As you might have noticed, there is currently no option to down-vote posts here.

When Lemmy was much smaller there were some bad faith actors organizing down-votes on posts they didn't like and because a few down-votes already meant a lot this was quite effective (from their perspective) to shape the discourse to their liking.

These days our instance is bigger and we have also blocked the worst offenders (and will continue to do so), so I am wondering if we should re-enable down-votes?

Personally I think they are useful in some cases, but ideally the down-votes would not federate to other instances. This option however is not available in Lemmy, so it is either on or off.

I will make three comments below this, one you can up-vote if you are in favour of enabling down-votes again, one if you are against it and one if you abstain from making a decision on this.

Note to non-slrpnk.net members: please don't up-vote any of the below comments I make.

I'll leave this vote open for some days... and anyway: no decision is final and if it becomes a problem again it is easy to disable it.

Edit: If you have for some reason a strong objection and want to veto this, please comment below.

Edit: I enabled down-votes with the upgrade to Lemmy version 0.18. At the time of writing this it is 45 votes for enabling down-votes, 32 against enabling them, and 10 abstentions. Lets see how it goes.

!antidepressants

in case the link is not working https://slrpnk.net/c/antidepressants

I subscribed to !news at . . . well it probably does not matter. I receive the news the moderators are posting there, but also every single boosted comment anyone makes on the news stories as separate inane postings on my mastodon feed(!) That can't be the way to run a railroad! Can comment reposting be disabled by moderators or can it be suppressed by users? Because othewise, the news feed subscription is a poison pill to my fediverse-based feed.

Is following a lemmy user on a remote instance or any instance from ones lemmy account a thing?

Might be nice to give this instance more Solarpunk like colors. I am currently a bit short on time to work on this myself, but contributions are welcome.

A nice banner image would be cool as well.

The documentation on theming is not very detailed, but it seems to be mostly just Bootstrap 4: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/administration/theming.html (Edit: that docu might be outdated and it is actually Bootstrap 5 now)

An example for a instance with a custom theme is here: https://compuverse.uk/

I used https://browse.feddit.de/ to discover a community of interest and they provided this link to subscribe: !electronics@discuss.tchncs.de but when I paste it in the search field for joining a community, nothing happens, or sometimes there is a "not found" message. A growing pain I suppose. I will keep trying . . .

Hey all, I'm the new mod for /c/podcasts here but I've noticed none of the previous posts are showing up. I can see everything in the comment tab and when I click on the "show context" for a comment I can find the original posts.

Does anybody know why this is or how I can fix it?

As a former Redditor looking for a new home - I was first directed to Lemmy.ml - which has a stickied post asking users to find another instance to join. I was directed by an r/solarpunk moderator to this instance (makes perfect sense!) and had also seen suggestions in similar spaces to make a kbin.pub instance for myself.. somewhere in there I was thrown the idea to join Mastadon as well.

As I’ve come to understand, these all exist within Fediverse, and wherever I join I’ll be able to see and post and comment to the content of other Fediverse alt instances (although I haven’t really tried, I still don’t quite follow this - although I’m going to read up on this reply https://slrpnk.net/comment/133314 and search around myself too) - so no reason to get to caught up on where to sign it would seem.

This preface is actually somewhat a question itself (as I still don’t fully ‘get it’) and to maybe give people who have the same questions a space to ask away… at the same time it might help to contextualize my newcomer questions:

Questions on the Community

• Are you comfortable with the Reddit refugees joining here? Is there any qualms or worries you (or anyone else, for that matter) has about this instance and an influx of users?
• A: https://slrpnk.net/comment/133084 Be a good people here and on all of Fediverse. Join here if interested in the communities on this server

Platform/Interface Questions

• I don’t know if this will work, @poVoq@slrpnk.net (doesn’t look like it worked) how can we @ a user?
• A: Unknown to me, OP!
• Are you able to sticky threads? If so, is that an admin only ability or is it possible for moderators within (or without, even) the communities too?
• A: Unknown to OP

Questions about Subbing/Moderation

• Is there a way to [un]subscribe, show or hide certain communities within this instance? And is there a way to track how many users are “subbed” to these communities?
• A: Yes, if you go to a community you have the option to sub - this applies to the main pages “Subscribed” content and is the main way to see content within the beta [iOS] app. I believe there are ways to subscribe to communities in other Fediverse instances but I don’t know the easiest or most efficient way to do that yet, will update if I figure it out.
• only way I’ve found how to subscribe to other instances is through the iOS app
• Can certain communities be labeled as essentially “not currently active” and/or “pending moderation?” And can we see who are the moderators of any community?
• A: I, OP, don’t know about the first part yet. But you can see who moderates each sub when you go to the sub - it has its own sidebar too
• I would assume that the influx of expats from Reddit would be overwhelming for just the admin to ultimately manage. Is that the case? *Do moderators help?
• A: Unknown to me the OP

Questions on Admin and Server

• Do I have it correct that you are the sole admin? If so, thanks! And are you looking for help in the longterm or shortterm even?
• A: https://slrpnk.net/comment/133500 on history of the server and admin.. unsure about if future help needed
• Can there be multiple independent servers ‘hosting’ SLRPNK? Can different admins with different servers provide support (or “host”) for this instance? Would there necessarily always be a head admin? A: Unknown to me, OP
• Is there a cap to how many users can join an instance/this instance?
• A: https://slrpnk.net/comment/134156 nowhere near the cap, ideas for if it were reached include pausing new users or (if donations are provided) hosting on a bigger server
• With the authority of having your own server (seemingly) and having a sole admin, is there anything we should note in terms of how this instance is hosted such as, under any circumstances if it were shut down? As kind of a floor-level question, what happens if the server goes down? Does the instance get wiped? Is it basically unusable but still archived?
• A: Unknown to OP

I hope my questions weren’t too much!

Edit: Will add in questions post-OP noted with an *. Putting in answers (both for other users and for myself to tinker with formatting and organizational structure) any missed answers may in full be due to this OP’s lack of reading comprehension.

Also these questions aren’t just for the Admin so if anyone of you know anything that would help please leave a comment and edumacate me. Also for anything unanswered, it can take some time and know-how to get this info from others and myself in my own research, I am being patient and am suggesting as well to other newcomers please be friendly and patient too!

Here at slrpnk.net we made the decision a while ago to open community creation to all members. We hope that this will cater to contributors making this instance their home and reduce lurking.

However this comes with some responsibilities:

1. Active moderation of communities you create (you can add additional moderators yourself though)
2. Please add a community avatar and a basic side-bar text explaining what the community is about
3. Make a short introduction post to tell us a bit about yourself and why you created this community (this is mandatory!)

Communities that do not adhere to this and/or are seemingly abandoned by their original creators (and no one willing to take over) will be pruned from time to time.