Thank you for being upfront and honest about the challenges you're facing. I'd like to also put my vote in for going whitelist only rather than moving off the fediverse altogether. However, I'm a big fan of beehaw and would likely follow a migration, but only if there's a good mobile experience on the new site.

I'll follow if it's time to go. I understand. Thank you.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think moderation grows exponentially with numbers of instances. A single comment may need moderation on each distinct instance. The more instances, the more moderation needs for that comment.

That seems unsustainable. I understand the conundrum.

Honestly, I wholeheartedly support this move. For a couple of (obviously subjective) reasons:

• Lemmy/kbin isn't ready. If Beehaw staff were able to fork their own version of the base code with their moderation etc. design preferences in mind, this would be another thing -- though even then it might not be enough to be worth it with the headache of fediverse moderation.

• Closed system/community is more personal, hence more productive and less noisy. At least before it outgrows itself.

What I'd hope but is also more work and potentially creates conflicts, is that the new platform provides good moderation logging etc. Which I think is key feature to ensure trust and self policing.

Is a forum site a possibility? I honestly miss internet forums. It does kind of sound like what you're looking for beehaw to be.

It's a shame how much of Lemmy's recent downturn appears to stem from slow and misprioritized development. At this point significant instances are dropping like flies and users are leaving in droves. I do not have high hopes for the future of this platform.

I'm not sure what it is really, but postmill exists. Another of my favourite post-reddit sites uses it; raddle.me.

I can understand, but this would not be fun at first. I subscribe to a number of beehaw communities because they are the the biggest in their niche like technology. The beehaw communities are often even bigger than the same communities on instances like lemmy.ml.

Every single part of Beehaw seems ill-suited to the fediverse. I joined (like many) after Reddit shit the bed by banning 3rd-party apps. I wrote a thoughtful (mandatory) application essay and... silence. Never heard back. Later, I reacted to a particularly bad take in a Beehaw thread and was told that I wasn't "being nice" like the rules required... Bitch, I'm not even a part of the your "community"! You chose to federate with the rest of us! I guess what I'm trying to say is byeeeeeeeee! Go start your own little puritan community somewhere I don't have to encounter it...

Makes sense. Beehaw was always its own community first, federation seemed to be some extra stuff on top of that. Staying on lemmy with less federation or even a few forum software makes sense for the goals of the project.

You’d lose the people who wanted different, but I don’t think being a major social hub for everybody was ever the intent.

Possibly something like LemmyBB could be an answer. Stay on Fediverse and get to isolate ( I think).

Wherever it leads I'll follow !

I'm a big proponent of federation and the Lemmyverse. While it would be sad for me to see Beehaw leave ActivityPub, I've always said that the admin team should do what they think is best for themselves and Beehaw and I will respect such decisions.

I probably wouldn't make a new account on another service because that would require a new app on my phone, but I'm OK with that if the idea of Beehaw prospers in another space.

@PenguinCoder @admin If I may suggest something on Lemmy as a stopgap measure, Beehaw can enlist the help of one of the AutoMod programs of Lemmy, so that any comment not on an approved user or instance list are removed on the specific "safe-space" communities. It might take some testing/tinkering but this may give you some of the granularity in moderation that has been requested.

I appreciate the transparency and willingness to discuss with the community.

I was a rexxitor in July, trying out different online communities after deleting my account there. I was very affected by the lack of moderation on Reddit, and subsequently every other platform that I've tried since then.

It's pretty clear to me that safety is an issue that affects all humans who use the internet. A sense of safety and security allows our minds the freedom to create. If Beehaw can find a sustainable way to keep us feeling safe to express ourselves, the people will come. The content will come, I can guarantee it.

Ultimately, the decision is up to the leadership here and I trust and respect that. I have no clue about any of this stuff. I just want to find a place where I can post my art and hopefully? maybe? not have to endure hate.

Which features would you need to continue staying federated, possibly limited to white-listed instances?

Just a few thoughts.

• Is there a way to configure lemmy to have some private Beehaw only communities and some public ones too. Maybe this is some code changes, but one would not think that this would be crazy hard. Might need to have some user preference settings too about restricting what us in the site feed too.

• Would there be a way of running two instances. One federated and one not or the one not only federated with beehaw.

• How serious is the adim time issue and the skills gap issue. Maybe worth thinking about what your issues are and what would need to happen to fill them. More people, hiring things out, etc.

• I agree too, you guys have to decide personnally your priorities. Not having clear personal limits can eat you up. So do that as well.

I understand some of the negative reception to this, especially from users of other instances, but I also understand the reasoning here.

Don't know if ditching ActivityPub entirely is a great idea, but I do get why. Perhaps a whitelist on another ActivityPub service would be a better option, although I'm struggling to think of any (other than kbin) which exist in this kind of form.

So, my only curiosity is which alternative platforms?

There aren't many in this particular form (social news/link aggregation), as far as I'm aware. Most others are traditional forums, microblogging, and general social networks.

And moving to something new, potentially in alpha/beta, with an equally or just as small dev team may end up just being a horizontal jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, with eventually similar issues when it comes to tools and capabilities of the platform.

Basically, are we looking at something new entirely in terms of UX or something familiar? And are we looking at something centralized or using some other federated service?