this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.

However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.

You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.

Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I would be happy to use another instance but my account is on this one. Is there a way to migrate an account, or perhaps "link" accounts on multiple instances somehow?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

AFAICT no. There is an open issue on the Lemmy GitHub repo. In general, all ActivityPub services I've used have this same account stratification problem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Is scaling the server a largely financial issue, or not? @[email protected]

could you reasonably confidently say that you could 10x the amount of users for something like 1000$/mo on liberapay?
If so, would you mind setting a "goalpost" for the community to help lift the financial burden?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think they said they're at the highest tier of their provider. May need to migrate to a different provider and get a beefier setup.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Do Lemmy instances not scale horizontally?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In theory, they can. But it depends on how it's deployed.

From my cursory look at the deployment docs, Lemmy's default deployment option is via docker. It relies on a postgreSQL server, which may or may not scale horizontally depending on the admin's choice of implementation. For example, a deployment on AWS using Aurora would theoretically utilize auto-scaling.

I haven't personally deployed an instance so, grain of salt.

EDIT: A good discussion about DB scaling here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3005

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

They do, but I'm not sure how well, I'm not a dev, and have no programming knowledge, so looking at the documentation looks like arcane hieroglyphs.

I'm pretty sure I read a comment about it from one of the devs, but can't recall the fine details of the conversation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

You might wanna consider temporarily closing sign-up requests on lemmy.ml similarly to how mastodon.social did it during its large influx. Making a sign-up request and just receiving an infinite loading icon is a very frustrating experience.

Similarly, you want to make it as easy as possible to financially contribute to lemmy, even if it means using proprietary platforms like Patreon.

Overall, the current Reddit API change is probably one of the largest opportunities for lemmy right now, so smoothing over the user experience as fast as possible in the coming days will be of atmost importance if we want lemmy to become a viable Reddit alternative...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

lemmy.ml should be a roundrobin dns that sends you to a random instance in the pool. Or else you will re-centralize lemmy and curmble under the IT bill.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

something like lemmy-in.[tld] ?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

https://toast.ooo is accepting registrations 🎉

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I applied for a few other instances but this one came through first. Your downfall is being too good compared to the competition.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

That's how I wound up here too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'll be honest. I only applied for this one but that was because I had (still have) no idea what I'm doing lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

IMHO, selecting an instance is definitely the biggest user experience problem Lemmy has at the moment. New users who are unfamiliar with the platform are going to pick the biggest instances, and that's going to create performance problems.

We'll need to prioritize work on instance browsing. Lemmy has outgrown the experience over at join-lemmy.org. If I could wave a magic wand, instance browsing and onboarding would have a way to show instance capacity / performance, a way to categorize and filter instances, and a way to recommend instances based upon interests. That would probably help to spread people out more evenly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

There's a website I highly recommend called fediverse observer, it doesn't really go based on interest, but it has some other factors it uses and I really like it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No problem just make a pull request with your changes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

You probably don't want my code if you want a stable platform. ;)

That said, I dig what y'all are doing, and I'm veteran experience / interaction designer who's been around the block for a few decades. So I might be able to find some time to mockup some experience concepts and or help to run user tests with audiences that your curious about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm going to set up a general purpose instance tomorrow with the intention of handling a relatively large number of users. The main problem is choosing a domain!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

It's a week later, but I did get this done finally. I've set up https://lem.monster/ . Still doing some tweaking, but it's open.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I've made https://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/ to help take off some of that load. New registrations are welcomed and it should be maintained for a very very long time 🎂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Another thing:

We do need more site admins to help us handle the applications and moderation.

For obvious reasons, we prefer ppl who have been here for a long time, and post / comment consistently. If you'd like to help us out, so that nutomic and I can focus on coding, that would be splendid.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

For non technical users, the idea of instances can be a very confusing concept (the email analogy is a good one but its still confusing for people). I know you guys have a lot on your plate in terms of development wise, however I hope that prioritizing keeping lemmy.ml up is high up there. I say this because its the instance that most users from Reddit will flock to. And the last thing they need is to create an account then have the site go down for 6 hours. I havent experienced it going down. Although hopefully you have a backup site for when it does (what I mean is just a page that says your down/your working on fixing it... Try these instances instead.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Im a lemmy.ml user since 2021. I need to create a community 'goth-music-oriented' or need help to get /c/goth more visible (it doesn't appear in the lemmy community browsing.

The former community creator, Maya, i think she abandoned the community. Her last post was 2 years ago. Thank you in advance for any help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If anybody else is lost and wants a basic general-purpose home for their account, https://lemm.ee is on good hardware and open for signups.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Over at https://join-lemmy.org/ , when someone clicked on "Join a Server", they are presented with a list of instances, it's not that obvious that these are cross-accessible (yes, the homepage mentioned it, but not here), and people are bound to look for one with the most users.

Perhaps, add a simple TLI5 explanation/diagram explaining how Lemmy works on https://join-lemmy.org/instances .

(The documents are also too wordy for most people to care.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Pull requests welcome, the code is here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@[email protected] It might be a good idea to default the Communities page to All instead of Local, to help push users into discovering other instances and promote them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree because this way, new users will learn what and how to use other instances. Plus, it also helps with finding more content, especially if the user picked an instance without many people which makes there be less communities and content they can check out on first glance.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Looks like beehaw.org is down

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Even when it's up, I'm unable to register - it just sits there and spins forever. 😕

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Point us to where the coin slot is. E.g. Patreon. We insert coin 🪙, you upgrade.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

First post for me!

Sorry, I applied and got approved here. Still waiting to hear back from beehaw…

I’m really digging this UI compared to Reddit, but I am 99.9% a mobile user via the native Reddit app (don’t @ me!)

I am very tempted to setup my own instance. Wondering what resource usage looks like for an instance.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, I think I have two accounts (I registrated in a community and then came here and had to create another one because I couldn't log in). It's kind of confusing for people who are not as tech savy as myself.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Well, my understanding is your user exists on whatever instance you signed up on. You could technically create users on every single instance, but that is not necessary. You only need one user to exist somewhere, and then you can subscribe to, and post to communities on other instances.

For example: from lemmy.ml, if you search for [[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) you can then open the sidebar and subscribe to, and post to, the gaming community on beehaw.org with your lemmy.ml user.

[email protected] is not the same community as [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

For example: from lemmy.ml, if you search for [email protected] you can then open the sidebar and subscribe to, and post to, the gaming community on beehaw.org with your lemmy.ml user.

This was really helpful, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

An easy way to understand this is that instances are like email providers. You can sign up on Gmail, but still email someone using Outlook or something else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That analogy makes a lot of sense. Very helpful to new users

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I like to call Lemmy "Feddit".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I like to call Reddit "Deaddit"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I tried like 4 or 5 instances before coming to lemmy.ml, but none of them were taking applications anymore. Finding even those was a hassle, since all I got was a list of domains without any details as to what the instance is about or if they allowed newcomers.

Now that I've setup everything, Lemmy does seem like nice alternative to Reddit, but as someone from the outside, all of this is daunting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

@[email protected] what kind of hosting do you guys use for lemmy.ml? At the time of writing it looks like you have around 33k users and around 2k active. What does that look like for resources consumed?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

If this is the Mastodon moment, ho boy. Don't envy the sysadmins.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's good to be popular. Congratulations on the growth!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What if I wanted to create an instance where upvotes are disabled? Could that be possible? @nutomic

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