On the bright side, it’s never been a better time to switch to an immutable distro…

it wont

Good that they changed the name.

Look at the date, lmao.

You sound like the type of guy who drives a cybertruck and practices Elons “odd hand gesture” in your bedroom at night.

They fear open source software because it is one of the only thing that threatens their technofascist hegemony.

This only further proves that we are investing in platforms that are chipping away at them.

Herein lies a problem I’ve had for a while, actually. It’s hard to tell people about Lemmy, because “Lemmy” isn’t really a website, or an app, or even a platform, really. It’s a protocol that anybody can use. For instance, we’re not really posting comments here on Lemmy, as much as we are posting comments via Lemmy.

Yeah… I agree.

One problem is that the names of software projects like “Mastodon” and “Lemmy” get mixed in with the names of servers like “mastodon.social”, “mastodon.art”, “lemmy.world”, “lemmy.ml”, etc.

That creates a lot of unnecessary confusion for potential new users, because they end up conflating the software with the server, thus missing the big idea of the fediverse completely: that a bunch of servers, even those running different software, can talk with each other to form one big social network.

But it’s kind of a moot point because there probably isn’t much that can be done about that now.

I just hope that in the future people will avoid using software names in their server branding, because it only confuses people.

You’re probably right about Lemmy/threadiverse communities. I really don’t put much thought into what server someone is posting from.

But when it comes to Mastodon I kind of wish that I was on a server with a tighter local community so that I could make more use of features like the local-only feed and local posts. Obviously I can switch to a smaller server or make my own, so it’s not really a problem, but with Mastodon there are features that theoretically benefit from having stronger local communities.

Still, the meat of this suggestion is really just to use invites as yet another way to bring people into servers, in addition to having a big list of fully open servers, as well as application-based closed servers.

The beauty of FOSS though is if someone wants it bad enough, they can implement it themselves.

For sure. I’ve contributed to FOSS projects before. There are a few big hurdles between idea and implementation though.

Personally I don’t know enough about web development or the software stack involved in various fediverse projects to be of much help with implementation right now. So the only thing I can really do at this point in time is put the idea out there, whatever little that’s worth.

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So not closed off as in non-federated, just invite only?

Yeah. We’re talking about using invites to onboard people onto servers.

So a barrier like the ones that have applications, but based on something other than fiktering who joins the community? Not only is that counter to the entire point of federation, but invite only approaches only works for closed systems. Nobody is going to wait for an invite when they can just join any server.

Would you rather be invited to an event or fill out an application?

There’s way less friction involved in sharing an invite code.

I also don’t think that closed servers are “counter to the entire point of federation”. Federation is about servers talking to other servers, it has nothing to do with how individual servers grow.

And if people don’t care to wait for an invite to join a specific server, and they’d rather take the initiative to join a different server right away, that’s fine too. They’re still in the fediverse either way.

The topic of sharing invite codes is geared towards the type of people who aren’t going to take that initiative in the first place. We get rid of the need for them to understand how the fediverse works by just giving them a ticket into some specific server. They can take it or leave it.

I’m open to the idea but I’ve never run a fediverse server of any kind. I don’t have much web admin experience.

Do Lemmy, Mastodon and the other big fediverse projects already support invite-based registration using codes?

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Other than the benefit of being part of a more tight-knit community, you’re taking one of the biggest points of onboading friction away by giving them a code instead of asking them to pick from a list of servers they know nothing about.

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It kind of does matter which instance someone joins, because not everything is federated with everything else. Also the rules and the overall vibe of the community can vary wildly from server to server.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that potential new users think about joining “Lemmy” only to find a big list of servers that they don’t know anything about, and that scares people away. Giving them an invite removes the need for them to choose anything at all.

Fair enough, but you sound like the type of bitch-made brat who didn’t return the everlasting gobstopper. Just saying.

You could. I think invites to closed servers are probably more appealing, but the gist of the suggestion here is just to have a feature where existing users can invite other users.

Well, I’m not really that interested, to be honest. Sorry…

I just wanted to remind you that you’re not this dude’s manager, and it’s probably not really your place to be worrying about his rate of progress.

If you want him to do something for you, maybe find out some way to pay him, otherwise just sit on your hands and wait for him to do whatever he ends up doing, because pestering people on social media is never going to achieve anything other than getting you blocked. People don’t like being bothered, especially not by random dudes on social media.

If you’re excited about loops (or any other FOSS development), then the best way to express that is just by telling people how excited you are, not trying to grill them like you’re their boss or something.

That’s just my opinion as a FOSS developer of 6+ years.

Come to think of it, even semi-open communities (like the kind that require users to apply to join) could benefit from a user invite code system as an alternate way to get people in without applying.