TL;DR: Do you think that a self-hosted instance of Lemmy might be usable enough for me to use as a discussion forum for my online classes?

Hi, I’m a HS teacher. Like many schools around the world, mine will be starting the academic year with a distance learning model.

I’m looking for a platform to host asynchronous discussions with my students this year.

I like the reddit/lemmy model of structured discussion and think it would be very useful for in a distance/asynchronous learning environment. I love the simple lemmy/reddit model of structured discussion for this. It’s better than what I’ve seen in LMS’s (flexible, easy to use, etc.)

Do you think that Lemmy might be usable enough for me to use as a discussion forum for my classes?

I would not be using Lemmy as the main LMS for my class, just as an occasional or ongoing discussion forum.

It would be a ‘real world’ use, so I care about usability and easy onboarding for non-technical users, and of course I don’t want my server to break, BUT **the contents would never be mission-critical. ** Disruptions and even full collapse of the site would not be the end of the world. I would like the option of using Lemmy for certain kinds of assessment (did you contribute substantively? did you follow the norms of reasonable discussion that we talked about?), but I could totally cope if the worst were to happen… the point is the conversation.

Me: I’m a redditor with some slightly crufty experience as a linux sysadmin. I expect installation to be possible and documented, but I can troubleshoot, if you’d all be so kind to listen if I get stuck. Once the school year starts I won’t have lots of time to invest in maintenance.

** Hosting: ** I’d host this on my own machine at home or (more likely) using a $5-$10 VPS.

Federation: I would not be planning to take advantage of the ‘federated’ aspect of Lemmy, at least at the beginning. An isolated site is better for this use case.

**Any comments or advice? Has anyone tried Lemmy for classes of students? **

Edit: If I have <150 users and pretty low usage overall, will 4gb of RAM be enough on the server? Would 2gb? ~~ I currently own something like the Value Server here 1 core / 2GB RAM / 40 GB storage? ~~ The Lemmy Install guide doesn’t mention specs.

Edit 2: I currently have a ** Linode Nanode (1GB: 1 CPU, 25GB Storage, 1GB RAM).** This is certainly too little to run Lemmy, no?

  • nutomicMA
    4·
    4 years ago

    Lemmy has really low hardware requirements, so either of those servers would be more than enough. But one problem is that we dont support invite links or anything like that, so you can only choose between completely open signups or no signups. So you will probably have to find a workaround for that, like making the site only available on an internal network, or putting HTTP auth in front of it.

    • Future Me
      2·
      4 years ago

      But does Lemmy have closed communities? Otherwise, the content is visible to people outside of school, which I’d be uncomfortable with.

      • nutomicMA
        2·
        4 years ago

        We will implement that eventually, but it will take a while. You could use HTTP auth in front of Lemmy, but that would be kind of ugly.

        • care_lessOP
          1·
          4 years ago

          Thanks. This is good to think about. If students have anon usernames, I don’t think I mind them having a public-visible discussion.

    • DessalinesA
      1·
      4 years ago

      Yep. I think its still probably fine to use for those purposes tho.

      One option you could do @care_less@lemmy.ml , since closed signups and private communities are a long way off for us, is to create the server, make all the accts for your students, close signups, then give them that info.

      Honestly tho I probably wouldn’t worry about that step, bc if someone starts participating and you don’t know who they are, you can easily ban them.

  • CycliCynic@lemm.ee
    2·
    1 year ago

    If I am being honest, maybe but probably not. Lemmy, being federated, means that anyone else on another instance would also have access to that instance. You definitely can force an application to be able to sign up there, but I am unsure about stopping other users from posting and accessing the information. I’ve not set up a server myself as a note.

    My main concerns come from a few places.

    1. The information you would be providing on lemmy is likely considered to be owned by the school you work for as they are technically paying you for it. I would ask someone about the legality based on where you are.
    2. Personal information could be, even accidentally, posted and available to many users.
    3. There are likely a lot of school approved options, though likely not free. They should, however, have the correct level of security, reliability, etc.

    Overall, it’s something that may need a more in depth risk vs reward assessment, especially for potentially containing PII.

  • code@lemmy.mayes.io
    2·
    1 year ago

    What problems does lemmy solve that a normal forum wont? I would only consider this if its unfederated as if you federate it then you are opening up your communities to the outside. At that point look at forum software as well

  • MrWiggles@prime8s.xyz
    1·
    1 year ago

    My Lemmy instance is running on a vps of very similar size to yours. I anticipate possibly needing to upgrade the size, but from what I can tell an instance of that size should be able to host up to 300 or so users pretty seamlessly. I’d say go for it! The ansible configuration is very easy to set up, although getting the config files to work is tricky. Feel free to visit my progress and struggles that I’m documenting over at !server@prime8s.xyz, and I’ll do my best to document things as I go.