Hello everyone!

I’d like to first start by welcoming all the new users who have decided to chose sh.itjust.works as their lemmy home instance. It’s wild to think that its only been 4 days since I’ve decided to spin up this instance and we are already nearing 1000 registered users.

During these last few days I’ve welcomed users from all parts of the world who collectively have created nearly 50 new communities on this instance alone.

Today I want to be transparent and share some of my thoughts, clarify some rules, share some concerns, answer some questions and most importantly introduce the two new instance admins that have been added over the last couple of days. So let’s get started!

New Admins

  • @smorks@lemmy.ca - Some of you may recognized this name from the lemmy.ca instance. This is in fact the same person. I’ve asked smorks to help out on this instance and he accepted. As the userbase grows having someone whos living some of the similar issues will be bring great value to this instance. We are stronger together!
  • @donut@sh.itjust.works - donut is a personal friend, new to the fediverse but has agreed to give me a hand should things get out of control. He’s a little quiet right now but he’ll open up soon enough.

Rules

As you may have noticed, there aren’t a whole lot of rules. This might need to change in the future but my goal as of right now is to keep it this way. Being respectful to all users no matter which instance they come from, part of the world they grew up in, personal believe or personal opinion is a absolute must. Our world is already in shambles, we don’t need another place for all of us to fight against one another.

  • Be respectful
  • No bigotry
  • No Ads or Spamming
  • No pornography

You’ll may have noticed that a new rule that has been added. No pornography. When pornography is introduced a whole bunch of legal implications need to be considered amongst other things like proper moderation, DMCA notices processes, etc. 4 days ago I would not have thought this to be a problem however I am not in a position to hire legal counsel and implement the elements required to not get this instance shutdown. So for now, no pornography. If the demand grows for this in the future and there is an opportunity to fill this gap I promise I will revisit this rule.

Donations

I’ve had a few users ask me whether they could start donating. I’ll admit I was caught off guard when that happened, thinking of how thoughtful people can be. When I started this instance 4 days ago, I did it because I wanted people to have a home away from reddit, a place where they could come and share interesting topics, debate, discuss and connect.

I’m by no means rich but I have chosen a career that puts me in proximity of things needed to run an instance like this one. It also does help that I really like servers and while some people might really like the latest limited edition sneakers from X company or the latest iPhone/Android device, etc…, I really really like servers, datacenters and networking.

I don’t have a plan for accepting donations today but seeing how this community is growing, I will need to consider it soon. You know what’s more expensive than running a lemmy instances for thousands of users? a failed marriage.

There are some other options that might be available such as looking for sponsors but I do want to keep this instance about the users and not about corporate so I’ll need to think hard about this one.

Whatever is decided I’ll make another post with the details.

Concerns

Let’s quickly talk about concerns. Most of you already know that many of the reddit mods are orchestrating a protest by blacking out many popular subreddits. Most of us anticipate a large spike in traffic towards our instances during the period of June 12 to 14th. If any of you were around during the Digg days, you may remember how the migration from digg to Reddit went. The early reddit days was filled with outages, performance issues, and frustration.

A lot of people people are looking for what might be the next reddit. We don’t knows if lemmy will be it but a lot of people will surely be giving it a shot. During that time many instances including this one will likely deal with some growing pains.

From a resources perspective my biggest worry for this instance is related to the storage. I have CPUs, I have RAM but when it comes to storage, well its an element that has been growing much faster than I had anticipated. I will be keeping a close eye on this however want to wave a little yellow flag so that everyone is aware until I work out a solution.

Q&A

What communities allowed to be homed here?

  • As long as it follows the rules above and doesn’t get any DMCA requests or jeopardize this instance from being shutdown or me in trouble. Go nuts!

What communities allowed to be federated over/subscribed to?

  • Same as the above and follow rules.

What am I allowed to link to in communities or text posts?

  • Same as the above and follow rules.

What kind of images am I allowed to upload to the integrated image host?

  • Storage is something that will likely become a problem in the foreseeable future. You all upload a lot! That being said, don’t upload copyrighted materials or anything that will get me in trouble!
  • YumChurros@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    Hi everyone. Reddit refugee here. I’m not tech-savvy so I’m posting because I’m a noob and testing this out.

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Heck, same. The narwhal bacons at midnight etc.

      Any idea what the rainbow pentagram thing is next to the permalink button above comments?

      • YumChurros@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Haha. Seems to take me to the top post. But I hadn’t really played around with that aspect yet. I’m still trying to find some established communities that fit my interests.

    • 5redie8@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      What’s up! Also a refugee. Hopefully this thing takes off, digging the vibes here. Less of a learning curve than I thought.

    • boogers19@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Now this is an example of one part I cant seem to figure out lol.

      I click that link and I leave sh.itjust.works and end up on lemmy.ml. And then I cant comment.

      But I do already know that I can go to that community thru sh.itjustworks, find that post, and then Id be able to comment. Feels like Im missing something.

      (and extra confusing in this particular instance: that post was made by a sh.itjust.works account and yet I still cant comment.)

      • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Firstly to clarify, that link goes to lemmy.world.

        No, you’re not missing anything, it’s confusing. I don’t actually know how to link communities in a way that they will be automatically opened through the person’s home instance, assuming that the home instance is subscribed, but I believe it is possible to do so. And if it isn’t possible now I believe it can be made possible.

        However, in this case it’s easy because we are both from sh.itjust.works, so I can link you to our own instance’s copy.

        https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12511

        Let me know if that works.

        Or you can use a link like the one below to go to the version of any community that’s hosted on your home instance. But if none of our users are subscribed to the community it won’t exist here.

        https://sh.itjust.works/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

        • boogers19@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Yeah… I understand all stuff after “However”. It’s that first part about linking to the proper instance of a particular post that is throwing me off.

          But, now I see what you are saying about .world vs .ml. The link goes to post on asklemmy@lemmy.ml hosted on the .world instance. I hadnt even realized we could jam 3 separate instances into one single post lol.

          (and yeah, the replacement link works. Thanks. Im waiting 2days now for my “subscription pending” to that community)

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            But, now I see what you are saying about .world vs .ml. The link goes to post on asklemmy@lemmy.ml hosted on the .world instance. I hadnt even realized we could jam 3 separate instances into one single post lol.

            Oh, wow lol I didn’t realize that it either. That’s my fault for giving a weird link. But it’s really just the one instance at a time.

            The original link goes to lemmy.world/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml, which is a copy of asklemmy hosted at lemmy.world.

            We have our own copy of asklemmy hosted here at sh.itjust.works/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

            I know you already understand that but just to explain for others following this thread.

            I haven’t had to wait more than a few minutes for subscriptions to load for me, not sure what’s going on with that

            • boogers19@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              So far all my .ml subs have been pending, none have gone thru. But they are all showing in my Subscribed feed. Im guessing it’s just growing pains this week. Or maybe even .ml is watching to see what new users will do this week? I imagine there’s gonna be a whole bunch of reddit refugees that’ll start an account and then forget about it in a few days.

              • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
                3·
                1 year ago

                I know the Lemmy.ml server is really strained right now. But I think that’s just a visual glitch because if its showing posts on your feed then you are subscribed.

  • gawdahm@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Joined today :). Seems like a really chill instance which I would expect from someone called The Dude

  • nectroxt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Hi everyone! This is my first post, so far I’ve enjoyed the platform, it’s very easy to get started, thanks for the server!. I’ve noticed that some communities don’t show up when I search, does anyone know why this is? Or does anyone know of a community directory or index?

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Copy/pasting from my comment lower down in this post:

      Sure! Every instance can have 1 of 2 modes:

      Allowlist: Every server not explicitly allowed is blocked

      Blocklist: Every server not explicitly blocked is allowed.

      This instance is set to blocklist. That means that unless it’s listed on the blocklist here than you can federate with it.

      In the “All” feed and in the community search, you will see every community that at least one person on this instance has subscribed to.

      If you want to subscribe to a community that is not from a blocked instance that nobody has subscribed to yet, you need to follow these steps:

      1. Get the full URL of the community (for example, https://lemmy.sdf.org/c/retrocomputing). You can search for communities in the community browser or in lemmy.directory.

      2. Open the “Communities” page at the top of the website

      3. Paste the full URL into the search, switch all search settings to “All”

      4. Wait 5-10 seconds for our instance to pull in the community from that site

      5. Click the federated link it gives you (https://sh.itjust.works/c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org, for example) and subscribe.

      That community will now always have the latest posts, comments and vote totals pulled in as soon as the other instance publishes them

      EDIT: Should probably mention that as soon as Kbin sorts our their technical difficulties, then you can use this exact approach to pull in Kbin magazines (https://kbin.social/m/cs, for example)

  • coderofhonor@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Just to clarify, individual accounts will be in trouble if they subscribe to communities on other servers that break the rules? Or are they blocked by default?

    • Tin_ghost@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      My understanding is that each instance has its own selection of content it allows to be hosted by that instance. But your username/password can log into any instance, and access that content. When you do this, the content is not transfered to the instance your UN/PW is from (your origin), but access to that content is granted as you have a federated log-in. What is brought to the origin instance is like a pin in a map that can then be seen by the origin server, and added to the origins directory for other users on the origin to see. Each instance has its own directory based on the pins that instances users have placed throughout the internet/fediverse.

      Back to your question, and this is my understanding of how it works. You won’t find any NSFW communities hosted on sh.itjust.works, but you can see & access nsfw communities from others (lem.my, lemme.one etc…) using your sh.it login. I think you as a user will be able to add NSFW to your feed, but it won’t be on the directory for others to find if the admins blacklisted that content/community.

      This is my first post on any of the fediverse, and I am partly posting this to see if I am way off base, so please correct me!

    • ScreaminOctopus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I don’t your personal account will get in trouble for subbing to rule breaking communities, but if the instance hosting those communities is blocked by this one you won’t be able to see those posts anymore.

  • noneabove1182@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Can you create a dashboard of sorts so we can all see the CPU RAM and storage usage? Would be highly interested. Also if you’re accepting donations of storage I have some spare drives 😅

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’m completely new. (Reddffugee)I would much rather contribute to a subscription/donation service than ad-supported. It would be great to see the estimated cost per user in a semi-real-time basis, and a goal for quantity of monthly fixed-cost subs. I’d happily pay a $5/mo sub, for example.

  • madsmith@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for hosting. As a former retired technologist, let me encourage you to consider that growth can follow a logistic growth curve, which can resemble exponential growth.

    I’d love to see this community succeed. But it’s long-term sustainability will need to account for the costs of keeping these instances running at scale.

    Would love to see someway that we the community can participate in supporting the continued operation of this community.