defeating.

          just to be clear: we don’t think there’s intrinsic value in federating with the largest communities just because they’re large, and we will never federate (or maintain federation) with a community purely on the basis of its size or ostensible contribution to the fediverse’s activity.

            • Seathru@beehaw.orgEnglish
              7·
              10 months ago

              Your opinion. But fact is, their choice is why some of us are here. Yes, I would like articles posted to lemmy.world to show up on my all feed here; No, I absolutely would not like to see lemmy.world’s entire userbase here. It would overwhelm the small mod team and likely kill the vibe. The slight inconvenience is worth it.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      13·
      10 months ago

      Lemmy.world is full of people who don’t want to “be nice”, and are happy to drag anyone “to the dark side”.

      If there was a unidirectional way of federating, like “let people from Beehaw participate on LW communities, but don’t allow LW users participate in Beehaw communities”, then it could be a viable option.

      Otherwise, just the (hopefully small) portion of bad actors on LW, would be enough to drown out Beehaw’s communities and overload the mods. There are already signs of mod fatigue on Beehaw even without federating with large instances that used to be “free for all”.

      • Auzy@beehaw.org
        8·
        10 months ago

        Exactly this… I’ve noticed the same on Facebook too these days. Plenty of fake profiles where people are clearly trolling, and some are plain bigots

        I’m not trans, or gay. But, even just watching some communities on Facebook and Reddit, you’re totally right. It has gotten to the point they are proud they are “anti-woke”, feel empowered and have made it part of their personality. Anti-Woke is just another way of describing someone who is controlling and abusive towards others, instead of accepting others. They’ll attack anyone they can to make themselves feel more in control.

        The community here doesn’t need to agree with EVERYTHING others say, but it should be an encouraging community. And I think I’m not the only one to say, I’d happily donate to keep the servers running if we are going to be unique, and not another reddit or facebook.

    • acastcandream@beehaw.orgEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      If we weren’t supposed to defederate then we wouldn’t have the option. Nothing is stopping you from browsing it yourself anyway. You can browse world to heart’s content while the rest of us enjoy our quieter nook lol

    • lagomorphlecture@beehaw.org
      3·
      10 months ago

      Thr reason given for defederation with world is a lack of adequate moderation tools and open signups on that instance. Given the recent csam attacks on .world I have to say it looks like the admins had a valid point.