to start: after some consideration, we’ve altered our entry question a little bit so that entry is not guaranteed. during the daytime you can basically expect waits of 30 minutes or less when it comes to approval/disapproval, but overnight it’ll be anywhere from 6-12 hours. just FYI

if you’d like to introduce yourself without it getting lost in all the posts already made, i just made a thread for that over here

our sidebar should give you most of the information you’re looking for about us, but to reiterate some: we are pretty relaxed here, but we have a well carved out understanding of what we want to be. if you would like more elaboration on that, you can find elaboration on that at length in the following two posts:

for some less lengthy and more relaxed elaboration, see the discussion in the comments of this post.

as for funding: we are 100% user-funded. if you would like to contribute to our ability to keep the website up, you can donate on OpenCollective, which supports both one-time donations or monthly donations.

a few other questions occasionally pop up like “why do we have the set of communities we do?” and “why can’t people make their own?” (the latter is a feature of lemmy). for elaboration on that, you can see the following post and the discussions here. we are open to suggestions and creating communities as demand sees fit; see also discussion here.

downvotes are disabled on this instance and that’s a thing we’re not liable to change. if you’d like elaboration for why that is, see this comment. this may be a point of friction for some coming from reddit, but i hope you’ll understand why we’re doing it even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.

if you’re interested in our governance to this point and a brief idea of our long term goals, see the comment here.

feel free to sound off on other questions you have; i’ll try to update the OP with those and our ability to answer them as time goes on.

  • Glad to have another excuse to drop a walled-garden platform. After a few months my mastodon feed has become more engaging than my twitter ever was, and I’m looking forward to joining some communities of excellent people here!

    • This place is way more alive than when I signed up, I’m getting excited!

      I’ve hated walled gardens for a long time and I’m glad to see a lot of users are heading for federated alternatives. It strips away all of the weird tracking and algorithms and just lets us interact normally.

        • Yeah it’s so freaking weird. Any reasonable person building a reasonable social network would promote interconnectedness and positive social behavior. Yet all the major social networks seem to promote angry behavior and angry people. I’m so glad that more and more people are choosing to “leave the matrix”. I would love to see if future where everything social media is federated and algorithms are optional at most.

          • my guess is its that way because it drives more attention to the site sure drama can be harmful to the person but for the site its a goldmine of people going to see whats happening and seeing ads and driving up usage metrics

        • Yes. It’s surprising how different it is when it’s just a generic algorithm.

          Most platforms got progressively worse over the last decade and being here makes me realise how far we fell.

  • Been with Reddit since the early days, just after the migration from Digg. This is my first federated service and I love the idea. I don’t use social media outside of Reddit so while I heard of Mastadon, I didn’t really know what it was. Big companies like to run stuff into the ground.

    • I’m really liking the idea of Lemmy.

      Mastodon, like Twitter, I just don’t really “get”. Why follow people? I want to follow topics, ideas. Centering conversations on who started them, rather than what they are about, seems strange.

      • I never understood Twitter or used it much except occasionally to follow links from news reports or check on the status of sites that went down. I am prone to writing longer posts than fit within the character limit and also like reading more in depth content than you get with such a short character limit, so mostly Twitter didn’t seem like my sort of environment.

        Even so, I was curious about the exodus to Mastodon and tried it and Calckey out. I found lots of introductions by scientists and started following their hashtags and following individual scientists in a variety of fields that I was curious about and some of them provide links to pretty interesting articles and books in their fields. I am starting to understand the appeal of following people. Sometimes the right people can provide an inside look at a topic or serve as a curator of decent quality links relating to their area of knowledge that you might not be exposed to through lay people with the same interest.

      • You can follow hashtags on Mastodon. If you find yourself interacting with anyone in particular, it can be nice to follow them to broaden your interactions, but that’s not required to get something out of it.

  • I’m glad there’s a free, open source, federated version of the thing I’ve been using for years. 4 years on digg I believe, and 13 on reddit. The more I think about the history of discussion forums like this. It probably should have been federated in the first place rather than trying to be a centralized thing.

    anyway, glad to be here.

  • I’m a reddit refugee too. It’s so interesting to see that almost all the comments are 1) from actual people, and 2) conversing in way actual humans might if they weren’t on the internet.

  •  uthredii   ( @uthredii@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    Message to the new users:

    Communities like this struggle to get started without corporate backing and marketing money. Once we hit a critical mass the quality of the content and number of users will keep increasing.

    Please help by:

    • spreading the word about beehaw.org and LemmyNet in general.
    • try to contribute by commenting/posting.

    Relevant links:

    Reddit mods announce the api update

    Link to the apolloapp thread

    Link to r/programming thread

    Link to r/technology thread

  • Hi all. Another refugee from reddit that just joined today. Thanks for letting me in!

    I haven’t given up entirely on reddit, but I’m getting pretty darn close. Been a redditor for nearly 13yrs now. I’ve also been on Tildes for 4yrs now. I’ve tried various reddit-likes over the years including Imzy and Voat (before it turned into a raging cesspool).

    Anyway, let’s see how this fediverse stuff goes. Not sure I entirely understand how federated services work, but excited to find out.

  • Hello everyone, another Reddit Refugee saying hello!

    A bit of history, I was on Digg, and after they ruined that I joined Reddit (how many years ago was that already??). Lurking around ever since.

    I really do appreciate the civil and social attitude here-- let’s build a great, open and accepting community!

  • Ahoy! I originally joined here a few weeks ago, when Reddit first started rumbling about charging for API access, but didn’t really post anything until today.

    So hello all!

    Quick question: At the top of this thread it says that there are 55 comments, but I can see maybe 1/3 of those. Where have the rest gone? I commented on another post that had 4 comments, but I couldn’t see any of them…

      • So, having done a bit more digging, it’s not Safari. Arc is exhibiting the same behaviour.

        To make matters more annoying, I have replies that I can see in my inbox and reply to, but if I try to load them under their posts, the posts won’t load. Again, in Safari and Arc.

        • With the release of Lemmy 0.17.2 there are language settings that are frustratingly confusing. I still can’t wrap my head around it. You could try going into your personal settings, here at Beehaw, and see if you can figure things out.

          • Ah! I just set. my language to “Undetermined” and I can now see your reply to me in the music thread, which I couldn’t before. Except now the other comments have disappeared…

              • I think I’ve figured it out… I selected all the languages and hit save.

                I guess the problem is that some people leave it set to Undetermined, others set it to English when they post, so a user’s individual setting will only show comments tagged as one or the other.

  • My first comment in this community.

    Hello. I’m just another Reddit refugee (I know, I’m not original). Thanks for allowing these rafts to get ashore, and sorry for the 500 error. I guess the influx of so many of us arriving here now can be blamed for that. Let’s hope we can also contribute to keep this a good place. Hey, older members here: any good advice for us to do so? Thanks!

    • Hey, older members here: any good advice for us to do so? Thanks!

      Honestly just participate and be nice. So far we haven’t run into any real drama and have had exceedingly little moderator interaction. Please read the posts in the sidebar if you find yourself with time to really understand our ethos so you can help ensure this place stays nice and moderator actions are at a minimum 💜.

      Most of the complaints and suggestions have been around activity, so if you feel inclined to comment for any reason, even just to say “thanks for a wonderful article”, I think many people appreciate the validation and support.

      •  Senuf   ( @Senuf@beehaw.org ) 
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        1 year ago

        Thanks a lot for your answer! I guess it all comes down to common sense and being nice. As for the first, I’ll try my best. As for the second, it’ll be much easier, I tend to get along with people. Special thanks for a very prompt answer!
        Regards from far away (I’m guessing here).
        :o)