Beehaw Support

Compiling this data was not as hard as I expected, let's go through the data and the shiny graphs!

Age of Beeple

Most are above 24! Seems we got an older average age compared to a lot of social media. It would be interesting to see how many came here with experiences from independent forums before Reddit.

Where Beeple reside

This one's a big graph. Though we can notice most people are from the US. Would be nice to see more countries represented though a big part of it likely has to do with language. (You will need to open the big graph in another tab, it's too big to show properly.)

Gender identity of Beeple

So, as expected, mostly men. However, less than expected which is nice to see. There should be outreach to at least equalize this.

Sexual orientation of Beeple

This is kinda surprising. It seems we managed to get a lot more LGBTQ+ people than expected considering most of you all come from Reddit - so this is nice to see. This is most likely because of our focus on a safe space.

Whiteness of Beeple

As expected, mostly white which is unfortunate. I think there's outreach to be done in that regard as well.

Neurodivergence of Beeple

We seem to have a really surprising amount of neurodivergent people! Definitely nice to see.

Beeple with disabilities

I.. have no idea how to interpret this data so I'll just say, shiny graph.

Beeple's awareness of the Fediverse

Most knew about the fediverse but still a good 20% had not heard about it so glad to see you all managed to find your way here!

How Beeple have been dealing with Beehaw

It seems most people feel relatively confident in their ability to use Beehaw and most people seem to enjoy it. That makes me really happy to see. Feels rewarding, feels good.

Conclusion

I wanna thank everyone for the feedback about the survey and its questions - we'll do better next time! I'm glad we did this survey because it shows the areas to work on in terms of outreach! Thank you all for your participation!

quick dual announcement

New Communities

we've tabulated the easiest part of the survey (other results coming later) and we're pleased to announce that, in the future, we'll be creating six new communities. these six choices can be stratified as:

most popular, community picks

• World News
• AskBeehaw

hand picked, also popular with our community

• Tabletop Gaming
• Anime and Manga

hand picked, base exists in our community for it and distinct enough to take a chance on

• Vegan and Vegetarian[^1]
• Parenting

in the specific case of World News, the !news@beehaw.org community will be converted into the "World News" section, and a separate !usnews community will be spun off for US-centric news.

these communities will be created in batches of three. you'll see WN+US news conversion/AB/TG first, then A&M/V&V/P about a week after that.

as for communities that didn't make it, these are best fits for now:

• School & Education: !humanities@beehaw.org
• Camping & Hiking: !greenspace@beehaw.org or !environment@beehaw.org or !chat@beehaw.org
• Fitness: !chat@beehaw.org, occasionally !betterment@beehaw.org
• Photography: wherever it fits
• TIL: !chat@beehaw.org
• Travel: !chat@beehaw.org
• Spirituality: !chat@beehaw.org and !humanities@beehaw.org
• Health: wherever it fits
• Sustainability: can mostly go in !environment@beehaw.org
• AntiWork/WorkReform: !socialism@beehaw.org
• Retro: wherever it fits

Community Moderators

this also means we're taking on new Community moderators. as with last time: this is not a full time job and we don't want it to be, but this is also not a completely trivial commitment either, so please only apply if you're comfortable with making that commitment. (if you think it's becoming overwhelming or too much for you at a later point, that's different and we can discuss that then.) our community mods haven't had many issues though, so i doubt you will either.

What is expected of community moderators?

I'm sure you can surmise, but to be specific:

• Encourage and promote respectful and constructive discussions, and address any behaviour that goes against our community's spirit to be(e) nice.
• Assist people by answering their questions, offering guidance, and helping them navigate the platform effectively, ensuring they feel heard.
• Where possible, give us and/or your fellow active mods concerns, improvements, or insights you have from your section of our community. 

What powers do community moderators have?

You'd be expected to use these responsibly, obviously:

• The ability to remove or hide posts, comments, or other content that violate our community guidelines.
• The authority to issue warnings to users who breach our mantra, and in severe cases, temporarily suspend their accounts.

We generally encourage a compassionate approach to moderating, though. Unless someone is clearly unproductive, we encourage you as a mod to engage in constructive dialogue before banning. And if you don't have the energy for this, you can flag a post to bring it to our (or another mod's) attention.

Additionally: blatantly misusing these or using them maliciously will be instant grounds for demotion, and in the latter case likely permanent banning from the site. Do not do that, please and thank you.

If I'm selected, how can I report stuff to the admins?

On site, you can flag it and leave it for us to deliberate. You can also reach one of us by DM on here.

If you need to immediately contact us for mod stuff, our main hubs of operation are Discord (where we have a specific channel for community mod reports) and Matrix (which is pretty relaxed and easy to follow). You can also use a DM on Beehaw itself.

How will mods be selected?

Hand selection. In the future we may supplement hand picking mods with another method—any mods selected by that method would most likely serve on a temporary basis (and that would be made clear to them on appointing).

Applications can be made here.[^2]

[^1]: because i've already seen moderately concerning posts w/r/t to this: please do not make us regret this community. it is currently this grouping or nothing. [^2]: we are working on a non-Google platform here but but our first alternative failed to materialize today and there are easily half a dozen other things we need to prioritize right now (including the big 0.18 update, which had its timing on here derailed by a crippling bug). we'll get to an alternative when we do. if you do not want to use the form, DM me and we can arrange something.

A few quick notes on discussions the administrator team has had, since we've fielded a lot of questions in these particular fields. We're posting this both for transparency and to help us limit the load of having to respond to each of you individually.

• We would like to become an official nonprofit at some point, but there is a cost associated with this, we are not lawyers, and we might need to change where/how we collect donations to do so.
• We've upgraded the server approximately 7 times now. We're trying to balance fiscal responsibility with server costs. We are aware that digital ocean isn't the cheapest server and we are trying to be conservative with estimates and give ourselves extra runtime at whatever tier we are on. We're also hoping that the upcoming lemmy version will solve a lot of our CPU-bound issues.

We are aware of the following bugs:

• the "report created" indicator flashes in the bottom left corner for some users randomly, even non-moderator users
• sometimes, briefly or without a refresh, the username in the top corner will not be your own; as far as we can tell this is purely cosmetic and is not a security issue
• sometimes the post you're in changes to another post for no clear reason

hey folks. here's a new FAQ on the community, since the currently pinned thread is a bit haphazard and crammed now, and we've had more time to go over stuff.

What is Beehaw?

in summary, we're a community that wants to cultivate a sense of real belonging to something, to foster meaningful conversations, and to ensure everyone feels valued and respected in a way that isn't the case with other social media out there. we've thought and written a lot about this. if you'd like more than that summary, we strongly encourage you to read the following essays, which explain how this community is run, what we prioritize in running it, and why we've designed it this way generally:

• What is Beehaw?
• The spirit of the rules
• Beehaw is a Community

you can also read more on our Docs website

This sounds very cool! How do I join?

you can register here.

you don't need to write a whole essay, however: please answer the question fully, and try to engage with at least some of the content above/on the sidebar before you register.

this is not personal, but we've grown a lot and are primarily interested in users who really care for the philosophy of our community. if you don't answer the question fully, you will likely get denied or caught in registration limbo when we have a backlog of users.

How long should I expect to wait to be approved?

now that we have email working: anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. you should get notified if you've used an email to sign up either way. make sure to check your spam folder to be safe this may be an issue for some users. if you did not use an email to sign up, try logging in after about 24 hours, and then again after 48 hours.

if we receive an influx of users you may get caught in registration limbo by failing to answer the questions, and it may take longer to get back to you than the 48 hours listed here.

if you have issues with anything, please report them in the following thread!

I'm in! How can I keep Beehaw running, or otherwise contribute?

our instance is 100% user-funded. you can one-time donate or become a monthly donor here. you can donate anonymously both ways. as far as we're aware cryptocurrency is accepted by OpenCollective, it's just more laborious and you'll probably have to contact them to clear it.

if you have volunteer labor or advice you're willing to give us on how to keep the site running smoothly, we also generally appreciate that. our Matrix and Discord communities are the best way to offer that stuff to us.

How do I help keep the community running smoothly?

be considerate! think about the things you say and how you want to say them; be kind and charitable; don't assume the worst of people; but above all: Be(e) nice!

it might seem trite, but genuinely we've found there is no better distillation of what we want to accomplish here than that ethos. if something makes you feel like that ethos is being violated, err on the side of caution and report it (on desktop it's the flag button in the three dot menu on any post). it can't hurt. so far though we've found most people kind of know what we mean, and we're hopeful you'll be able to pick up on that too.

as for non-moderation ways you can keep things running: contribute to discussions! share stuff you find interesting! contribute your expertise and help out folks when they ask for it! it's okay—and very understandable—to lurk based on the toxicity commonplace on other social media, but we really do try to make this space as welcoming as possible to everyone here and we hope you'll find it a safer place to come out of your online shell.

What else should I know?

we always take feedback. while we can't promise any changes, you can provide thoughts and comments on just about anything on the site in Beehaw Support, or on Discord or Matrix (where we maintain real-time chat). we try to get a sense of what the community wants and needs all the time, so we'll frequently be asking for input from you to help inform our decisions.

downvotes are disabled on this instance and will probably always be. we find them unproductive. communities cannot be made by users on here. we do take feedback on what gets made and when to make communities, as a part of the above point. you can always find a running list of communities we have at this link, or under the Communities button on desktop.

we are all volunteers, and this is not a job for us. we would like to not have it be one, so we can just be members of the community with all of you. please help keep it that way!

in the very, very long term, we aspire to become a co-op or similar, as a part of fulfilling our ethos.

as with the last thread, feel free to sound off on other questions you have. i, other mods, and community members will try to get to them as able.