Recently there seems to be some of misunderstanding what the lemmy.ml instance is about, especially from newer users.

Lemmy.ml has always been a niche site, and it will most likely stay this way. We don’t have any intentions to turn it into a mainstream instance, or set a goal of getting as many users as possible. Our goal is simple: make an instance that people like to use. I would say that we have been successful in this, but obviously it is impossible to satisfy everyone.

The reason for this is that @dessalines and I are paid to develop Lemmy, while donations from lemmy.ml users only make up a negligible part of our income. Besides, having more users would force us to spend more time moderating, and less time for development. Lemmy works quite differently from big tech sites like Reddit in this regard: while they get more money with each extra user through advertising, for us it is the opposite. So we would much rather have a smaller, non-toxic, and friendly userbase, than a large one.

Part of the problem might be that lemmy.ml is described as “flagship instance”, which can certainly be interpreted to mean “mainstream” or “general purpose”. I struggle to come up with a better, more accurate description. If you can think of one, please comment here.

If you dont like the way lemmy.ml works, thats okay. Federation exists exactly to solve that problem, let different groups have their own instances, with their own rules and political views. You can see the list of existing instances, and instructions for setting up a new one on join-lemmy.org.

In particular, I would like to see someone (or a group of people) create a mainstream, or liberal instance. That should help to avoid further drama, and avoid attempts to turn lemmy.ml into something that it is not. @dessalines and I would certainly be willing to help with any technical problems that such an instance runs into, and include it on join-lemmy.org (just like any other instance that meets the code of conduct).

  • @pingveno
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    3 years ago

    My wording probably wasn’t very clear. There would be a set of site-wide rules, then two or more optional suggested CoC’s depending on the desired flavor of community. So in a community that’s devoted to LGBTQ+ people or non-political topics (e.g. tea, cats), it would be appropriate to pick the more restrictive CoC to produce a softer, friendlier environment at the price of self-censorship. But in a political debate space, it would make sense to have a looser CoC to get a diverse set of opinions for the community to mull over. The optional CoC’s would purely be to facilitate creating communities.

    The idea is to create some consistency across the instance without forcing a single set of rules on everyone. The /r/moderatepolitics moderators have found that people who are new to the subreddit often run afoul of our rules, particularly our interpretation of what constitutes a personal attack. Having a common set of rules would at least create some consistency from community to community.

    • @nutomicOPMA
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      53 years ago

      Ah I see. For lemmy.ml the current way of doing rules works fine in my opinion, and is more flexible than your idea. But of course you are free to do things differently on your own instance.