Okay thanks. Just an idea, I want to help the project blossom.
I know how to code (pretty good actually), if you need any help doing some things, I can try to look into it
I know Rust. I just struggle with the Arc<> / ArcLock<>, I don’t know when to use one or another in a synchronous or asynchronous language.
I know JavaScript, really well actually. This is my main language, the one where I do everything. I just struggle with testing, I don’t find it particularly easy compared to Rust.
Not sure why people do not like Usenet but it more or less died when ISPs and orgs stopped hosting servers and giving free access. It was getting overrun with spam too. I think it can be moderated and the servers can be private. Just usually was not. Mostly textual too though I do not know what current readers can do. Usenet is still around. Not sure why people say harder. Google groups is usenet or was.
Frankly the Beehaw people are kind of nuts if they drop lemmy. It will be interesting what they think is better. I will believe it when I see it.
I am probably more favorable to Usenet then most as I used it for 10 or so years in the late 80s and early 90s. That is not to say that it should come back. People the days need a lot of eye candy and want something new and shiney. Plus the app architecture these days people want is different.
Frankly the Beehaw people are kind of nuts if they drop lemmy. It will be interesting what they think is better. I will believe it when I see it.
I'm personally on the fence on how I feel about Beehaw defederating or deplatformimg, if that even happens. But their concerns over lemmy are valid. It's not unreasonable for them to want something with less technical debt and better tools to protect their community.
Just hate to see more fragmentation. To me that is nuts. On the other hand if they are going to defederate anyway, I guess it does not so much matter. It does need to be a popular platform though if the apps and tools are going to be very well developed. Also kind of depends what they think the lemmey dev direction will be vs their goals.
Fragmentation of a bigger (relatively speaking) instance will certainly have an impact on the fediverse. And that is unfortunate, I agree.
If you're curious to learn more about Beehaw's struggles with Lemmy and and haven't already seen these posts, there's a few on https://beehaw.org/c/chat
The short version though re: lemmy dev direction is there's no indication (last I read) that the lemmy devs have the same priorities as the Beehaw admins do. And that's ok, they can of course prioritize and develop whatever way they see fit. But that means beehaw is dealing with some pretty glaring issues for the foreseeable future. It's a tough spot.
Edit: clarification.
Actually, I spent the afternoon reading down through the whole list that I could find. There seems to be a lot of frustrations which I believe is totally real. However it is not at all clear to me that most of these are that huge of an issue. Some of them are already fixed and others like Database improvements are clearly on the development list. It also feels like there is an unrealistic expectation about what the main devs can realistically do in the time they have.
There are some major issues. One of the big ones seems to be moderation action not federating which seems nuts and it is probably not unilaterally resolvable. The other is their goal of a safe space which is kind of core. One has to wonder if that is compatible with federation at least how it now stands or for that matter with a fully public discussion system anyway. They did not directly say it, but I have to believe the moderator hours of having a federated system must be quite large too and totally distracting.
One of the wants is to be able to choose what communities federate with whom (or maybe if at all). Another is to be able to have closed communities where you have to specifically ask to get access (though it did not say if they had to be fully private or just not able to post). The latter seems harder as this would have to work across federation and Lemmy is not intended for private discussion anyway. The former does not seem to be that hard and you could probably figure out how to modify Lemmy to support it without impacting federation (just report different communities to different partners, or just reject subscriptions). Not sure how activity pub works.
Anyway just my uniformed take.