Petition for lemmy.world to close registrations.

youarehurtingthefediverse@lemmy.world to Fediverse@lemmy.world – -37 points –

I just realized that none of the comments or posts I made in the last week from my instance are getting to lemmy.world.

I went to see if I my instance was defederated. No, still showing as connected.

I then went to see if I got blocked or banned. Nope, my username is not showing up in the modlog anywhere.

Is it because my instance is small? I guess not, because I can interact with people and communities from anywhere else just fine.

At the moment, the only plausible explanation I have is that lemmy.world is overwhelmed and dropping messages from smaller instances. They do however everything in their power to keep more users coming up.

Yeah, I get that they were being attacked. I can only imagine that getting DDOS'd is not fun, and worrying about the Schmoes on the smaller instances is not a top concern.

But even in the middle of these constant outages and attacks, the lemmy.world admins are still keeping registrations open? Why? Wouldn't it be better if they encouraged the users to move out of the instance to reduce the load? Isn't the whole point of decentralized technologies to be, you know, decentralized?

I shouldn't have to come here, create an account and make things even more centralized just so that I can tell people that this attitude is hurting the fediverse.

I wouldn't be so pissed at this if it weren't for the fact that some many communities were created here and is making this particular instance a crucial part of the fediverse, but the admins seems to be more worried about getting their user count up than the health of the overall system.

Please, admins, the more you go with this unstable federation and open registrations, the more of an incentive you are creating to centralize this further here. Help the fediverse and help yourselves. Close down registrations and focus on ensuring that everyone can access the communities that are being formed here.

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Why is it so vital for you to keep registrations open? Can you please help me understand the logic behind it?

Instead of mentioning your instance so we can help you you seem to have other motives.

Edit: but if you want the logic. We had discussions internally as well as with other instance admins about this and the conclusion was - even from other instance admins - that closing registrations would be a bad idea. Currently a lot of people are sent to lemmy.world from reddit and 3rd party apps for example. If people land here and are not able to register they might not look into it further and give up because it is too complicated or overwhelming. So that would actually be worse for the fediverse. That is why we want to make the sign up page more informative and provide options.

Perfectly fair. People coming from Reddit specifically need to be eased into the fediverse and saying "whoops sorry we're full / closed" isn't great.

Ideally if we want things balanced people should be on multiple instances but I'd rather several slower, bigger instances in the meantime until the community expands.

Cheers for the work you guys do!

If people land here and are not able to register they might not look into it further and give up because

Sorry, that's a really bad excuse. Lemmy allows to have custom messages/taglines on the registration page, why not just add a quick paragraph saying "registration is closed because this server is overwhelmed, but here is a list of servers that you can use".

Make it a rotating list, change it every 2-3 days if you want.

So are you here to make us close registrations or do you want help with your problem?

I'm also here to expose bad excuses.

As for help, @Wander@yiffit.net has pointed me to the right direction, and he didn't need to know my instance to do so...

Iā€™m also here to expose bad excuses.

Not being able to help someone who is refusing to provide technical detail is a pretty damn good excuse in this industry.

If your goal is to expose the bad excuses of others, step one is to put in as much effort as you're expecting from others. :P


Edit for good measure: (links fixed, forgot about direct linking comments from outside of a lemmy instance)

  • Your instance was not federating with lemmy.world. [1]
  • You assumed that the blame had to rest on lemmy.world because you had "eliminate[d] all the possibilities [you] had at hand". [2]
  • You made this post to vent about a bunch of unrelated nonsense and refused to provide technical detail that would assist the admins in troubleshooting. It's a given fact that your privacy is your choice, but it's also a given that you shouldn't be a dick about it if you choose to withhold details, even from PM. For the record, the information being requested was the bare minimum for an instance administrator to troubleshoot network interactions with a remote instance.
  • A random (but cool) third party identified the issue with your instance not federating. [3]
  • Instead of apologizing, you proceeded to act like you were entitled to that solution from the admins you wrongly accused. [4] You are not god's gift to the internet and they are not technical support for your instance.

There's no room for niceties here, you are either an asshole in denial or some brat who is too young to know any better. Sleep on it. Come to terms with that fact and make good on it, or don't. You aren't worth anyone's energy, and I'm only bothering with this summary for everyone else's sake. Your problem is fixed, it was never on lemmy.world's side to begin with, and somehow you are still acting like the failure of the admins to figure out what was busted with your shit is some Sherlock gotcha moment.

I am unaffiliated with lemmy.world and my toxicity does not represent the opinions of the admins. (but they're probably thinking it)

Well he didn't implement IP bans on his instance I bet. The reason I asked for this information is so I could check if your IP ended up on our banlist or check if it was marked as inactive.

Is the large amount of users actually the reason for the downtime? I thought it was coordinated attacks.

It's the attacks. The amount of users or communities is not the problem but there are people who want us to close down (registrations) for a variety of reasons.

I get the feeling that you've never been in charge of UX before. What you're suggesting would be an absolutely terrible user experience. You have to realize that not everybody is as interested in new things as you or I might be, so even the smallest of hurdles will be prohibitive for most users.

So he just wants us to close and leave them in the dark, right?

This is being handled by a team that knows what they are doing. Together with someone that contributes to Lemmy.

You know what else is an even worse user experience? When people are basically forced to assimilate with the Borg instead of being able to participate from their own side of things, through no fault of their own.

Dude, you've been asked at least ten times now (I stopped counting when I reached ten) if you've addressed your technical problem with the admins here. Ten times (or, likely, many more) you've avoided answering that question which implies, naturally, that you have not.

You're not interested in solving a problem. You're interested in being "right", even if you're utterly, completely, and inescapably in the wrong.

Go back to your instance and flail your arms like a toddler in a tantrum over there, please. Or, you know, work with the admins to solve your problem where it actually exists instead of where the voices in your head are telling you it is.

Instead of counting, try reading. It's not about "the technical problem". It's about the fact that my instance:

  • has not done anything wrong
  • is wrongly being cut off with communication from half of the whole fediverse
  • the admins don't see any problem with this erratic growth and the ripple effects is causing elsewhere
  • I am literally getting told by the majority to "go back where I came from".

Let me see if I can it myself clear: If lemmy.world was 10-20% of the whole userbase, I wouldn't have to care about them. But because they are growing so much and don't seem to be intent of self-regulating, their growing pains is causing problems to those in the minority instances.

I don't mind repeating it or trying to find different ways to explain it, but the point I'd like you all to understand is that lemmy.world needs to organize itself before focusing on further growth, and this is why I am asking to close the registrations.

Why do I get the feeling that your instance probably had some hateful shit on it and you're upset that nobody wants to see it? It seems like you're not telling the whole story here. Can you please be honest and share the details about what the hell it is you're actually getting at?

That is completely off the mark, but it's interesting: lemmy.world's approach to growth is reckless and causing issues elsewhere, someone is calling it out, and yet you are trying to make this about me instead of addressing the problem that am pointing out.

The only solution for you is "close registrations" while the admins already pointed out another solution that's in the works. For someone who says he doesn't want to keep repeating yourself you did that plenty. You want YOUR solution, not A solution.

At this moment, lemmy.world has 8x as many MAU as lemmy.ml and it has pretty much as much users as ALL of the top 10 combined.

Let's make a deal. If they manage to bring this down to less than ~35% after two weeks after they implement their solution, then I will shut up about it and you never hear from me. If they don't, then they close registrations. Sounds reasonable?

No you stopped sounding reasonable right after hitting the submit button when you posted this.

Nice jab! Now can you please address the argument? If changing the registration page is a good solution, what should be the expected change in userbase split?

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Nobody can help with the problem, though, when you won't share any details. Maybe I'm way off, like you said, but you won't elaborate as to how, so what takeaway do you expect people to have here?

Sorry, I am starting to get tired of repeating myself. Can you go through my history and see the 3 or 4 comments where I am arguing that the main point of my post is not specifically about the technical issue that is affecting me, but instead a larger point about how this idea that letting one instance grow and dominating the userbase while having so many issues is irresponsible?

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Personal anecdote: I probably wouldn't have joined Lemmy if it wasn't for lemmy.world and I think I'm far from alone.

People hear from others that Lemmy is the place you go and when searched for you end up here. Having registrations closed doesn't sound like a great idea when most people have no idea about the fediverse

Same, I started with Lemmy.world to begin with because I didn't really understand the fediverse and didn't want to go through choosing. After I understood federation more I set up my own instance. If I didn't start with Lemmy.world I probably wouldn't have tried Lemmy at all.

I agree with you. I chose Lemmy.World because it was listed as a general instance and the others were very specific and I was still trying to navigate what the Fediverse even was. If Lemmy.World hadn't been an option I would probably have stuck to Squabbles or Kbin.

"If you could have at least mentioned your instance name we could ask our backend administrators to have a look and we could get back to you with an informed answer."

Try answering their request. Stop going on about registrations, at least until the above is resolved.

I think it is already answered in this thread.

  • let us know which instance (even by pm) do we can have an informed reply as to what is going on. There have been changes made in the backend to fend of attacks but this should not affect federation.

  • There is a bug in Lemmy where instances are too early marked as 'inactive' and will stop federating.

Btw the title of this thread is 'stop registrations' not 'help me find out what is going on'.

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