I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.
It seems kind of slimy.
If you don’t want the communities, stop squatting them. Having no users seems like just a way to keep costs down so you can hold onto more urls and is bad for the general ecosystem anyways.
It’s amazing, there is always someone that will look at other people are doing and find the worst possible take.
I decided to reach out to other admins precisely because I got tired of hearing “you are running all these instances by yourself, who guarantees that you are not going to do something nasty with them or disappear if you lose interest?”, even though I’m running all these instances by myself, keeping them up to date, posting regularly on a good number of them, trying to get more people involved for over an year and (most importantly) outliving a bunch of “community-based instances” .
Seriously, this crab mentality is the worst. What a disgrace.
Just coordinate the release of the urls and the transfer of the instance.
I’m skeptical about this since you are squatting on at least 18 urls while trying to get volunteers to create value out of them. Nothing leads me to assume you are being altruistic.
Edit: misattributed something, woops
It seems like you are waiting for the next influx to potentially monetize and trying to hold the most potential instances without putting any work or money into it. It’s just my impression.
I also think instances without users are a terrible idea and I’d rather real instances come about organically instead created by people that actually care about the subject.
This is exactly what I am offering. I want to transfer these instances to a consortium to own this collectively.
Just yesterday I renewed 10 of these domains. That cost me ~400€. I renewed nba.space and nfl.community last month, each cost ~650€. Running all these instances is costing me ~200€/month.
I’m not even looking to dump these costs on the potential new co-owners, this is why I said that I don’t mind keep running them.
First, we’d have to argue the implication. You are implying that any attempt at building anything that is financially sustainable is immoral, something that I said many times is completely misguided, and a point of view that is starting now to be shared by other prominent figures in the Fediverse.
Second, I am offering the instances to be co-owned precisely to assuage those concerns. By having other admins co-owning the instances, I’d hope that less people would be pushing those accusations against me.
Thank you for providing the numbers, these domains are quite pricey if you have to pay 1700 € per year on domains alone.
Stop thinking in terms of prices, and start thinking in terms of value. A three-letter domain for less than 1000€ is a bargain.
I’m thinking in terms of costs because those could prevent any admins potentially interested in joining you to do so.
Lemmy.ml still runs on a server which costs 80€ per month (https://lemmy.ml/comment/13507604). A .ml domain name costs 61€ per year on gandi.
Your hosting costs are 2.5x higher, your domain costs are 27 times higher.
Maybe you’ll find other admins who agree with you that it’s worth it.
Which part of “I am not asking for financial support” is not clear from the blog post?
You are asking a consortium of different admins to collectively own those instances with you.
If the idea is that those other admins can take over should something happen to you, then it makes sense for them to assess whether the whole project is viable from a financial perspective, otherwise it would just lead to them closing most of the instances, which is just the same as them not owning those instances with you.
You sound like a grifter.
So are you willing to give up ownership of the url and have the instance be transfered to someone else’s hardware?
Maybe I misunderstood where you are going with this.
To be precise, I’m willing to give up some ownership. I still want to participate in its governance.
If a new consortium is formed and if the collective decision is to move it, yes. If the decision is to keep as it is, also fine.
Well you definitely are breeding a welcoming culture here.
Please, spare me from the cheap rhetoric.
I’ve been for over an year offering alternatives, attempting to bring actionable proposals to the table, putting resources on the line (go take a look at the matrix room and you may find me telling people that I registered selfhosted.forum and I wanted to give it for free to the /r/selfhosted mods) and every time there is any type of push for concrete effort, I am met with apathy at best and suspicion at worst.
Everyone keeps crying about Zuckerberg/Threads/Venture Capitalists/Spez, but when push comes to shove no one wants to mobilize and put up a proper fight.
It’s tiring and frustrating.
…k
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