Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to do a federation check-in.
So far these are the instances in question but please use this post as a suggestion for other instances to either federate with or defederate from or to comment your thoughts on federation in general.
kbin.social / fedia.io
Please comment to vote:
indicates you want to federate with all the instances listed above
indicates you want to defederate with all the instances listed above
indicates you would like to defederate with some and federate with others (please include what instances you want for each)
Here are some relevant posts/comments:
https://hexbear.net/comment/4515862
https://hexbear.net/comment/4510892
(Nath is an aussie.zone admin)
https://hexbear.net/post/1592684
https://hexbear.net/post/369410
(we would selectively not federate with their /c/196 community)
kbin.social and fedia.io are kbin and mbin respectively which is very similar but also distinct from lemmy. These are the two largest instances but we may look to add more in the future. There is an issue with those two as they deanonymize the modlog and allow users to inspect the upvotes for a post/comment. If users vote to federate with kbin/mbin instances and we experience moderator harassment they will be defederated from immediately.
My personal opinion follows:
I think that lemm.ee primary worth is the 1.7k daily active users.
programming.dev has active programming communities
aussie.zone has a lot of australia specific communities
lemmy.blahaj.zone has specific queer communities
kbin.social and fedia.io value is from userbase
https://the-federation.info/platform/184
https://the-federation.info/platform/290
https://the-federation.info/platform/73
hexbear is 1.75k users per month compared to .ee 3.6k and kbin.social 4.6k
Removed kbin and mbin due to moderation / user self-deletion federation problems
I think this is what all the DEFED EVERYONE folks are missing. Hexbear will die without new users. We need to get new users somehow. Federation is that somehow. Voting against any and all federation is voting against the future of Hexbear.
hexbear seemed to do fine for years without any federation.
I wouldn't say fine. Hexbear managed to tread water and it was a tonne of manual work to do drives offsite that put Hexbear in spaces where it might grab a few users at a time. What Hex needs is systemic growth caused by the organisational structure of the site, this then provides growth without labourers actively working on generating the growth. The site has in fact grown a little bit since federation, compared to pre-federation where it was just breaking even with frequent drives, often performed by individuals taking it into their own hands to do too.
deleted by creator
I disagree, we were getting plenty of new users before federation from outreach on reddit and other places, and just plain old word of mouth. And frankly I don't think bringing in new users should be our primary goal, at least not above fostering a safe and welcoming space.
This was a tonne of manual labour though, often performed by people taking it into their own hands out of personal concern/anxieties for hexbear. If the organisational structure of the site provides growth we're much better off. We have actually grown a bit compared to pre-federation too, which shows it works.
I don't think new users means discarding the latter. There's no suggestion on my part that we weaken hexbear's rules. New users that fit in will provide the growth, new users that do not will get themselves banned.