About two days ago we found a bug with the registration system on lemmy. Because of this we have updated our registration process a few times, and cannot deny any applications as the person registering does not receive any message and cannot re-apply.
We currently have several hundred people that we are waiting to deny, and some unknown amount of people that we denied prior to finding this issue which we would really like to contact and give them a chance to register as they didn’t write enough in their registration for us to really evaluate if they were a good fit for this instance.
If you’re a developer please take a look at this github issue and please work your magic to help fix this problem.
As an aside, we also have a list we’ve been working on for enhancements that would make moderating and administering this instance a lot easier, and enhancements we think users would enjoy in terms of UI and UX. We’d love to share these as well as facilitate a discussion to surface more ideas (and we plan to in the future), but right now we need to focus on the most pressing issue to us running this website, whether people can create an account here and participate.
We want them to fit in with our philosophy, so we’re looking that they paid attention to our rule, our ethos, and our ambiance. To be clear, we’re not making judgements, but if you leave it blank or only talk about federation, we can’t be certain that you will vibe with how we moderate and what we’re trying to do here.
Cool. Roughly how many % of applications do you deny? I’m starting to wonder if I should be stricter with my applications for the sake of “user quality”.
I’ve found many applications simply fail to answer the questions. I guess this should at least be a minimum requirement.
I think we’re approving around half, but I’m not sure if that’s kept up today. To share my thoughts on the matter I’m extremely concerned about the possibility of this place moving the direction of echo chambers for a variety of reasons. I’ll probably make another philosophy post in the next week or so, but I’ve been very overextended between this, work, current healthcare issues (I’ve had 2 surgeries in the last two weeks 😩), stuff for pride month (I’m a leader at my work’s pride ERG, moderated a speaker today, speaking for a group next week, gotta help with SF pride, etc), and in general being busy in my social life as well so I haven’t really had a ton of time to contribute all my thoughts or put them on paper as I’d like to.
Oh my goodness! Please, please, please look after yourself and your health and wellbeing first and foremost!
It sounds like we’re a lot alike, and I burned myself out overextending myself, like you’re doing, trying to help others so much for so long…my health issues got worse and now I can’t help anyone because I can barely even take care of myself! and it’s an awful feeling when previously helping others was my whole thing and reason for living.
This may be unsolicited and TMI, but just wanted to caution you about what could happen. Look after yourself, please! You deserve it! Remember that you can’t help and look after others if you don’t help and look after yourself. Thank you for everything you’ve done and are doing already. Hang in there. <3
I greatly appreciate the feedback and I have taken a few steps back this week to ensure I’m not overextending myself. Thank you for looking out for me 🥰💜
That’s great to hear – and well said @Zoop@beehaw.org. Burnout’s a huge risk in situations like this, so very glad you’re taking care of yourself.
anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2, yeah
Understandable, thanks!
Please take care of yourself first!
Hey, sorry to bother you again but I have a follow-up question. Maybe feel free to ping someone else that might be able to answer.
How do you deal with users just signing up somewhere else and then interacting on beehaw anyway? I mean isn’t that effectively just circumventing the application process?
Probably most people interacting in our space are doing so through this method. It’s something we have always paid attention to. In the long, long run we will likely have to do something about it.
Practically speaking we will likely have less tolerance for users like this who misbehave and we may have less discussions with them and simply ban and remove their content quicker.
Do you have any solutions in mind? I’ve been trying to think of something but nothing quite feels right.
Maybe having a setting like “Allow federated users to post” that you could disable, and then users from outside the instance can only comment, not post. That would at least cater the discussion somewhat to what the instance wants to talk about. It still feels very restricting though.
We don’t have any tools to treat different instances differently except defederating at this time