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?

  • matt@lemmy.koski.coEnglish
    3·
    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.

  • erlend_sh@lemmyrs.orgMEnglish
    2·
    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.

  • zhenbo_endle@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    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

    • Snaggen@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      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.

        • stephenc@waveform.socialEnglish
          2·
          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.orgEnglish
          1·
          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.

      • wit@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        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@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          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.

  • lemmyrs@lemmyrs.orgMEnglish
    1·
    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.oneEnglish
      2·
      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

        • veaviticus@lemmy.oneEnglish
          1·
          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

      • jeltz@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        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.

  • Aloso@lemmyrs.orgEnglish
    1·
    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.devOPEnglish
      1·
      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