So far, I like what’s been built here. There are a few things I’d change, but they’re not dealbreakers. My main concern is the voting system and how it works. Otherwise, Lemmy seems like a solid option. I’m not sure how much voting can be disabled or changed on an instance.
I’m considering either hosting a Lemmy instance for nightash.net, where I currently run a traditional forum, or building something closer to the architecture I described here .
I’d appreciate feedback, especially from people who might be interested in using it.
This is quite a turn of events. Glad to have you joining us.
I notice you’re not actually writing this message from lemmy but piefed.
Piefed has many features lemmy does not so ensure you choose the right fediverse software for your own needs.Make sure you have some proper protection for the signup would be my main feedback, those that allow completely free registrations quickly get infested with spam bots and then their instance get denied federation by the other instances.
What exactly are your concerns with voting?
On any fediverse software, ActivityPub is going to be sharing your vote records. PieFed gives you a little more control and lets you lock down those votes to only be shared with your own instance, with “trusted” instances, or with everyone.
With Lemmy you can create an instance that forces it so that downvotes are not an option.
With PieFed you have a little more control. You can create a community that accepts downvotes from:
- Everyone
- Nobody
- Community Members
- Local Instance only
- Trusted Instances
End users across both Lemmy and PieFed ultimately decide how they view content in their feed and whether votes factor in at all.
Even if you disable downvotes on your particular instance/software, that doesn’t stop other instances from tracking upvotes/downvotes in their own way, locally. At most the main instance hosting the community won’t be federating out the downvote information from one instance to another.
The way you describe topics in your anti-echo-chamber forum sounds like it fits better with the way PieFed handles Topics and flair on posts, but it’s different enough that I can sort of see what you’re getting at.
As far as controlling how spaces/topics are organized, and looking at your chart, which instance would ultimately be in charge of that? Would it be the largest instance and smaller instances are expected to follow? What if a smaller instance organized the topics in its own way?
The way PieFed handles this is that each instance is in charge of their own Topics. Users can only view the topics that their instance provides, although they can be organized in a similar way to one another.
Thanks, that helps clarify the differences between Lemmy and PieFed. My concern isn’t mainly who can see vote records. It’s that votes can influence which posts and comments people see.
My main issue is that people often use votes as likes and dislikes, even though they’re also meant to help moderate content by handing some of that responsibility to the user base. In practice, that can be abused. I’m not exactly sure how Lemmy calculates scores or how much they affect visibility, but if downvotes were purely cosmetic, I wouldn’t have the same concern. Mass downvotes can bury good posts, while mediocre posts can get boosted simply because they’re popular.
Users can choose how votes factor into their feeds, and disabling downvotes locally won’t stop other instances from using their own votes. I’d still want reactions to be cosmetic, or at least never used by the protocol to rank or suppress content.
The topic and flair idea overlaps with what PieFed already does. The part I’m still trying to work out is whether spaces should be entirely local to each instance or whether instances could optionally share directory entries. I don’t want the largest instance to control the organization, and smaller instances should be free to organize things differently. A shared directory, if there is one, would need to be optional and not authoritative. I haven’t figured out the governance for that yet.
My concern isn’t mainly who can see vote records. It’s that votes can influence which posts and comments people see.
Set your default sorting to “New Comments”, which is identical to how forums do it, ignoring votes entirely.
You can also disable downvoting if you wish.
I’m not exactly sure how Lemmy calculates scores or how much they affect visibility
I’m pretty sure Lemmy doesn’t consider downvotes beyond 3. Also voting doesn’t affect visibility, just sorting.
So the score can’t be downvoted to extreme negative sorting, there’s a limit.
Users can choose how votes factor into their feeds, and disabling downvotes locally won’t stop other instances from using their own votes.
Sort of. If the post/comment comes from one of your users and you have downvotes disabled, then your server will decline the downvotes, so other instances won’t see those declined downvotes.
If you still want to make changes you could consider making pull requests for additional config options, or keeping a soft fork
Maybe worth considering moving to Mbin instead? Piefed from what I can tell is somewhere in the middle of the two.
Otherwise, if you self-host, put the limit to some astronomical level so no human would reach it. Or comment the limit out if possible.
I’m not sure how much voting can be disabled or changed on an instance.
I don’t know how much protection is built in Lemmy, but I guess you would be defederated quickly if votes are changed.
There are a number of Lemmy instances that have downvotes disabled and are not widely defederated. Blahaj, and reddthat are two that come to mind.
Beehaw too
Yeah I don’t think people defederate based on what happens on your own instance, only what flows to other instances.
