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Consolidating on one Lemmy instance (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by danyel@programming.dev to c/rustlang@lemmyrs.org
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/24889

[Disclaimer: Lemmy newb here]

There are currently 3 Rust communities across 3 instances: programming.dev, lemmyrs.org and this one (lemmy.ml). I know it's still very early for the migration from /r/rust, but it would split the community if there are so many options and nobody knows which is the "right" one. Currently this community has the most subscribers, but it would make sense if the Rust community finds its new home in one of the other instances.

  • lemmyrs.org seems like the logical solution if instance-wide rules are paramount and "non-negotiable"
  • personally I would love a programming-centric instance and programming.dev seems like a good way. Rust is not the only language I'm actively using (unfortunately :)). Maybe there can be community-specific rules that "enforce" the Rust CoC and the Rust community can find a home there?

Either way, the current situation has the most negative impact.

Thoughts?

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[-] erlend_sh@lemmyrs.org 13 points 1 year ago

I'd prefer it was this instance, i.e. a top-level instance. What’s cool about running this threaded-links thing from the top layer (multi-instance), is we can have a nice collection of sub-reddits for key Rust topics that are big enough to carry micro-communities of their own, such as:

  • cli
  • wasm
  • networking
  • embedded
  • gamedev
  • security

Other instances can also have a rust community, but they'd be federated to this primary one.

[-] admin@lemmyrs.org 9 points 1 year ago

A few things:

  • Instances are like their own self-hosted Reddits with communities being the sub-reddits. We have (had?) r/python, r/rust, r/golang along with r/programming; we can do the same here with topic-focused instance (like this one). I can imagine there being instances like lemmygo.org, lemmypy.org etc if the Reddit exodus continues.
  • You don't need multiple accounts to access communities (sub-reddits) from other instances (reddit). A single account on any instance allows you to access communities from any other instance. The UX/UI is a bit wonky, but it works.
  • As @erlend_sh@lemmyrs.org pointed out, micro-communities like cli, wasm, networking etc can potentially become big enough and/or have specifics that are more suitable to exist on a topic-based instance.

Personally, I don't have any preference. I will simply subscribe to the community which is the most active on whichever instance.

[-] veaviticus@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

The downside to individual servers, and micro-communities, is the cost and maintenance of lemmy instance. Its more scalable, reliable and cheaper to have a bunch of relatively low-churn communities exist on one bigger instance.

The upside is that the rust community gets to own its own data. If programming.dev decides to shut down tomorrow, and posts and comments made there are gone. Lemmy doesn't mirror or cache... all that data lives solely on the server ran by somebody.

I'd vote lemmyrs at least for now until a governance and stability model is figured out to ensure these conversations don't go into /dev/null like /r/rust (sort of) did.

If say the Linux Foundation or a similarly large open source foundation (Apache, FSF, OSI, etc) decided to host a larger "open source" server, I'd consider moving there to improve discoverability and lessen the burden on the rust community itself

[-] jeltz@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed, there are advantages of having an own community. Especially until the people running e.g. programming.dev have a proven track record of being reliable.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Hi, creator of programming.dev here. What could we do to prove reliability to you? Would open graphs and metrics of the current state of the service help? Would current server costs and how much has been covered by donations help? Would knowing the names of everyone with access to the server, on the admin team, or access to the domain name help?

It seems to me like a user stood up an instance of lemmy and because it has rs as part of the name you might be treating it like the Rust community's, but to me, it's exactly the same as programming.dev, except it has a lot less chance of staying running.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

The upside is that the rust community gets to own its own data.

Well, sure, if you know who the owner of lemmyrs is, and if they follow all the other stuff you talk about here.

If programming.dev decides to shut down tomorrow, and posts and comments made there are gone. Lemmy doesn’t mirror or cache… all that data lives solely on the server ran by somebody.

Correct! Which is why I've already taken great pains to make sure that if something happens to me (owner of programming.dev) that the server continues to run. I already have someone else managing the domain with me, several people have access to the server. Backups occur daily. Is some sort of "legally separated backup where if I die the lawyers can hand over the db backups to someone else and they can take over" what you're looking for? I am trying very hard to make sure that the website does not depend on a single person to keep it running, but it seems like a lot of people want something to happen, but can't describe what that is.

[-] veaviticus@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Oh I'm not saying what your doing over at programming.dev is wrong or insufficient... Honestly I don't know what your doing to ensure the lemmy server exists long term (though its great to hear you've got some policies in place already).

I'm more thinking the rust community should evaluate options and vote, or some rust subgroup of the leadership should set criteria to ensure that another reddit-type event doesn't happen again (the home of this community must be open-source, with data backups publicly available, with a governing body and a line of succession or something, etc).

If programming.dev meets those things today, I'd say sure lets move there. I think its better to have a lemmy instance for a concept (computer science) than a specific topic (rust), but that's just me

[-] snowe@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Oh I’m not saying what your doing over at programming.dev is wrong or insufficient… Honestly I don’t know what your doing to ensure the lemmy server exists long term (though its great to hear you’ve got some policies in place already).

Oh yes, I completely understood you weren't saying that. I'm asking what we can do to make it more likely for the community to want to be at !rust@programming.dev! I want to do as much as possible! The rust community would be a huge benefit to others in the instance, and we think others will be more likely to want to work on the Lemmy project if the Rust community does join. Having programmers alongside each other will be really helpful to us all I think.

I’m more thinking the rust community should evaluate options and vote, or some rust subgroup of the leadership should set criteria to ensure that another reddit-type event doesn’t happen again (the home of this community must be open-source, with data backups publicly available, with a governing body and a line of succession or something, etc).

Yeah I'd love to see this! The data backups being publicly available might cause a problem (then your usernames and passwords have a chance of being cracked 😬), but other than that, yeah I completely agree!

[-] ideonella@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

I think it would be really cool if the Rust Foundation had a Rust Lemmy instance!

[-] unreliable@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago

On reddit was very common having multiple communities about same topics, you just subscribe to all. Overtime each would creates its own personality or vanish. It is a natural process.

[-] zhenbo_endle@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

I'd like to support to merge into one community in the current situation. For me, it means that I don't need to visit three communities every time I refresh lemmy. Besides, I agree with op that new users may be confused by which community to join.

I'd vote for moving out of lemmy.ml, considering it is already overload https://lemmy.ml/post/1147770

[-] lightsecond@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah. The longer we wait to make this decision as a community, more the cost of merging and the load on lemmy.ml.

[-] Aloso@lemmyrs.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'd like for the r/rust community to completely migrate to lemmy, and for the r/rust moderators to become moderators of the chosen lemmy instance.

I don't care which instance it will be, although I do like the idea of the Rust community being fully self-sufficient and self-governed by hosting our own instance (but still being interoperable with others). The main downside seems to be that people who are active in multiple communities will need multiple accounts, and creating an account requires

  • a unique username (too bad if the name you use on another instance is already taken here)
  • a password you need to save in your password manager
  • approval by the instance owners/moderators, which makes this not only tedious, but also slow

And if you use a mobile app as well as the web app, you need to login twice after the account was approved.

On another note: The lemmyrs.org instance currently has several "communities", which are more like categories. They might be a substitute for Reddit flairs, which should allow people to filter what they see on their Reddit homepage. However, Lemmy doesn't support flairs, and on r/rust they weren't actually used that much. Most people didn't set a flair when posting something, which kind of defeated the purpose. I think we should come up with a proper solution for this at some point.

[-] danyel@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago

Actually you don't need multiple accounts, you only need one in a specific instance and can interact with other instances (My account is registered at programming.dev).

The UX is extremely wonky and I had to look it up, but you can go to the search in the top right of your instance's main page (not the "communities" subpage) and search for communities and filter by "Communities" in the top left

[-] lightsecond@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

The rust instance can federate with others so users can use the same account everywhere. The OP has an account on programmy.dev, you have one on lemmyrs.org, and I have mine on lemmy.world and yet we are all having a conversation on this thread without issues.

Owning the instance gives admin permissions to whomever is running the server but also the headache of maintaining uptime. If we move this community to programming.dev, the rust community would be “tenants” on a common instance. This option would be a no-brainer for smaller language communities (where my brainfuck enthusiasts at?), but if rust community decides to completely move to Lemmy, it might make sense to have a separate instance.

In terms of raw scaling for Lemmy and pure efficiency, AFAIK, fewer large instances is better than lots of smaller instances that federate with each other.

But the question is less about efficiency and more about trust. I’d rather have this community on programming.dev (first choice) or lemmyrs.org (equally great except for the fragmentation) depending on which admin the community is more comfortable with.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

I’d like for the r/rust community to completely migrate to lemmy, and for the r/rust moderators to become moderators of the chosen lemmy instance.

If the /r/rust moderators join programming.dev I will immediately make them mods of !rust@programming.dev!

[-] hunger@lemmyrs.org 5 points 1 year ago

Who is actually running lemmyrs.org?

Is that officially associated with the rust project or maybe even sponsored by the rust foundation?

Is it planned to integrate with the rust forum in any way?

[-] flibbertigibbet@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

programming.dev sounds like the best option to me too. But I'm just a lurker

[-] Snaggen@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My impression is that it is just someone who created a community for each language they could think of. But if programming.dev is a popular instance that is well managed, then sure. But for now, it seems that lemmyrs.org have more users and momentum.

EDIT: On a closer look, it turns out my first impression was quite wrong. programming.dev seem like a quite well managed place, so I do not have anything against using that as a base for rust if that is what the rust community chooses.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 15 points 1 year ago

Hi! Creator of https://programming.dev here. I am actually the main mod of /r/experienceddevs and created the instance as a new home for all programming topics. One of the communities I was (am?) most excited about hosting is the Rust community. Along with that I really thought that having a general purpose instance that is easy to type is more ideal than several split communities.

People are more likely to participate if the website is easy to remember and type (e.g. reddit, twitter, facebook) compared to all of these very very hard to remember names (not that lemmyrs.org is hard to remember, but many of the other instances are, and I don't think putting the name of the software in the url is a great idea, but that's neither here nor there).

Finally, I have already put significant work into making sure that even if I no longer want to host or if something happens to me that the community can keep the site running without me! I have numerous admins, a github org, a chat community, we are working on improvements to the server to make it more stable (we rolled out cloudflare today), and hope to commit many upstream changes to lemmy to improve it.

Of course, if any community is going to choose to run their own instance I would expect it to be the Rust community, but also would hope that the community could look at my track record and moderation style and see that programming.dev would be a good instance for them to call home. I frequent the /r/rust sub, even though I am not a rust dev (I've built a few projects, but nothing good), I've always wished I was and I thought this was a good chance to finally become one.

[-] stephenc@waveform.social 5 points 1 year ago

Of course, if any community is going to choose to run their own instance I would expect it to be the Rust community

Haha, I suppose you're right about that one.

[-] Snaggen@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

As I mentioned in later comments, my first impression was nothing more than a first impression. When I learned that it was not just some random person that threw up an instance but some respected mods I circled back and had a closer look. And at a closer look, I admit that my first impression was wrong, it seems like a quite well managed instance with great potential. I actually created an account that to evaluate that, to see where I finally will end up when the dust have settled. So thanks for your effort, and sorry for my poor first impressions. But it really doesn't matter what I think, what matters is where the prominent rust front figures choose to hang out, I hope that will include one of the lemmy forums.

[-] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

I completely understand! I don't expect people to trust random strangers on the internet, so I was just commenting with information about me so that others would know what was up.

But it really doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is where the prominent rust front figures choose to hang out, I hope that will include one of the lemmy forums.

I completely agree. Thanks for responding back and I'm hopeful that the Rust community is able to create a new space that we're able to participate in, wherever that may be.

[-] danyel@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

My impression is that it is just someone who created a community for each language they could think of.

Actually it's the /r/experienceddevs subreddit mods who created that instance. I had never heard of the subreddit before though but they had a bit above 100k subscribers

[-] lightsecond@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I love(d?) that subreddit. Relatively good quality discussions compared to most of other programming subs on reddit.

[-] Snaggen@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

But the thing that will decide this is where the leaders and contributors to rust will choose to post their updates, and take their discussions. So, for now I guess lurkers and regular users will have to follow all and see where this will be.

[-] beejjorgensen 3 points 1 year ago

I was wondering if this would self-resolve due to the fact that most people choosing which community to join will tend to choose the one with the most people, driving it even farther into the lead. And the other ones would eventually just be deleted...?

[-] wit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I read your edit but I am still going to make the point: programming.dev has more users than lemmyrs.org at the time of writing this:

  • lemmyrs: around 130;
  • programming.dev: 1.3k;
[-] thomask 2 points 1 year ago

I suspect parent was talking about the number of subscribers to the Rust community on each server (currently 174 on P.D, 591 on lemmyrs). Which server people choose as the "home base" for their account so to speak is an interesting reflection of that server's maturity/impact but not the major driver of community activity.

[-] wit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Ohh, I stand corrected!

[-] matt@lemmy.koski.co 3 points 1 year ago

Agree that one is best I suppose, but on my own little instance I can subscribe to all 3 and interact with all of them just fine. If I had to pick one I would go programming.dev, it would expose rust to programmers not yet using it and would let users on that instance see communities for languages they otherwise might not check out.

[-] variants_of_concern@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

its just like reddit, when there are multiple subreddits for the same topic, like r/mantids and r/mantis. eventually new users will probably just pick the one that has the most people and work itself out that way or just join both

[-] tamato@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

I saw this issue too, and it's a common issue throughout many instances migrating from other subreddits

Thanks to that, people have started discussing a way to "join" servers efficiently.

I'm currently a bit busy, but when I get time, I'm looking forward to contributing to the open source project!

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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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