There are different opinions on Beehaw’s registration process. I kind of see how some people would find it dissuasive, specially after most of us are coming from Reddit. But I still think it’s very practical, at least for the time being.
Btw, this is only my opinion as a new user, I don’t know any of the admins/mods. Link to my original comment.
Honestly, if you aren’t prepared to fill out a simple text box to join the instance, I’d prefer you went somewhere else.
Right? If you can’t come up with a minimal answer to a very simple question, how could you possibly contribute positively in any way whatsoever here? And why would you even want to join this instance? This isn’t meant to be a shitposting low effort instance…
Or if you’re just going to lurk… you don’t need to make an account at all! As I did for the first week before deciding on whether or not to join, lmao
I actually really liked it as an exercise in reflection.
I probably wrote too much in mine, a good full paragraph for each. They really just need to create the slightest barrier to entry to make moderating 10x easier.
They need to add a word limit though, I think I went a bit overboard lol
I didn’t think it was too bad. Like others I wrote 3 sentences or so basically just answering the questions honestly. I was approved fairly quickly.
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Maybe it was because I joined during the influx but I got away with two lazy sentences. Something like, “reddits on strike and I ain’t a scab. I’ll post about geeky programming stuff.” I mean, it really does take the bare minimum
To me, that first sentence was enough. jk
I wrote a frikkin’ essay. I wish I’d saved a copy because I was sure they were going to read it and file it under “whackadoodle: do not admit.”
The funny thing is I actually got rejected (or put in the limbo) once. After making this account and answering the questions exhaustively, I tried to make another account for foss/programming purposes exclusively (I tend to do that for privacy reasons). The second time my answers were much shorter since I didn’t want to take up too much time from the admins , and I guess they weren’t too convinced, haha. But no hard feelings, I just hope my username eventually frees up and I can make the account :)
There are also some bugs that may throw you into limbo as well on lemmy. Some of them seem like insanely basic oversights like how if you pick an already taken user name it will just spin indefinitely
Oh yeah, that happened to me too. It won’t even tell you the reason why. When I checked, I was actually surprised somebody else had already picked the username I wanted so early lol (Hi @styx@beehaw.org, we had the same idea haha)
Accounts are created on registration so while you may not have been approved it’s possible that is your account.
This it not the case, haha. I checked and they had made the account before me and had some posts/comments. So we just had the same idea, I guess
Hello there!
hey, cool username!
Thanks, yours too 😊
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By the way, I don’t know if this is a good time/way to ask, but is it even allowed to register a second account? I tried searching if there was a rule against it, but I couldn’t find anything. If it’s not, I completely understand and will make another account in a different server :) (Although I would prefer it be here bc I wouldn’t feel as comfortable in other instances 😢)
Pinging some of the admins, I hope you’re not too busy. @alyaza@beehaw.org @Gaywallet@beehaw.org @admin@beehaw.org
Why do you want a second account
If you don’t already know about programming.dev or discuss.online, you may want to consider them for your second account.
Thanks! I didn’t know about them. And genuinely curious, do these instances have good moderation/community similar to here on Beehaw?
You mentioned wanting a programming centric account, so programming.dev makes sense. They don’t allow open creation of communities. They must be requested, they must be tech related (don’t know if this might change). They seem to want to keep the discussions on tech and programming.
discuss.online’s admin is working on creating some moderation tools for Lemmy admins. I’ve been chatting with him on the discuss.online Matrix server. He seems like someone that will build a good community.
Their moderation ethos are not hashed out like Beehaw, but they have both started up this month and I like the vibes so far.
If those don’t work out, I’m also starting up an instance that will be up and running soon at grok.town with an ethos that largely overlaps with Beehaw. But at the moment I only have a matrix space set up at https://matrix.to/#/#groktown:matrix.org
yeah I think a lot of people who haven’t actually done it are misconstruing it as something far more than it was. I wrote 3 sentences for each but a commenter on another instance thought I needed to write “3 essays”
The way I see it, it doesn’t take that much longer than writing a post or even a long comment. If a person isn’t willing to take the time to do that, I wonder how much they were going to contribute to the community in the first place? lol
reminds me of the people who got pissed when we defederated from a few instances. I guess they’re just angry that they don’t have access to something other people do, even if they won’t use it.
They’re so accustomed to centralised social media that allows them to troll and bait without caring for the people in those platforms, that, when, they find instances here, like Beehaw, that do not want to have contact with people and instances that promote that type of attitude, they feel confused and betrayed.
They expected the fediverse, Lemmy, Beehaw to be a replacement for Reddit, not only as content/link/information aggregation platform, but as a place to continue acting like they acted on Reddit with no consideration or understanding that they aren’t in Reddit anymore.
The fact that many are calling Beehaw admin/mod team “snobby” “snowflakes”, etc just says it all
The fact that many are calling Beehaw admin/mod team “snobby” “snowflakes”, etc just says it all
I even saw one that called them “oversensitive ninnies” and it was weird how they didn’t make the connection as to why they defederated
Honestly. Zero self-awareness.
I saw this image and I was like… “Actually? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad”
That wouldn’t be a bad idea for the time being. But images like this show that these people really don’t understand how the fediverse work. They would die of shock if they ever saw how long (way longer than Beehaws) the list of defederated servers is in the mastodon instance I’m in
I hope they really don’t think we can’t just type the address of other instances on our browsers and see the content… if we choose to, that is.
What’s really funny about this image is that the implication is that Beehaw mods are trying to keep us from seeing content from other instances, when they’ve said in multiple ways that 1) if you don’t agree with the decision, you can go elsewhere, and 2) it’s about keeping trolls from spamming up Beehaw, not preventing Beehaw members from venturing outside of the instance. I don’t even know why people think Beehaw’s admin/mod team cares at all about where it’s users go beyond making sure they’re not trolls trying to infiltrate. They’re providing a free service where they’re trying to build a community, not create an Orwellian dystopia where all thought is policed. If anything, mods here have been way more tolerant of dissenting voices than I’ve seen elsewhere as long as those voices are civil and not actively promoting bigotry/harm.
I wonder how much they were going to contribute to the community in the first place? lol
Pretty much that. They’re not even hard questions to answer, you could even lie. But, the day or two wait period and general approval process means you weed out a lot of the undesirables who are looking for a quick way to upset and bully people. It’s a good thing.
I answered honestly, and I think it was probably about five sentences. I’m definitely not a robot or a bully, and they still denied me. maybe it’s because I brought up developing a sports community.
no there’s a sports community here, it might be that users aren’t allowed to create new communities though
I don’t know why people can’t be bothered to click the “register” button to see for themselves. I’ve spent more time writing each individual post I’ve made on Beehaw than I did the questions for registration. Granted, I also read all of the literature discussing the philosophy and goals of Beehaw beforehand and had the answers in my mind by the time I saw the questions, but it was really just a line or two per prompt. Basically the bare minimum of user vetting. Imagine my surprise when I see people talk about it like we were asked for an in-depth literary analysis of the themes behind “Great Expectations” and how they can be translated to the modern world.
So many people are just looking for something to complain about with Beehaw. Just go to another instance. It’s not that hard! That’s the beauty of the Fediverse!
Literally. And maybe once things settle in the future, and better mod tools become available, we may all reunite. But that will be up to the admins to decide ultimately
Agree! I love Beehaw’s vibe and I follow a fair number of Beehaw’s magazines, but I decided on kbin.social to start. But honestly? If I end up spinning up an instance, I’ll probably limit registrations too. There’s space for all sorts of admin / community philosophies here in the fediverse!
I’m not complaining, but it did feel like an interview to me. But that’s just my anxiety talking. I haven’t gotten logged in yet, but I’ve heard there’s a backlog of accounts to get through that have been approved. High volume of applications causing issues, I’m guessing. But I don’t think the three questions is a bad thing for beehaw to require. If you can’t be bothered to put in that little amount of effort, then you probably won’t actively contribute, with comments or posts, so what will you bring to the community? Or if people give negative/troll answers, it keeps them out.
Beehaw’s registration process is quite easy, asking you only to write a few words on why you want to join (which could just be “it seems like a nice instance”), in comparison to other registration processes I’ve seen and done.
I’ve been through registration process where to guarantee that you’ve read the rules and anything required would hide words in the post containing that essential content and then asked you questions of which the answers where those words. Sometimes with the addition on asking you why you wanted to join.
This (Beehaw’s registration process) is nothing in comparison
I come from a different point-of-view that I support the question portion, but I did find it hindered me slightly. Only because of my own anxiety, not because it’s a bad idea.
I mostly wanted to reply how the handling of my application was really personable, in case anyone else is lurking and finds it intimidating, like I did for a week or two. It’s not a college thesis and I imagine those running beehaw want more people to make the place more bustling.
I think the little question bit being there will lead to a better environment overall. I’m outing myself, but back in my roleplay forum days the ones with a bit of an application process had better quality engagement. Ymmv, of course.
I don’t get what all the fuss is about. I told them I don’t like Nazis and was approved within minutes. It was not a complicated process.
Honestly, I was more frustrated with the spinner of doom that kept me from actually submitting my registration for a few days. That meant re-writing my response to that application question until I decided to just save it in notepad until I was able to get a registration form actually submitted.
The “interview” process itself makes total sense, and I’m happy to have even something so simple that helps keep some of the low-effort riff-raff out.
Yeah, happened to me too lol. But that’s mostly the software/server’s fault rather than Beehaw’s admins. I hope they improve that in the future, specially for new non-technical users.
Same happened to me. It’s mainly caused by a bug in Lemmy itself, so I’m sure this issue will get fixed at some point. It might definitely scare people off the fediverse.
I completely agree with the three questions for screening. It only took me a few minutes to answer after reading the guidelines. It looks like people are making a bigger fuzz out of this than it really is.
Hot take: its a bigger impact on those with anxiety disorders or other tendencies to rewrite things a million times when they are “important”. I find it easy to post online because its cheap, but writing my beehaw paragraph definitely stirred up some “eeeek, I gotta say this right!!!” fears in me.
As a fellow comrade of anxiety, I personally didn’t find it too daunting.
I just wrote something like “seems like our community/social values align! I’d like to contribute to discussions and share my knowledge, if that’s the case” and got approval within hours.
Then again, doing anything with anxiety can be exhausting. In this case, I think my desperation for something to replace my lost support communities won out over my anxiety.
Yeah, I definitely did feel like it was an “interview” and if I answered wrong I wouldn’t get in. I still get the spinning wheel, but I’ll check back tomorrow. I’ve read in a few places now that a lot of accounts have been approved but are essentially in a queue. It should hopefully be caught up soon.
Hi I definitely didn’t take 20 minutes to write and incessantly edit 3-4 sentences.
@eclipse also as a new user coming from Reddit, I personally liked that they are screening new users. Super quick and easy to fill out.
I wrote like 6 sentences. Got accepted in like 16 hours. Just said I disliked the authoritarian left on the main instance and prefered the sense of community Beehaw provides.
I do not like they have defederated from 2 of the larger instances. Not a fan of that at all. I do understand why they did it, just personally not a fan. I’m on kbin until they get that under control and re-federate the I’ll likely look into joining them.
I like the instance, like the sign up process, just don’t want to be defederated. Hopefully the modding tools get better soon.
Beehaw got overloaded. They temporarily defederated from 2 instances to slow the flood. Admins from all 3 are working together to get moderation (and Beehaw) up to speed.
People are being far too dramatic about a simple technical problem.
The process to ask simple questions like these is not a barrier for users looking for honest conversation.
That is one of the facts I did choose Beehaw, because it shows the will for maintain a non-toxic community.
Same. The fact that there’s a bit of reading to do and a few screening questions was a selling point for me personally.
I honestly have not tried to sign up for beehaw so I can’t comment on the registration process itself in detail, but I do find that they’re intentionally trying to be picky a little strange. It seems to me that beehaw is trying to build a community that isn’t actually all that well suited for a federated setup. Which is fine but like, maybe they should just make a forum?
I honestly have not tried to sign up for beehaw so I can’t comment on the registration process itself in detail, but I do find that they’re intentionally trying to be picky a little strange. It seems to me that beehaw is trying to build a community that isn’t actually all that well suited for a federated setup.
if federation can’t accommodate the idea of a curated community then that is a huge failing and limitation of the concept. federation should not mean “get fucked if you want to build something that isn’t open season”, it should mean “build a community to your taste, but still have the ability to connect to places which aren’t your own community effortlessly”
And federation should definitely not imply letting your users to see content they don’t want to see due to poor moderation from other instances. I mean, people sign up here for a reason… How’s that “being picky”
This is my thought as well. I signed up for Beehaw specifically because I loved the idea of a chill place where I don’t have to worry about the typical Internet joys of bots and trolls, and where people can have actual discussions. If I want to see other Reddit-like content like low-effort memes, that’s where federation comes in, because I can go elsewhere to see it. Meanwhile, others are free to hang out in my home instance if they like the vibes (also due to federation) as long as they don’t try making a mess of the place. If they do… Well, they get kicked out the only way available for now.
I mean, it’s not like they’re being picky out of spite… They explained the situation and what led them to defederate.
I didn’t mean to imply that they did anything out of spite. And I’d argue that by definition they are being picky. But, I also said that’s fine. I don’t care what they do with their instance it just seems kind of opposed to the whole purpose of the federated content mindset. I dunno, maybe I just still don’t get it. Personally I don’t care about the centralized/decentralized thing. I just wanted a reddit replacement.
Idk, you could say they’re being “over-protective”, but even then I would argue. As I’ve said in another comment, people who come here expect that… At least I did when I decided to sign up here and not somewhere else. And they do federate with other servers. I mean, you’re posting this from kbin after all… so how’s that opposed to federation?
Btw, IIRC they literally say in one of their posts: “this is not a Reddit replacement”.
I also didn’t say they were being over protective, I said they were being picky by definition. Which for the third time, I don’t have a problem with lol. I don’t care what they do with their instance. Curating a userbase is totally their prerogative. It just seems weird to do so on this platform where you’ll be interactive with userbases that you did not curate. It seems self-defeating. That’s why I originally said another format or structure may have just worked better for what they want to create. But again, I don’t really care either way, I was just throwing in my two cents that no one asked for.
Go to any established (older than a month or two) Lemmy instance and click the “instances” button. You will see that each has lists of instances they defederated from.
It’s part and parcel of decentralization.
Regulation of user registration and defederation are key to the fediverse, not against its purpose.
The purpose of the fediverse isn’t to be a replacement for any centralised social media, it’s to be a safe alternative free of corporations and bad actors (who are isolated in their own servers). If you just wanted a Reddit 2.0 maybe a centralised alternative would have been better for you.
The purpose of the fediverse isn’t to be a replacement for any centralised social media
Isn’t the decentralization like the entire point? Your two points go hand in hand, I think.
I just wanted a Reddit replacement.
Reddit is centralized. The Fediverse (however you choose to access it) is decentralized.
You will never find a Reddit replacement here.
Closest thing I have so far. It’s been scratching the itch since last Monday.
Defederation and regulation of federation are part of decentralisation.
“Decentralised social media” doesn’t mean “the same as a centralised social media, but on a bigger scale”
It’s just that instead of belonging to a corporation that seek profit, it belongs to common people who can have their own servers/chose the server they want to be and interact or not with the people or content of other servers as they please.
Decentralisation gives you the choice to:
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Not having to see intolerant/discriminatory content
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To interact more easily with people akin to you, as part of federation in certain platforms is the ability to create “bubbles”, which consist on sister instances that are closely connecting and interacting with yours.
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Being able to register to a server that fits your need and it’s in agreement with your ideas.
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It also gives you the opportunity to move on to another instance if something happens to the one your in or you simply find that it wasn’t for you. Because there are hundreds of servers using a same software, you don’t need to put up with anything, if you don’t agree with the admins you just move to another instance. Neither are still possible here, but other platforms have features like “migration” and “nomadic identify” that facilitate this.
Limiting who can be part and interact with your server is also essential because most of the people that choose the fediverse and other open source social media over corporative one (not people who are simply here because their fav social media giant fucked them over) do so because they want to be safe from the harassment and bullying promoted in big capitalistic social media platforms. These people belong to marginalised groups, are political or some other kind of activists, etc.
The humanity of the person behind an account is very important here.
As such attitudes like trolling, interacting in bad faith, baiting, etc that were seeing as neutral, “great fun” and encouraged on big for-profit social media platforms aren’t acceptable here. “Trolling” and “shitposting” is a valid reason for defederation here.
So, no. This is not a replacement, this is a completely different model of social media that caters to a completely different public.
Lemmy and kbin aren’t “multiserver Reddit”
Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc aren’t “multiserver twitter”
Friendica and Hubzilla aren’t “multiserver Facebook”
Nor they ever aim to be.
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Beehaw isn’t the first nor the last server on the fediverse to ask people to submit a sentence or two explaining why you want to join.
Thematic instances and instances aim to marginalized groups tend to be picky to protect their users and/or keep the instance “on topic”
Sure it is! Beehaw limiting instance users and curating the instances they connect to isn’t a bad thing. Their users want a close knit instance with links to other instances who suit their philosophy. Those who choose Beehaw choose it for that reason. That we can all choose a good home here is absolutely how federation should work.
Okay so like just one more time here I want to try to make it super clear that I never said, nor meant to imply, that beehaw is doing anything “bad.” I didn’t say it’s a bad thing. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I just don’t get it given this platform.
Beehaw is a couple years old at this point. It’s been chugging along happily in the Fediverse, curating communities and a membership base that is quite successful. (Hence the tens of thousands of new people wanting to join, and overwhelming floods of people from other instances wanting to participate in Beehaw’s carefully curated communities.)
Took me 5 minutes, was approved a couple hours later. just answer the questions honestly.
