Thank you for clearfy. Good thing to know.

The comparison to Wikipedia is a really good one.

There's a reason I've decided to contribute to whatever "primary" Lemmy server I end on.

Infrastructure costs money, and so does the admins time.

Particularly in these early stages, really clear and transparent communication and plans are key I think.

Nice to see some info on the sidebar links, hopefully will be combined with posts and further info as things progress.

Help people buy into supporting the service they use, but knowing who they are supporting, why, and what their support via Patreon enables.

I think a lot of people would be happy to pay small amounts, but what are the running costs, and what is the roadmap and requirements and cost to scale and improve performance etc. What happens to additional funds over and above the running costs? (Fair compensation for time should be a thing!)

Another consideration is aside from the financial side, what other support will be required to scale and what are plans for that - additional admins, any other mods for "official" communities etc.

It's a very exciting time, delicate but full of potential!

A great post that I wholeheartedly agree with.

Just as with Mastodon / Twitter, the services may look very similar but what many fail to grasp immediately is the culture is different (in a very good way!).

Thanks for the reminder! I signed up at sdf.org because I saw that r/bbs had moved over. As soon as I saw SDF's website, which hasn't had its look updated since the mid 90's by my eye, I knew it was the one for me. I can tell they've been struggling a bit under the load but I appreciate so much that they're hosting an instance and I have confidence they'll get it all running smoothly. They're a non-profit and I'll be donating as soon as I'm able.

I do worry, though, that as the fediverse grows many of the instances won't be able to scale up and will drop out. I'm not an admin or sysop and know nothing of how this works on the back end, so hopefully those fears are groundless.

While I understand what you're getting at, users can be viewed as "the product" if they are contributing content (posts, comments, votes, and other forms of engagement) and "the customer" if they are consuming this content in any way.

Without content or readers there would be no Lemmy, just like for Wikipedia with no editors or readers there would be no purpose for that site either. The terms "product" and "customer" aren't intrinsically related to monetary value.

I’m actually paying monthly to help with server costs. What am I?

If you're not paying for it, directly or through donations, you are the product. If you're not paying for it via donations, someone else is paying for you. Nothing really changes.

Put another way, this is a commons. You share the job of maintaining the commons, or you recognize that someone else is supporting you and you pay it forward when you can. Nothing is free, and we can lose these spaces if we don't take care of them.

Let’s make lemmy the best community in the world without corporate greed!

This is so sweet and wholesome that I might faint from a sugar OD!