There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring.
Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.
In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps.
Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee.
Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running.
Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion.
All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful.
Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base).
The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around.
Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future.
Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
Selfishly, I would like to see beehaw remain on the fediverse. I enjoy the community, the curation, and desire for strong moderation. It is a great window to the broader fediverse link aggregator community. Beehaw’s ideals and structure clearly appealed to many Redditors and the like. The concept of federated communities seemed appealing, and beehaw is an important voice in the evolution of the moderation of a federated network.
However, the sacrifice that the admins have had to put into making the platform survive while the software finds its uncertain way through a mountain of growing pains seems unsustainable (just my pov through the last 3 months) - not just on the technical side. There’s that saying - when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. It’s hard to see how moving from Lemmy to something more sustainable, if it exists, would be the wrong move.
Painful decisions rarely come with a flashing light that scream “now’s the time” - but the loss of your major technical contributors sounds stunningly close.
Edit> fixed a typo or two