@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

kevincox

@kevincox@lemmy.ml

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kevincox,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

This really sucks for bug reporting. I don’t mind this at all for hosting as that cost notable resources (especially their free CI tier) and they can set their own terms, but I want people to be able to report bugs without any trouble. (Although if spam is an issue maybe projects could opt-in to requiring this verification to report bugs).

A work-around is maybe the service desk feature allowing reporting bugs via email but this has issues for proper collaboration:

  1. The reporter’s email is shared.
  2. The issue is private by default.
  3. Can’t collaborate on an existing issue.

Maybe I’ll just go back to mailing lists… Or GitHub has gotten better recently. But GitLab’s CI is so much better.

kevincox,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t think there is much concrete, but here are some things that it effects.

  1. Performance. You view almost everything via your instance. So picking one running with capable hardware and ideally close to you (network wise) will give you a better experience.
  2. Reliability. If your instance goes down you are basically offline. This can be hard to predict for the future.
  3. Trust. Your identity is “owned” by the instance. So if they wanted they can impersonate you. This can also be very hard to gauge.
  4. Longevity. If your instance shuts down it will be quite inconvenient and your identity will be lost, so you may want to try to predict which instances are likely to last.
  5. Moderation. If they block too many other instances you won’t be able to see content that you want to see. If they block to little then you may be seeing content that you would rather not. Or the instance may be blocked by other instances if it becomes known for spamming.

Content is actually not really on my list since you can subscribe to any communities from any instance. It is true that the instance can provide some content discovery purpose via the local and known communities page but I would argue that separate service which track communities across all instance are better for this purpose.

Are we using Lemmy correctly?

What I think could make Lemmy superior to Reddit is the ability to create themed-instances that are all linked together which feels like the entire point. I've noticed that a lot of instances are trying to be a catch-all Reddit replacement by imitating specific subs which is understandable given the circumstances but seems like...

kevincox,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t agree. If I like LOTR and giraffes I don’t want to create an account on both “instance groups”. I want to do like today and create a single account, then subscribe to the communities I am interested in wherever they are.

To me it sounds like you are sort of mixing up community location and community discovery. This is sort of the case right now because instances have a list of local communities but I think that it is best that they are separated. For example on Reddit I don’t generally find new communities by scanning the entire list of communities. I usually find them when someone mentions a related community in a comment of a community that I am already in. Or when I stumble across a community when searching the web. When you discover and subscribe to communities this way it doesn’t really matter where they are hosted or if they are grouped. You can organically discover things that interest you over time (although I agree that it can be a bit slow to start).

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