I started !programming.dev because I am a moderator of several 100k+ subs over on Reddit and I didn’t want my communities to not have a place to go if Reddit crashed and burned (even though it’s incredibly unlikely). The main sub I moderated (/r/ExperiencedDevs) for years wanted user verification to combat the spam that was newbies commenting and posting about things they didn’t really know or understand. This will be possible to actually implement on Lemmy, whereas reddit was closed source, and didn’t really care about their communities.
I am also a strong supporter of pulling control away from megacorps. We need more small to medium sized businesses on the planet.
For selfish reasons? I wanted to work on something new and have true ownership over it, the ability to build a community that worked together to build something without capitalism standing in the way. It might seem strange, but one of the first things I did was bring multiple other people on board to help me maintain the server, even going so far as to add domain managers to the domain name. This was all to counter the major questions people were asking around “what if the host decides they don’t want to host anymore?”. Well hopefully the programming.dev community is willing to take that burden if the time ever comes, even though I hope it doesn’t. I also wanted to start something similar to a coop, where ownership is shared, meaning users have incentives to make the platform better. I have lots of ideas around this, but this will never be possible on Reddit. It is quite feasible here.
I also had the chance to buy an incredibly dope domain name! https://programming.dev! Why wouldn’t I jump at that chance? And I get to even use it instead of let it flounder. So many reasons to host something like this, to build a trusting community, a safe space to have to let people talk about a shared love/topic/hobby.
This will be possible to actually implement on Lemmy, whereas reddit was closed source, and didn’t really care about their communities.
Just curious how you think you might go about this. Do you plan on contributing yourself, forking, or using the community to influence the direction/prioritization of new features?
All of the above! We already have a github org (github.com/programming-dot-dev/), have forked the repos, have users contributing to our fork where we will deploy, test against stage, then the programming.dev community, and then upstream the changes if people like them. I am already working on a poll feature to add proper polling support to lemmy (which they’ve shown that they do not want to add for some reason). Hopefully my poll solution is good enough that they will be ok with merging it in. Otherwise we might have to actually hard fork, rather than just use the fork as a testing grounds. I think polling is an absolute necessity on a platform like this. Especially for your last bullet point, having the community influence the direction and prioritization of new features! Many people will not create github accounts just to vote on features. Having native polling will help with that direction.
Honestly the domain name is a fantastic choice; Much easier to feel comfortable sharing links to my colleagues from programming.dev than something like “shit just works” or “lemmy world”
I started !programming.dev because I am a moderator of several 100k+ subs over on Reddit and I didn’t want my communities to not have a place to go if Reddit crashed and burned (even though it’s incredibly unlikely). The main sub I moderated (/r/ExperiencedDevs) for years wanted user verification to combat the spam that was newbies commenting and posting about things they didn’t really know or understand. This will be possible to actually implement on Lemmy, whereas reddit was closed source, and didn’t really care about their communities.
I am also a strong supporter of pulling control away from megacorps. We need more small to medium sized businesses on the planet.
For selfish reasons? I wanted to work on something new and have true ownership over it, the ability to build a community that worked together to build something without capitalism standing in the way. It might seem strange, but one of the first things I did was bring multiple other people on board to help me maintain the server, even going so far as to add domain managers to the domain name. This was all to counter the major questions people were asking around “what if the host decides they don’t want to host anymore?”. Well hopefully the programming.dev community is willing to take that burden if the time ever comes, even though I hope it doesn’t. I also wanted to start something similar to a coop, where ownership is shared, meaning users have incentives to make the platform better. I have lots of ideas around this, but this will never be possible on Reddit. It is quite feasible here.
I also had the chance to buy an incredibly dope domain name! https://programming.dev! Why wouldn’t I jump at that chance? And I get to even use it instead of let it flounder. So many reasons to host something like this, to build a trusting community, a safe space to have to let people talk about a shared love/topic/hobby.
Totally agree with the dope domain name. Not going to lie, a big reason for picking
programming.devwas to be /u/jim@programming.devJust curious how you think you might go about this. Do you plan on contributing yourself, forking, or using the community to influence the direction/prioritization of new features?
All of the above! We already have a github org (github.com/programming-dot-dev/), have forked the repos, have users contributing to our fork where we will deploy, test against stage, then the programming.dev community, and then upstream the changes if people like them. I am already working on a poll feature to add proper polling support to lemmy (which they’ve shown that they do not want to add for some reason). Hopefully my poll solution is good enough that they will be ok with merging it in. Otherwise we might have to actually hard fork, rather than just use the fork as a testing grounds. I think polling is an absolute necessity on a platform like this. Especially for your last bullet point, having the community influence the direction and prioritization of new features! Many people will not create github accounts just to vote on features. Having native polling will help with that direction.
Honestly the domain name is a fantastic choice; Much easier to feel comfortable sharing links to my colleagues from programming.dev than something like “shit just works” or “lemmy world”