Where solarpunks organize for a better world!

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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by Five to c/meta

Introduction

Every month we retire the pinned community meta post from the last month, and create a fresh one with updated news. We summarize the state of the instance, and create a space for public comments and discussions that don't merit their own meta post.

International Worker's Day is May 1st!

In 1886, a May 1st general strike called by the American Federation of Labor saw a significant response in New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee. But in Chicago, due to the International Working People's Association founded by the anarchist Albert Parsons, the number of people who went on strike was larger than twice all of those other cities combined. On May 3rd, Chicago police fired indiscriminately into a crowd of striking workers, killing several. On May 4th, the anarchists held a peaceful street meeting where several luminaries spoke. But near the end of the meeting in the Chicago Haymarket, police arrived in formation to forcibly disperse the peaceful crowd and order they desist their first amendment-protected activity in the name of the law.

Whoever it was who threw the bomb into the crowd of officers, all sides agree they were not one of the anarchist leaders who were later arrested, put on trial, and executed. The blast killed one, but 7 more officers and 4 working people would die of wounds from police bullets fired in the smoke and confusion. In the legal farce that followed, the capitalists of Chicago demonstrated through their ghoulish reaction how much they feared working people when they band together. The Haymarket heroes became not just a regional cause célèbre, but coverage of their show trial and martyrdom spread the message of the strike internationally, perhaps the most significant and successful general strike in history. It ended the common practice of 12-hour workdays, and lead the 8-hour workday, your average 9 to 5, to become the international standard.

On this day, we celebrate their sacrifice, and remember the power of working people everywhere. Celebrated in almost every country on this day, it is a symbol of cooperation between people unrestricted by national borders. In the spirit of solidarity, the admins at SLRPNK wish everyone a happy International Worker's Day!

Activity and Data

It continues to be a pleasure supporting you as an admin. When looking at data, it's easy to draw unqualified conclusions, and worse, use them as benchmarks and goals. The most important thing is the unquantifiable vibe of the instance, and whatever the numbers say, I'm pretty satisfied with that metric.

That being said, I know people are curious about the numbers, and the numbers are indeed curious. It's now official: the increase in new and active members was not a quirk of the change of reporting code at the beginning of the year. It appears there's been a reversal, and every month since January has seen the number of active members increase over the previous month. The growth is small but steady, and is even more curious due to the trend of declining or stagnant reported growth over the same period in larger instances with better funding and fame.

In addition to the growth of active members, our total number of posts continues to grow in a fashion suggesting an exponential curve. Fun.

We don't do any kind of deep analytics where we could pin down more accurately what's driving growth and why, so it's irresponsible to make too big a deal out of this data -- but it's definitely not bad. Whatever is happening, there's a good chance some of it is due to trends outside of our control, similar to Reddit's API exodus that brought most of us here almost a year ago. My advice is ignore the numbers and keep doing what you're doing. Whatever it is, it's making SLRPNK qualitatively a great place to hang out.

Software Status

@poVoq has done a wonderful job keeping Lemmy and Movim software up to date while screening new versions for major bugs. He has added a collaborative editing application Etherpad to the suite of community tools, available at https://pads.slrpnk.net/. Hedgedocs at https://docs.slrpnk.net/ will be retired due to lack of activity from the software maintainers. I'd like to personally thank @poVoq for hosting SLRPNK and keeping the software working and up-to-date.

The wiki on https://wiki.slrpnk.net remains a bit rough around the edges, as we have not yet gotten around to fixing the remaining issues with the login and easy page editing, but a few people started updating their community wikis anyways. Please let us know if you run into specific other issues. It will likely take some to get them fixed, but at least we can document the various issues for now.

Community Highlight

Check out these two communities created last month: !zines@slrpnk.net created by long-time member @toaster - a place to find great short-form self-publishing, and !forced_obsolescence@slrpnk.net by @activistPnk, a great idea that complements our vibrant !buyitforlife@slrpnk.net community by @ProdigalFrog.

I'd also like to draw attention to !fullyautomatedrpg@slrpnk.net, a forum the authors @andrewrgross and @JacobCoffinWrites are using to imagine a fantasy future to build collaborative stories in. They've put a lot of work into their world-building and are eagerly seeking public participation in the project. Congratulations to FA on being boosted by famous sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow!

Finally, !selfhosting@slrpnk.net I think deserves more attention. I have a great deal of admiration for @poVoq, and part of that is the alternative vision he has from most of the rest of the Fediverse and Lemmy instances. While some instances compete for position as the largest general purpose forum, others are happy to be small niche subject instances. SLRPNK falls into the latter category, but with a twist - with us, the medium is also the message. We will hit capacity one day, but we want the Fediverse to continue to grow in spite of us. We're very transparent about our administration decisions in XMPP moderator chat, and that's partly because of our social compact with you, but also to teach by example. Projects like !selfhosting@slrpnk.net, the Fedi-admin guild, and the wiki are part of the technology side of this goal -- to allow anyone who is interested to replicate what we're doing here, and improve on it.

The Solarpunk project is bigger than us, and we think Lemmy's ability to scale through federation is key to allowing us to grow without putting too much power and responsibility into the hands of a few people. Cloud services take away your agency and lock you in to their platforms while violating your privacy. Self-hosting is a way around that technology trap, and the skills you learn can also be applied to eventually host part of the Fediverse as well. If you're curious about what's possible, subscribing to !selfhosting@slrpnk.net is a great place to start.

Call for Moderators

Moderating a community here is a great way to build skills useful for online community management. We love to see new communities people are passionate about - but that's not the only way to get involved. Several communities are undermoderated despite continuing to attract activity. We didn't get around to closing any communities this month, but will likely start that again soon. Joining the moderation team will help keep the communities you love alive. The first step is joining XMPP chat and asking around. The moderators channel is extremely active, and a great way to coordinate and get support from us and other moderators. You'll also get a peek at what's likely to show up in the next monthly meta.

We are still planning to build a new a space for women on SLRPNK since we closed !twoxchromosomes two months ago. @punkisundead has started a discussion on Loomio to gather resources, and @schmorp has also joined the Fedi-admin guild to contribute. We are actively seeking more voices, as this is an important project, and the more people who cooperate on it, the greater chance it will have of success.

Open discussion

It’s now your turn to tell us what’s new! Any topic related to this community, our infrastructure, or the Fediverse at large is fair game. If you’ve created a new community, this is a great thread to tell us about it. All comments will get extra visibility up until the beginning of next month. Got questions? Ask’em!

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submitted 9 months ago by rikudou@lemmings.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it's actually pretty popular.

Do you have some that's really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?

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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by nefurious_krankstar@lemmy.world to c/imageai@sh.itjust.works
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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by _number8_@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

i can't stand megathreads -- no one reads these! no one wants their posts banished there!

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submitted 10 months ago by gamer@lemm.ee to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

The mastodon and lemmy content I’m seeing feels like 90% of it comes from people who are:

  • ~30 years old or older

  • tech enthusiasts/workers

  • linux users

There’s nothing wrong with that particular demographic or anything, but it doesn’t feel like a win to me if the entire fediverse is just one big monoculture.

I wonder what it is that is keeping more diverse users away? Is picking a server/federation too complicated? Or is it that they don’t see any content that they like?

Thoughts?

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Whats your such opinion (discuss.tchncs.de)
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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by muddybulldog@mylemmy.win to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)...

What you see via the UI isn't "all that exists". Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see "under the hood". Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won't normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.

Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.

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Inspired by the linked XKCD. Using 60% instead of 50% because that's an easy filter to apply on rottentomatoes.

I'll go first: I think "Sherlock Holmes: A game of Shadows" was awesome, from the plot to the characters ,and especially how they used screen-play to highlight how Sherlocks head works in these absurd ways.

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submitted 11 months ago by TinMaus@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

I'm going to miss AITA. Even if someone makes it a community, it will take a long time to populate.

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submitted 8 months ago by sv1sjp@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
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submitted 10 months ago by Kagathara@lemmy.ca to c/android@lemmy.world
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

hey folks, we'll be quick and to the point with this one:

we have made the decision to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. we recognize this is hugely inconvenient for a wide variety of reasons, but we think this is a decision we need to take immediately. the remainder of the post details our thoughts and decision-making on why this is necessary.

we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy is--particularly with federation in mind--basically since it began. i have already related how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we're being confronted with external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below).

an unfortunate reality we've also found is we just don't have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don't scale well. we have a list of improvements we'd like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible--but we're unanimous in the belief that we can't wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now, while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain.

aside from/complementary to what's mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by and large, boils down to:

  • these two instances' open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;
  • the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances;
  • our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in;
  • and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply don't care about what our instance stands for

as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this:

There's a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But it's not just that, there's a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it's really hard to trust and support who's around you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when there's more hostility around them. They'll even shut themselves off when there's fake nice behavior around. There's a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it's not just where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse, to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the same page about our ethos and right now we can't even assess that for people who aren't from our instance, so we're walking a tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn't sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe.

Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren't open to having strangers walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to undo.

and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it's in effect. but we hope you can understand why we're doing this. our words, when we talk about building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed decision.

this is also not a permanent judgement (or a moral one on the part of either community's owner, i should add--we just have differing interests here and that's fine). in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we'll reassess whether we feel capable of refederating with these communities.

thanks for using our site folks.

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Please note this is just a beta and there are going to be bugs, but it works and it works nicely. Have fun.

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Lemmy.ml has now blocked Threads.net

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With the number of people concerned about privacy, it is a wonder why chrome is even popular.

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Way to go, guys! (lemmy.world)
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submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by BuckRowdy@lemmy.world to c/reddit@lemmy.world

I was just browsing a thread on c/nfl looking for new mods. There were multiple 12+ year Redditors there offering to help.

Got me wondering. There are 14,000 of us in this community. How many of us are ten year plus users who have just had enough?

Edit: I didn't expect this post to be as poignant as it became. There are so many of you... I can't reply to everyone. I'm an 11 year user and have modded something like 150 subs over the years. I'm really sad too, but I'm finding that lemmy has most of the content I'm looking for, just needs more comments.

The API was a big blow, but removing awards on past posts and deleting coin balances is really dumb.

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submitted 9 months ago by onichama@feddit.de to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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submitted 10 months ago by CaspianXI@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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How i feel on Lemmy (programming.dev)
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This seems like a good place so far tbh

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submitted 10 months ago by o_o@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Hi all,

I'm seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I'm wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I'm pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.

If this isn't the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I'm happy to take this somewhere else.

Cheers!

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submitted 10 months ago by BlackRose to c/world@lemmy.world
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submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by lwadmin@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

Earlier, after review, we blocked and removed several communities that were providing assistance to access copyrighted/pirated material, which is currently not allowed per Rule #1 of our Code of Conduct. The communities that were removed due to this decision were:

We took this action to protect lemmy.world, lemmy.world's users, and lemmy.world staff as the material posted in those communities could be problematic for us, because of potential legal issues around copyrighted material and services that provide access to or assistance in obtaining it.

This decision is about liability and does not mean we are otherwise hostile to any of these communities or their users. As the Lemmyverse grows and instances get big, precautions may happen. We will keep monitoring the situation closely, and if in the future we deem it safe, we would gladly reallow these communities.

The discussions that have happened in various threads on Lemmy make it very clear that removing the communites before we announced our intent to remove them is not the level of transparency the community expects, and that as stewards of this community we need to be extremely transparent before we do this again in the future as well as make sure that we get feedback around what the planned changes are, because lemmy.world is yours as much as it is ours.

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submitted 9 months ago by Samsy@lemmy.ml to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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SLRPNK

1,274 readers
127 users here now

What is Solarpunk?

A SolarPunk Manifesto

Basic Rules:

For any community related question or to just test some function: !meta@slrpnk.net

Try our Photon & Alexandrite frontends.

We also host a lightweight frontend.

All accounts also work with XMPP chat automatically incl. our Movim client.

Learn more about us on our Wiki.

founded 2 years ago
ADMINS