this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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What do you want to have in a Lemmy instance? (ponder.cat)
submitted 3 months ago by PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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I started up my own instance and now I have realized that there's no reason anyone would join mine instead of any other instance.

That's no good. What neat stuff would the Fediverse like to see in a Lemmy instance?

  • Follow RSS feeds in your Lemmy feed? I have that already, in a way, but it would be nice to be able to do it for any feed automatically without it being clunky.
  • Follow Mastodon users? Or tags?
  • Embedded video? That seems costly.
  • Hackability? The ability to run your own customized front end? Or good scripting features in the browser console?
  • A better looking UI? This one is functional but it's not pretty.
  • Better moderation? I have heard the Lemmy tools aren't that good.
  • Something else?
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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Better mod tools. From a moderator (not admin) PoV:

  • modmail
  • ability to tag users and annotate things about them, preferably in a way that is visible for the rest of the mod team
  • ~~a list of the most recent comments+posts in the community~~ EDIT - already there, as pointed out by ericjmorey. I feel dumb for not noticing it before.
  • some sort of automatic warning, based on keywords

Specifically for the desktop browser interface (IDK how much it applies to other interfaces), it would be great if the [M] for moderator was a tiny bit less evident when you're just posting/commenting as a user, but there was a stronger highlight when speaking officially. Plenty times I feel the need to start the comment with [speaking as a mod], as that shield icon is easy to miss.

For admins I can't speak personally, but the list Beehaw admins provided seems IMO sensible.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I spent a long time looking at it.

I think what it boils down to is hackability. The friction comes from people being unable to modify their experience, or the experience of their users, without going through this crazy process that involves it going all the way up to two Lemmy devs for the entire universe of users, and then something getting changed, and then it going all the way back down to the moderator or whoever, after the site admin upgrades the entire site. Or, going rogue and starting to change the code for their instance, which of course only the admin can do and voids the warranty.

I wasn't trying to become a Lemmy dev. I just wanted to make my instance neat, and I like to tinker. But I'm glad that people took the question seriously enough to give real, detailed answers about what would make things better. Lemmy is already designed to separate the backend and frontend very cleanly. I think it wouldn't be too hard (famous last words...) to make the frontend more hackable to make at least some of these into easier things to do at an end-user or end-administrator level.

It might be good to look at other software, too. I was thinking Lemmy, but the goal is the neat stuff, not the Lemmy part of it.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the Lemmy devs are currently working on a plugin system https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/4695

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Worked on, it sounds like.

This is outstanding. What I was thinking was UI plugins or custom frontends per-user, effectively, so it would fill in a needed niche on top of the backend plugins. Maybe they've done something in the UI area already.

This is really good to know.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

Well they're still working on it. I don't even think it's planned to get into v0.20.0. They've been hoping to get feedback from people but they haven't really gotten any feedback yet and not many people have tried making plugins for it yet.

[–] ericjmorey@discuss.online 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

a list of the most recent comments+posts in the community

Are the the moderator views not what you're asking for here?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The mod view only shows you the posts, not the comments. To see the newer comments you still need to open each post individually.

[–] ericjmorey@discuss.online 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You may not have noticed:

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 3 months ago

I didn't! Now I feel like a muppet. Thank you for pointing it out.

(Holy fuck I was in desperate need for something already there.)

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

modmail

Just out of curiosity, what does this mean in detail? Would every mod get their own report that they'd need to dismiss? Or how should it work?

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

Modmail is like direct messages, but with a message box shared by all moderators of the same community. Any mod of that comm can see the messages sent to that box, or use it to send messages to the users.

This has a few benefits:

  • Typically, users don't know which mod they should contact for clarifications, ongoing issues, etc. Because they don't know who's active, or even who can solve that issue.
  • Sometimes a mod needs to issue a warning, but that would be insensitive or impolite to do through comments; for example if it involves the privacy of a third person. Doing so through DMs sounds like the specific mod picking on the user, instead of issuing an official warning.
  • It reduces the likelihood of miscommunication between users and mods. For example: user contacts mod A, mod A allows the user to post something, user posts it, mod B sees the post, and remove it. With a shared message box, mod B would see that mod A allowed the user to post it, and leave the post alone.

It isn't currently a big pressing matter, as current mod teams are kind of small. However I think that it's necessary for Lemmy's growth.