To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks
Resources:
Created this account so I could create the community. Decided on lemm.ee because my main account is on aussie.zone, which does not allow community creation (and limits its communities to things about Australia). Figured lemm.ee is better than lemmy.world due to the latter's performance/federation issues.
Do you want the Fediverse to be a soup kitchen or do you want to be as good as of a dining experience as it can be?
Feel free to advocate for your vision as much as you like, but it seems the audience here isn't very receptive.
You are avoiding a question and using "other people" as a distraction, instead of commiting yourself to an opinion.
It is not the first time that you do that. Why?
I'm not, you are the one trying to present me as if I'm not discussing in good faith.
My point is that, if people were receptive to your proposition (I know you posted about Communick in the past), they would subscribe to it, and then we wouldn't have the conversation we had in the last few days.
Based on your comments and the stats on your flagship instance, it doesn't seem to be the case, which is why I said that the audience doesn't seem very receptive.
Seems quite logical to me, and nothing my personal opinion has any impact on.
The question you are evading is simple: is your vision for the Fediverse something where everyone will be only working altruistically and that we should serve users who are purely out of a sense of community/charity (the soup kitchen model) or do you think there is value in paying professionals their market rate in order to get a service with better support, integrate new features and will have a vested interest in providing a superior experience (the "people go to restaurants and pay more than the cost of the food" model)?
Haven't we discussed this question at length recently?
You actually never answered my last comment, which answers tour question, so maybe you missed it: https://feddit.org/comment/1871850
You have a lengthy comment indeed, but it does not mean that you are answering the question I made: do you think that the Fediverse can be "successful" only via "pure" communal efforts, or do you think that it needs professionals to work on it and who should be properly appraised - ii.e, be paid according to market rate?
Taking 30$ per year as a reference point as this is your pricing on Communick (I know it also involves Mastodon and Matrix, but there is no Lemmy only package anymore, so that's the only option), this is too high and goes against the philosophy of free software.
Does your Linux distribution ask you for a yearly fee for development and maintenance costs?
Does F-droid ask you for a yearly fee?
Grayjay?
On the other hand, some people paid for Sync, so there is still an part of the Lemmy population who is ready to pay for software, but Sync is a polished product they knew they could trust quality wise.
You are still not answering the question!
Forget about Communick or my offer specifically: I am asking if you think that there is any value in paying for a service based on open standards.
I am not asking what you think of my pricing (though if your excuse is that $29 for the bundle is too much, you could say say what price point would interest you)
I am not asking you to compare the business of charging for a service (hosting) vs a product (client apps).
I am not asking you to pay for everything that is free (Linux developers are mostly employed by profit-driven companies who use Linux as a way to commoditize their complements). I am asking you whether you see the value of supporting the work of developers yourself instead of couching under the "community effort" excuse.
I am asking you to reveal your preferences and so far all I am seeing is you making an extraordinary effort to avoid saying "I refuse to pay for something that is not mandatory, even if my support could be beneficial to everyone"
I am asking if you think that there is any value in paying for a service based on open standards.
Of course there is, but that's not the only parameter to take into account here.
First, as we have discussed already, and based on the other thread about instance costs, the vast majority of admins seem okay with the "donations cover the hosting costs" approach. There was only one other person who shared your view that "sysadmin time should also be paid rather than be volunteering". Users seem to be okay with it too, otherwise they would migrate to your service.
The other main parameter is how much money people are ready to dedicate to funding Fediverse projects.
In the EU, 21% of people are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
House prices up by 47% in the EU between 2010 and 2022
People have other priorities than funding Fediverse projects.
It comes back to your comment about Lemmy users "holding a shiny new iPhone". We do not have data on that, but based on the hate the Apple users gets every time they post iPhone users are probably in the minority.
you making an extraordinary effort to avoid saying “I refuse to pay for something that is not mandatory, even if my support could be beneficial to everyone”
I don't even know why you are trying to make me feel guilty about not paying "enough" (according to you) for the Fediverse.
I'm very sorry, but there are a lot of other issues I would rather dedicate my money with a higher priority than the Fediverse (besides hosting costs, as we discussed already, I want to keep the instances alive). From the money I dedicate to donations, I usually support some local communities initiatives in my area, as well as some global programs (e.g. Doctors Without Borders, Action Against Hunger).
Again, if you can find people who want to get into your prepaid subscription service to access Lemmy, and you can use that to pay for your sysadmin time and some development for the software, that's great.
But I personally have other priorities. And I don't even know why are you asking for how I dedicate my money.
And for the record, I contributed to Pixelfed and Mastodon development (hundreds of euros per year) out of my own pocket regardless of Communick. I do it not because I have to, but because I believe that developers of free projects should be valued by their efforts and that the only way we can get rid of ad-based, predatory social media platforms is by putting our money where our mouths are.
OP's link is bad - they've created a direct link to the community on lemm.ee and named that link !aom@lemm.ee, rather than just typing !aom@lemm.ee. Lemmy and PieFed can both handle the link, but it seems that Mbin is struggling with it.
A proper ! link should work on Mbin - you've previously said that Mbin has been configured to point ! links to '/search?', so an unknown community gets resolved.
As for solving the problem of Lemmy throwing a generic error page whilst its backend is busy resolving unknown communities, that's a UX issue for the devs to fix, or for the users to know that they need to press 'refresh'.
That both Mbin and Lemmy have a '/search' endpoint is more of a coincidence than anything - I don't think it can be relied upon to provide some kind of universal 'fediverse link' (and I'm not just saying that because PieFed has no clue what to do with your link!)
OP’s link is bad - they’ve created a direct link to the community on lemm.ee and named that link !aom@lemm.ee, rather than just typing !aom@lemm.ee.
That's how Lemmy does by default if you use the autocompletion built in the interface.
Probably something to raise to the devs
they’ve created a direct link to the community on lemm.ee and named that link !aom@lemm.ee, rather than just typing !aom@lemm.ee
I just used the autocomplete built into Lemmy after typing !aom. It works just fine. If I click it on this account it takes me to https://lemm.ee/c/aom, if I click it on my main account it takes me to https://aussie.zone/c/aom@lemm.ee. Which is the desired behaviour.
Yeah, sorry, Blaze explained after how it happens, so my comment was more critical than it should have been. Anyway, the point of all this extra chat on what should just be some community promo, was that the link format that - it turns out - Lemmy autogens is fine for you, and fine for me, but not for MBIN users (who's solution seems to be proposing an entirely different and untested link format for everyone else to use)
I'm confused, isn't that just a two-step version of the link I provided?
Mbin and others might have issues with Lemmy created links
But shouldn't the plain !aom@lemm.ee be enough? Not sure about the link above, I've seen original lucifer post those before, never really investigated why
the target community may not exist with a direct link as youve posted.
when you push it through what seems to be a universal search url: /search?q=!community @ host . tld, it forces the remote host to create the community should it not already exist.
Oh wow, I didn't even realise you could do relative links like that in Lemmy.
It's a shame post IDs aren't globally unique so you could do something like that with individual posts.
Mbin user here, link in the OP kicks me to lemm.ee while originallucifer's link lets me find it on Mbin
Interesting, what about mine?
Yours also allows me to open it on Mbin.
If you want game-related communities, I can create them for you on https://level-up.zone and make you a moderator.
(OT: this decision of only allowing users of an instance to create communities is one of the things that I dislike the most about Lemmy. I am seriously considering creating a separate service to let people request communities on instances without an account)
Is that a video game instance? Because if so, that's a great idea.
Yeah, I have created a bunch of topic-based instances with the idea of having communities created in "neutral ground" and avoiding issues like "instance from instance Z has defederated from X and Y, so now the people need to create duplicate communities and/or duplicate accounts".
The whole list of instances is on the sidebar of !communick_news_network@communick.news if you are interested.
Also, because I got someone reporting me for not "disclosing my interests". Communick is a business. It makes money by providing paid access accounts to Fediverse services, like communick.news and mastodon.communick.com. These topic-based instances however are never going to be closed or exclusive to paying customers. Anyone that wants to create a new community based on a specific interest, just send me a DM and I will happily create it and make you a moderator. I created them to help organize communities during the migration and to distribute the load from all the mirrored content from alien.top.
Also, because I got someone reporting me for not “disclosing my interests”.
Thank you for addressing this
I don't mind the suspicion, but I think it is beyond silly.
I'm one self-funded developer who is stubborn enough to run this at a loss for almost 5 years now, and my greatest ambition here would be to maybe get 10-15k customers to pay me $30/year to be able to live with minimal comfort, provide for my family and hopefully contribute back to open source and the open web. Yet people want to paint me as some mastermind behind some huge corporation burning money around from investors and looking for a way to exploit users.
I'm honestly tired of this crab mentality. People think it's a sin to be upfront about their work and how much they value their time. It's also quite ironic that I can see the huge overlap: those who are always virtue signaling and complaining about bosses who don't pay enough to their employees are the same ones who refuse to patronize a small independent business, but go look at the phones in their hands and there is an 80% chance they will be holding a shiny new iPhone.
there is an 80% chance they will be holding a shiny new iPhone.
Really not sure about this on Lemmy.
live with minimal comfort, provide for my family
Are you unhappy with your current job? It feels like all admins are doing this as a hobby, and none of them plan to make money out of it
What current job?
I started Communick as a side-project in the end of 2019, but in July of last year I lost my job and decided to make this really work.
Now I get more why you are pushing so hard to make it profitable.
Have you considered finding another job in the meantime? The Fediverse isn't going to be profitable any time soon
Have you considered finding another job in the meantime?
What makes you think I am not looking?
Good luck on your search then!
Why not "good luck on making Communick work"?
Because the chances of this actually happening are quite slim.
It would be nice the Fediverse became profitable, and if Communick could become your main source of income, but from every signal we can see, it is not going to happen anytime soon.
10-15k customers to pay me $30/year
That's like a third of the current Lemmy userbase, who would be using exclusively your instances. Probably not realistic in the near future.
This is not just over the Lemmy userbase.
When I am dreaming of 10-15k users, I am looking at all the potential userbase, not the existing one.
Honestly, what bothers me a bit is you saying "It would be nice the Fediverse became profitable", but from all our interactions you seem to only support efforts that do not require any material (i.e, financial contribution) from you, and you have been purposefully avoiding contributing to the topic-based instances that I have set up.
I'll tell you one thing, I am thinking about giving away all the topic-based instances to the collective behind feddit.org. If I do that, would you move away your communities there?
you seem to only support efforts that do not require any material (i.e, financial contribution) from you,
Nice to see that you consider that my time is worthless. Or is other people's time only valuable when they are admins?
I’ll tell you one thing, I am thinking about giving away all the topic-based instances to the collective behind feddit.org. If I do that, would you move away your communities there?
What do you mean by this? How would this work? How would pay the costs and spend time managing all of these topic specific instances?
Not going to comment on your first paragraph, as you seem convinced this userbase is there and ready to use your services.
I didn't say your time is worthless. I am actually impressed with how much you've done here. What I am saying is that you only support things with your time, and you refused to help whenever money was involved. Is that not accurate?
pay the costs and spend time managing all of these topic specific instances?
So you acknowledge that running instances do have costs that need to be covered somehow. That's already a good thing.
Anyway, to make the case here: I am willing to move ownership of the instances to feddit.org's OpenCollective and even keep managing it, as long as there is understanding that they should be topic specific and closed for registrations. The idea would be to have feddit.org as the instance for people, and the topic instances as home for groups.
If that were to happen, would you move your communities there?
as you seem convinced this userbase is there and ready to use your services
No, I am convinced of its potential. There is a difference.
What I am saying is that you only support things with your time, and you refused to help whenever money was involved. Is that not accurate?
I support my main instance enough to cover the costs: based on the other thread I opened, and having a look at sopuli's FAQ, https://sopuli.xyz/post/13531 it costs them 0,06€ per user per month, so 0,72€ per year.
I don't know why you keep bringing this up, or maybe you meant that one time I refused to get a communick subscription?
Based on that other thread, some instances have costs as low as 0,10$ per user per month, so 1,2$ per year.
I just checked the Communick prices again, indeed it's 30$ per year, which is 25 times more expensive than the cost above.
If that were to happen, would you move your communities there?
Why would I? You have been always been claiming that if something would happen to you, someone else would take over, but we still only see you talking about Communick.
Managing an instance takes time and requires a team to be done properly. You are suggesting to add a number of instances on a single team. Have you ever asked them if they would be okay with this?
We have discussed this in the past already: I'm always reluctant to use your instances as you are the single point of failure of the whole Communick projects.
If lemm.ee goes down tomorrow, that would be a good news but Lemmy as a whole would recover. If lemm.ee, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, Lemmy.dbzer0, feddit.org and discuss.tchncs.de would go down together tomorrow, that might probably kill the platform.
Having a set of predominant content instances managed by the same person (or team, if you get feddit.org's approval), wouldn't be that much different from having Lemmy.world dominating Lemmy as they are now.
Let instances develop organically. Let them be managed by different teams, with different people, different approaches. Let people use the software rather than trying to centralize its control.
Ok, so let's make it clear that the whole talk about "it would be nice to make it profitable" is not serious, and also make it clear that your idea of "supporting the instances" is just equivalent to cover the hardware costs, which is a rounding error compared to the cost of human labor involved.
There is just so much more going on that you are taking for granted, I don't even know where to start:
By saying that you are covering the cost of the hardware, you are basically saying that the work of everyone else is worth zero. This is downright offensive.
maybe you meant that one time I refused to get a communick subscription?
No, not really. At the moment I am more upset about the fact that you are one of the most active users here, that you jump instances every two weeks or so and yet you seem to think that contributing $1/year is "enough" to support the work of everyone involved here.
Imagine going to a farmer's market and saying "how come do you sell those eggs for 10€ a dozen, you can feed 25 chickens for a whole month with that, if they lay 1 egg per day you are getting 750 eggs, so I don't see why I should give more than 12/750 euros per egg." and tell me how well that's going to go.
I just checked the Communick prices again, indeed it’s 30$ per year, which is 25 times more expensive than the cost above.
First, the $29/year includes access to Mastodon, Matrix, Lemmy and Funkwhale, with 250GB of space. There is also a 20% pledge of profits to go to the underlying projects. I also need to pay for things that others might be skipping on, like backups, redundant servers, etc.
Second and most important: the $29/year is supposed to buy you peace of mind. My customers are not paying me to "share the costs". They are paying me so they can feel assured that there is one professional taking care of the infrastructure. They are paying me to ensure that I can worry about the bugs in the software instead of them. They are paying me so that they don't have to worry about the instance going under without notice. They are paying me because they know that these things do not come for free.
Managing an instance takes time and requires a team to be done properly. You are suggesting to add a number of instances on a single team.
No, I'm not. I'm saying that I can still manage it if needed. My proposal would be to donate the instances to the team to get rid of this "single point of failure" that you are holding me against.
Have you ever asked them if they would be okay with this?
This is (so far) just a thought experiment, which I am making to illustrate how your logic is flawed. You are saying that my work is not worth the price that I am charging, yet at the same time you think that others will not be interested in doing because it takes time and expertise. Don't you see the contradiction here?
Let instances develop organically. Let them be managed by different teams, with different people, different approaches.
That's very eloquent, but you are still evading the most fundamental issue: If your idea of "growing the network" is to keep waiting to get more enthusiasts who are willing to sacrifice their time and sanity to serve 1-2 thousand users at a time, you are going to wait for a very. long. time. If everyone keeps treating this as a mere hobby, and if users keep thinking like you and refuse to pay for the professionals what they are worth, then the professionals are simply going to go work somewhere else. If you don't believe me, just look at what is happening with Mastodon and Bluesky.
By saying that you are covering the cost of the hardware, you are basically saying that the work of everyone else is worth zero. This is downright offensive.
I'm going to add to your list the time of people posting content and animating communities. I am happy to freely dedicates some of my time to it, and if someone would show up and say "community animators needs to be paid for their time", I would suggest them to go to Nostr, which seems to exactly address this issue, rather than here, where most of the people volunteer with their free time.
A comment from the Mbin lead dev yesterday (https://kbin.melroy.org/m/fediverse@lemmy.world/t/444176/-/comment/3956532 )
I also asked among the contributors if you should accept any form of money or NLnet funding or anything in that regard. Our common conclusion was: NO. Because we are doing it for fun, asking money will only create a situation were you might even feel more obligated.
No, not really. At the moment I am more upset about the fact that you are one of the most active users here, that you jump instances every two weeks or so and yet you seem to think that contributing $1/year is “enough” to support the work of everyone involved here.
Based on the other thread, it seems to indeed cover the costs. I usually give 5€ per year for an instance I use a lot. Still much cheaper than the 30$ for your bundle. It's a free environment, people will go to places using the donation model they prefer.
Imagine going to a farmer’s market and saying “how come do you sell those eggs for 10€ a dozen, you can feed 25 chickens for a whole month with that, if they lay 1 egg per day you are getting 750 eggs, so I don’t see why I should give more than 12/750 euros per egg.” and tell me how well that’s going to go.
Imagine opening a restaurant serving soup next to a kitchen soup where volunteers make and serve the exact same soup as yours, and tell me how that is going to work.
Second and most important: the $29/year is supposed to buy you peace of mind.
See above, peace of mind is similar on lemmy.dbzer0 for instance, and their admin still said
I would still fund this instance even out of pocket, but I really appreciate you all for assisting in this way.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/21873104
They provided the CSAM detection tool and Fediseer. Those project have donations tools, but I've never seen their creators threatening to stop developing if they don't get enough money the way you are.
No, I’m not. I’m saying that I can still manage it if needed. My proposal would be to donate the instances to the team to get rid of this “single point of failure” that you are holding me against.
The single point of failure still stands as of today, and on top of that, the lack of organic content and communities creation on your communities is probably why you are not having as much users as you would like to.
You are saying that my work is not worth the price that I am charging, yet at the same time you think that others will not be interested in doing because it takes time and expertise. Don’t you see the contradiction here?
It's not a contradiction. To come back to the volunteer kitchen soup above, it would be similar to donate 50 delivery trucks to a kitchen soup that does only manage one. They would need to park them, manage their insurance, broken tires, oil, etc, while they are doing fine with one truck, and that's how comfortable they are operating as volunteers.
If your idea of “growing the network” is to keep waiting to get more enthusiasts who are willing to sacrifice their time and sanity to serve 1-2 thousand users at a time, you are going to wait for a very. long. time.
LW host 18k monthly active users. Lemm.ee host 3k monthly active users. The issue is not with the number of instances, it is fine as of now, the issue is getting regular users.
If everyone keeps treating this as a mere hobby, and if users keep thinking like you and refuse to pay for the professionals what they are worth, then the professionals are simply going to go work somewhere else. If you don’t believe me, just look at what is happening with Mastodon and Bluesky.
Your perspective comes from someone who does not currently have a job and try to make the Fediverse profitable. Restaurant vs volunteer kitchen soup situation again. The vast majority of instance owners seem to indeed treat this as a hobby, hence are okay to give their time for free, and appreciate if donations cover the hosting costs.
Have a look at the other thread, there was only one other admin who shared your perspective.
I said it already, I'll repeat it: you have a much higher chance to get another source of income with another job than expecting people to pay 30$ a year for a bundle of Lemmy/Mastodon/Matrix.
They provided the CSAM detection tool and Fediseer. Those project have donations tools, but I’ve never seen their creators threatening to stop developing if they don’t get enough money the way you are.
Note that motivation to develop is a tricky business. I still have development motivation for FOSS, but it wanes and waxes seemingly on its own. Monetary compensation is there to help me maintain it a little bit further as it shows some direct appreciation, and I like when my voluntary work is also not costing me money 🙃
That said, I also recognize that there's other forms of contributions except monetary. If someone is contributing code, or sharing their GPU via the AI Horde, helping with documentation and community outreach, or even carrying niche lemmy community activity on their own, I consider it also valuable on its own, akin to monetary support. I do think that people who are mostly lurking and consuming the work I do, could find it in their hand to give something like 5$ a year or so. It doesn't take a lot of these people to provide enough to cover the costs of hosting and coffee.
Thank you for sharing your perspective!
Yeah I really like the idea of topic-based instances. There are some issues doing it that way with discovery, and potentially with what happens when communities split (see for example what happened with !risa@startrek.website splitting to !tenforward@lemmy.world), but on the whole I really like the way it can reduce the drama caused by entirely unrelated factors. I'm a big fan of ttrpg.network for that reason, and I guess you could describe my main home instance of aussie.zone as being one, too.
I'm curious about that business. With so many Mastodon and other fediverse instances available for free to anyone, what's the business model for a paid service?
Nice, I went ahead and created !aom@level-up.zone . As soon as you make a post there I can make you a moderator as well.
I'm really glad to see more people getting the point of these instances. Reducing drama is certainly one of the biggest factors, and "good fences make good neighbors" is a good principle here.
what’s the business model for a paid service
It's a difficult one, if I am being honest. I started this as a side project because I believed that with all the abuses from Facebook and Twitter, people would finally understand that "if you are not paying for the product, you are the product" is not just a nice slogan. Unfortunately, it seems that the large majority of people will rather live jumping from instance to instance and project to project instead of paying a few bucks per month to support independent developers.
But to give you a more cheerful response, Communick is not just about Fediverse. My background is in telecommunications, and the idea is to offer any type of service for messaging that is based on open standards, which also includes VoIP. It also provides Matrix and I've been trying to figure out how I can add support for SIP calling in a way that could make this a compelling alternative for Digital nomads that need to deal with multiple phone numbers.
Looking at the Fediverse only, some reasons to charge for access:
I appreciate it, and if I ever do get around to doing something about aoe2 or aoe4 I may use that instance, or if I see someone else express interest in creating game-related communities I'll recommend they head in your direction. But for now I've already created it on this instance, and don't see the benefits as being strong enough to outweigh that.
I didn't know they were making a new Age of Mythology game! That's awesome!
It's not so much a new game as a remaster of the old game. Back in like 2016 they announced they were making Age of Empires 4 and also "Definitive Editions" of 1, 2, and 3. The DEs came out in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and AoE2 and 3 DE were both really good and successful. Then a couple of years ago they announced Age of Mythology was getting a similar treatment. It came out for people who ordered the Premium Edition last Wednesday, and releases to the general audience tomorrow. So far it's been a massive success critically both in mainstream gaming press and with Age players.
edit: AoE2 DE did a fantastic job of unifying disparate communities. Before it, most low-level casuals played on the 2013 HD edition and most high-level and pro players played on Voobly with fan patches based on the original CD version of the game. After DE, everyone plays DE. The same seems to be coming true for AoM. Previously there was a split between Voobly and the 2014 "Extended Edition" (which also included some very controversial patches around 2016 to coincide with an equally-controversial expansion DLC). But already it seems as though people are embracing the "Retold" edition of the game, whether casual or pro.