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Based on the first post(or second, the first were deleted), today is the day this instance went online! Not much of a speech person here, so thanks to anyone who still stick by, and thanks to @stormy001@monyet.cc for keep posting all this time!

In another news, update and migration will happen either this sunday and the next.

Or around 12am GMT+8. Downtime will be around 1 hour long.

It's been a while this server got an update, last time it's a few months back, where we updated to 0.18.4, so when is the new update gonna be?

Soon, but first, the issue

The server been under heavy load since 0.19 came out, presumably caused by federating each time the other instance updated, so monyet.cc will goes down intermittently from time to time for no apparent reason. Browsing through the github, it seems like there's also extremely heavy load issue with 0.19, and some instance experienced significant heavy load after update, so there might be chance that the server will have a lot more down time due to heavy load after updating.

Still, an update is needed, as the new version provides useful tools for user and admin, the benefit is currently outweigh the risk.

So with that in mind, i'll try schedule the update around next week, will announce when it happen.

What about the down time yesterday?

It's been know internally for quite some time that the storage space is almost full(mostly occupied by pictrs) and need an expansion, and then it happened, database can't function so it shut down, and everything shut down with it. I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but by the time i noticed it it's in the early morning so it need some time for the tech guy to free up his schedule and work on the issue, expanding the storage from 150gb to 200gb(we all do it as hobby, so no full time commitment expected). It will go on for now, but the same issue will crop up sooner or later.

So why can't I do something about it?

First of all, i'm not a technical person, only dabbled in some light programing before, and have no knowledge on self-hosting, so i need to rely on someone knowledgeable to not break stuff, and that someone is @naomi_kho and another guy behind the scene which he wish not to be named. When i joined the admin team the task i'm given is to manage the site, and when dcx(the person who set up this instance) went AWOL, i wasn't given the access to the server at all. So when stuff like this happen i wasn't able to see it coming. Basically, the current active member of admin team is only down to me, and two other passive member that will help when requested. For now, it is how this instance function, and it's functional for the very least.

A way to move forward?

When this instance is set up, dcx mentioned he will pay for the server/domain for a year, and since he went AWOL about half a year ago, the fate of this instance has become increasingly uncertain come the one year mark, we simply won't know whether he intend to keep this running for longer than that or will he pull the plug in June(when this instance reach one year mark). Fortunately, a friend of mine is kind enough to let us host it on their server for free, but the catch is the server will be in Malaysia, and it will be bounded by the local law.

So the challenge now is to migrate the server. By the tech guy calculation, to migrate the current 150gb of data from one server to another takes about 3 hours at best, 8 hours at worst. Not a big deal since it's all just wait time, but it's better to lay down the plan now than later i think.

Secondly, the domain. Just like the server, it's registered and paid by dcx, while it's set to auto-renew, the uncertainty is nevertheless there. For this one, i'm not so sure whether we should get a new domain or stick with it. If i'm not mistaken, changing domain will break federation, as in we will change from one skin to another and all the other instance will recognise us as a new entity, it will be akin to starting from zero. Still, imo it wasn't too big of a problem if that happen, so i'll leave it up for suggestion.

Lastly, tiny rule change

Register as a new user here doesn't require an email for better anonymity, and that will not change for the near future. But the downside of this is spammer love using this place as a base for spamming other instance, so from now on all new account registration will be set to approval only and it will be approved within a day, this hopefully will slow down spammer, grifter, brigading, astro-turfing, etc etc. Also good for filter out inflammatory username.

So if you haven't noticed yet, this instance is down for the past few hours, long story short, the database shutdown and everything crash with it. And it's now up. That's it, that's the story in short.

... I want to try the response time for this channel.

@Naomikho@monyet.cc @Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc The bot is dead again.

Hi admin,

Is there any ETA on upgrading monyet.cc to lemmy v0.19.x ?

It's been a while we update the rule since the inception of this instance, and i think it's time we get a proper rule set for (hopefully) better handling of situation. Here's the 4 general rule to be enacted:

1)Be Nice

This one is self explanatory and intentionally open-ended. Just get along with each other and we'll be fine.

2)No Bigotry

This one is also self explanatory. Malaysia is a multiracial country and sometime we tend to rub shoulder with each other, sometime stuff getting heated up. Argument is fine, disagreement is fine, as long as it stay civil and no one get banned. Bigotry include but not exclusive to: Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Xenophobia, and so on.

3)No Porn

Do not post, share, or distribute any pornographic material. NSFW discussion(in words only) is allowed, and should be marked as NSFW.

4)No Ads & Spam

Do not spam this Instance with irrelevant shitpost or ads. If your intention of creating an account or community is to flood this place with shitpost, then it break this rule.

All the rule above also extend to the username, community name, banner, and avatar.

Now, lets talk about community that's without mod and community that's without post + inactive mod. There's a few community that fit the description, namely !quran, !hadith, !fiqh, !backlash76, !islam, !wanita, and !islamichistory. For these communities, if anyone want to claim it, do let us know. By the 8th of September, 2023, if no one claim it or no activity from the mod, it will be purged.

I'll further elaborate on this topic in the future.

Next, we talk about community creation. We have two paths to choose from:

1. Open up like how it used to be: anyone can create any community as long as it adhere to the rules, or;

2. Request only: user will have to request for the community to be created, but as long as the community in question isn't breaking the rule and the general vibe of this instance, it will be approved.

I'm leaning toward 1 and only goes to 2 for temporary measure, but i accept suggestion.

As for prohibiting community creation from new account, we might need to either remove it ourselves, make a bot to auto-remove community that's created by new account, or request lemmy dev to have this function to be added. For now I'll leave it to two option.

I guess that's all. Do discuss and give suggestion about anything above. It still haven't set in stone.

Currently, I have to manually schedule the posts for communities based on mods' requests, and I understand that this isn't a good thing to sustain in the long run. Hence, I have made up my mind to create a UI for this feature instead so all community mods can schedule their own posts!

This is only the initial ideation, and the final result may differ. The second scheduler design has some UI components reordered, but most of the idea remains the same. ~~I will try to add useful tooltips so you don't have to keep clicking on the help button for instructions~~

Please give your opinion on the following:

1. Is there any UI component that is difficult to understand or feels unnatural to you? Is there any naming convention that feels unnatural?
2. If you are a site admin or a mod of multiple communities, would you prefer to manage all scheduled posts within a single screen, or manage them by community? Which one makes more sense to you?

P.S. I do have plans for more tweaks/enhancements for the bot and other future features(when we need them) but I will work on things based on their rank of importance. I think this feature will be quite helpful to community mods(as one of the mods were confused last time on how to get posts scheduled for their community) so I decided to work on this next :) P.S.S. MonyetPanel will have more features in the future too, but releases may take a very long time as this is currently mostly a one-man project by me.

So...what should we do? Newer comm seems uninterested to reply to comments bringing up this point, but if you thank them for their posts they're very gracious

This is a long-lived post intended to serve as a general guide and coordination point, for people interested in building communities on monyet.cc! (Context)

We're posting this in order be linked on the sidebar. But very happy to discuss / take input and questions while it's on the frontpage!

Essentials / tl;dr

• Create away!: You're welcome to build communities of all kinds here (small exceptions below). They don't have to be Malaysia-specific!
• (Temporary) Please rate limit your posts: Please post at most 3-4 items per day on a single topic. This is a short-term measure; see below for full details.

Purpose and context

• Our shared goals: Community mods and the admin team have the same goal: we want our communities to sustain and grow!
• Our roles: The admin team's main role is to create opportunities for users to visit and give us a try. But we need communities' help to convince them to create an account and stick around!
• Need for coordination: Users will only stick around if the whole experience is compelling: Sticky and unique content, good discussions, a rich default frontage. Achieving this requires coordination between our roles.

Community policies

Disallowed communities

• Communities for sharing NSFW image content (text content is fine): Policy

Temporary posting limits

• The problem: The Lemmy frontage algorithm is currently buggy: it is not good at blending content from different communities.
  • If you post multiple things at once, they appear as a solid block on the feed.
  • If you post a lot of content on one topic, this floods the frontage and drowns out our other content.
• What this means: The above makes the frontage worse for everyone and hurts our site's growth.
  • Your posts will be downvoted: Users hate a frontage full of posts with zero comments + all on a single topic!
• Temporary measures: Until this is fixed: Please try to limit activity to 3-4 posts per day on a single topic (and space these out across the day if possible).

  • This will be fixed soon: There's active work happening on this. Reddit's algo doesn't do this, so we're confident that this is solvable.
  • We will reach out and remove posts if needed to maintain the diversity of the overall frontage.
• Sorry: This is definitely not ideal. We want you to be able to post as much as you want too! :(

Growth Protips

• Keep an eye on metrics: You want users to participate in what you're building. Engagement drives growth, and growth drives more engagement. What kinds of posts receive the most comments and upvotes?
• Start with fewer rules: In most cases, it's better to create rules as they prove necessary. Having fewer rules encourages more participation! And when you add them, your users will understand why.

Coming soon(tm)

• Higher-quality metrics
• Community Discord
• Process for promoting a community on r/Malaysia
• Expanded community-building guide

Context: This is a test of looping the community into our decision-making process via smaller posts on !meta. No promises that this will be a regular thing; this was time-consuming to write up. And likewise do let us know if this feels spammy!

After some bouncing around with the team internally, here is what we've converged on for NSFW communities.

Key considerations

Arguments for

• Sexuality is a huge part of the human experience, and so we should support this to some extent
• Reddit proves that it’s possible to host this content without degenerating
• This might be a kinda fun way of growing the userbase if done right!

Arguments against

• Unlike reddit, we don't have infrastructure to shield mods and the admin team from dealing with unsavory and traumatising content
  • People will always push boundaries. So if we allow explicit content, there will be people who post CP and other illegal stuff, e.g. leaked, personal, and private
  • Some of this may create reporting obligations: even without legal obligations there are moral obligations
  • This is not the job our team signed up to do
• If NSFW content starts becoming a big draw this might have unwanted effects on our userbase composition
• Hosting NSFW content may risk attracting unwanted official attention, especially if we grow.
  • This puts the site and the admin team at risk.
  • Counterpoint: It's possible we're actually safe as we're semi-anonymous and not hosted locally. But we haven't got the spare capacity to work through the legality + exposure risk right now.

Draft decision

NSFW text content: Generally welcome

• Gives us most of the benefits without most of the risks.
• (There are erotic novels in every MPH in the city right now!)

NSFW image content: Mature content is fine, sexually explicit content is not

• Lots of media seem to converge on two separate lines which divide the above (broadcasting, ESRB, YouTube, Pixiv, etc)
• Basically, thirsty content is welcome, but pornography and explicit content meant to be sexually gratifying is not
• For specifics, we'll probably refer out to the YouTube policy. It draws very clean and useful lines on this, and is obviously battle-tested. (We might archive a copy of this for easy reference)
• We can always revisit this choice as we grow, but this only seems likely if (a) Lemmy starts providing safety infrastructure we can lean on, and (b) we get much more clarity on our legal and other exposure

General limits: Don't be a scumbag

• Regardless of format, if you post CP, leak personal and private content, etc, you're going to get a ban (and possibly other consequences)
• I don't feel we need to set out a full list of scumbaggery here at this stage. And we hopefully won't have to for some time yet

(Thanks @weecious and @cendawanita for contributing initial thinking on this!)

What happens now: We'll let this sit for a week for public comment, and make updates if needed. And then we'll mark this as finalised and link to it from sitewide policy places.

Additional thoughts welcome if any!

Hi all, just an update from this post, where we asked for input on site direction and growth. We took these on board, and did some research into what other country instances and forums are doing.

Here's what we propose – input welcome before we start making changes!

1. Theme weeks, aka bootstrapping and promoting communities to r/Malaysia

• Malaysians have interests which don't get much airtime on r/my and r/mys, such as badminton, cars, dating, football, gaming, property, etc.
• If we can bootstrap a community for a topic, we can promote that to the main sub and see if this brings users across.
• This may be as simple as making sure the community has a dozen posts + a few dozen comments before promoting on r/my. So we might try some "theme weeks" to get things rolling!
• How about !malaysian_dating as a fun and slightly clickbaity first test?

2. !Malaysia channel

• We noticed that lemmy.ca, aussie.zone, and feddit.uk all have a !Country channel, and this is their largest community
• We think this is like r/malaysia on reddit: the definitive way for Malaysian nyets on the lemmyverse to get Malaysian content on their feed
• So we've set up !Malaysia. Perhaps we can treat this like r/Malaysia ~~and start crossposting country-level content there!~~ (Edit: Some complications, we're still figuring out the optimal pattern for this)

3. Upgrades and mobile apps

• We're hearing a bunch of feedback that Lemmy is hard to get into, especially on mobile.
• 0.18.1 finally dropped today with a bunch of quality-of-life fixes (it's a week late). ~~So we're taking the site down tonight to upgrade! Should be about 15 mins if nothing goes wrong.~~ Upgrade complete!
• ~~Once we're up to date, we'll add recommendations for trusted iOS and Android apps to our switching guide!~~ Recommendations added!

4. Improving moderator coordination

• The admin team's main role with growth is to create opportunities for r/Malaysia users to visit and give us a try. But once they get here, we need communities' help to convince them to create an account and stick around!
• And this will only happen if the whole experience is compelling: Sticky and unique content, good discussions, an interesting default frontpage.
• We feel this may need closer coordination with community mods. What works best? Should we start a Discord? Long-lived !meta post? Some other channel?
• We're also working towards getting you community stats. Subscriber growth charts, comments per post, pageviews, uniques, etc.

Input and ideas of all kinds super welcome. Thanks for joining us on the journey of building this place up!!

This post is for bouncing around thinking and ideas around future plans for monyet.cc!

Where we are now

As of 25 June, we have achieved a minimum bar for success vs. our goals on this post.

• We have proven that our community can defintely set up shop here. Hundreds of people have switched over very smoothly: posters, readers, regulars, everyone.
• What this means: We have built the boats. If reddit dies, either suddenly or gradually over years, we won’t lose the community we’ve created together.
• Before reddit there were lots of cosy forums across the internet. In the worst case, we can be one of them.
• A huge thank-you to everyone who has created an account and taken part in this experiment. Especially those of you who have been helping to make this place lively and fun ❤️

The next challenge

r/Malaysia comes back online tomorrow. Can we keep this place alive and healthy, and build it into something that can thrive independently of Reddit Inc.?

• This seems much smarter than just declaring success and putting the site in hibernation.
• monyet.cc could be a sister community like our Discord and r/malaysians, except not be 100% dependent on Reddit for new users!
• We know it can be done, because lowyat.net does it: they have literally millions of users.

What helps our chances: This week we've confirmed that this platform can serve the community in many ways that reddit can't. Because we now have "subreddits":

• Local language communities, like 中文嘛嘛档 and Berita
• Local interest communities, like AMG, Pets, Meme Everyday. Food hunting, meetup groups, relationship advice, students, bargain hunting, etc.
• Local classifieds! Job boards, buying and selling, dating / personal ads, promoting local artists, newtubers, businesses, etc.

Big questions

1. Direction: What do people think about this direction? This is still very young thinking.

2. Growth: Having all of this good stuff depends on us convincing lots of users to regularly use monyet.cc. Any thoughts on how to do this?

• Our current best idea is that instead of competing with the types of content on r/my, we could try to be a complement: focus on stuff we can't offer there.
• For example, we remove a lot of classifieds, newtubers, etc. We could start redirecting all this here.
• What kinds of content might people enjoy coming here regularly for?

Thanks again everyone!!

Please use this post to share suggestions and feedback on everything to do with monyet.cc. Constructive criticism is super welcome!

If you're seeing this on the frontpage: FYI the purpose of this is to be a long-term suggestion box on the sidebar. But in the short term we'd love your input as to how you're finding monyet.cc so far!