Introduction

Another month has passed, which means the old Meta Community Discussion will be replaced with a new Community Discussion, which gives an update on the happenings of the instance, and to provide a place to talk and comment your thoughts on the instance, or for anything else that doesn’t warrant its own c/Meta post.

Now, let us have a quiet moment in remembrance of the June discussion thread as we release it from its pinned status, back into the wilds of the fediverse.

…Right, that’s quite enough remembering.

Slaps server

Let’s bust out July.

Feddit.de is limping! Long live Feddit.org!

A few months ago, Feddit.de suffered a partial error, while the main admin was unavailable due to longer work related travel. As the Feddit.de admin is still missing, several of the site’s moderators collaborated with the Fediverse.foundation and last week, Feddit.org was launched to cover many of the same communities as the old Feddit.de hosted. This is an inspiring development, and demonstrates one way a federated social network can respond to damage.

Community Highlights

We had some new communities pop up on the server last month!

  • [email protected], created by @Emotet, who, I would like to point out, has a really cool animated avatar and profile background. Their community is focused on competent people doing things competently in media.

  • [email protected], created by @sabreW4K3, which focuses on news and discussions on EV’s.

  • [email protected], created by @reallykindasort. A place to discuss and share history of ancient peoples!

In other news, @countrypunk is looking for new moderators for [email protected]. If that topic interests you, why not throw them a message? I’m sure they’d appreciate the help!

We’d also like to thank @JacobCoffinWrites for graciously taking over as moderator for [email protected], and to @Midnight for becoming part of the [email protected] moderation team! Good stuff y’all :)

If you’re already a mod, joining the SLRPNK XMPP chat is a great way to grow your moderation team and share tips with other moderators. (it’s also usable by all members of the instance, and you can use it for non-solarpunk chatrooms too, it’s totally federated!)

If you’re not already a mod, and see a community that you would like to support with moderation, don’t hesitate to contact the current mods, or us admins.

Some examples of abandoned communities in need of new moderators are:

Again, if any of those seem like your bag, slap a comment down below, and we’ll mod you up! Having those extra set of eyes and developing your community into whatever your creative vision holds is not only a tremendous help to us admins, It’s quite fulfilling in its own right! :D

Technical Updates

Last month we updated our instance to Lemmy version 0.19.4/5, which brought some minor technical issues that were mostly fixed in the latter release. One major change was the introduction of an image proxy. This means that images in newly added posts (and new user/community avatars) are no longer directly downloaded from the federated servers, but rather first mirrored on our server. This has some privacy advantages and should also improve site loading speed a bit. We will have to see how this will affect our image storage capacity in the medium term, but so far it doesn’t seem to have had a big impact and with our recent server upgrade, we do have quite a lot of storage space.

We also experimentally increased maximum upload size to 10mb and allowed small video files as well. We need to see how the impact of this is, though. If it results in too much bandwidth and/or storage space use, we might have to reconsider this.

Open Discussion

Aaaand… Yeah, that’s the news for July. It was pretty chill, pretty snazzy, even! But now it’s your turn to share whatever snazziness is happening on your mind. Anything related to the instance, the fediverse, or the server you’d like to ask about or discuss? Create a new community you want everyone to know about? Then mosey on down to the comments, my dude!

Everything you post here will be highlighted until the start of next month, which is like, a really long time (until it isn’t. Time is cruel, cruel mistress).-

  • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netEnglish
    13·
    5 months ago

    I really like these monthly debriefs about the server and community development. Thank you for taking the time to write these up.

    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netEnglish
      8·
      5 months ago

      Thanks! I appreciate it!

      I just appointed you as a mod, which I think is the first moderation action I’ve had to take in the year I’ve been on Lemmy. (I love how chill this instance is, especially in the three communities I’m nominally a mod of). It’s a good community and I’m glad to have another set of eyes on it in case anything does come up.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      Thanks for taking over !podcasts! :D

      As for tagging, at least on PC with the normal Lemmy-ui, when I type @LibertyLizard (or just @Liberty) and then do nothing, a menu pops up next to it with names which I can click on, and that will autofill the correct formatting to tag the user in their inbox.

      Also @[email protected] may like you as a co-mod over on !nolawns, never hurts to ask ^^

    • quercus@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      I don’t mind teaming up if you’re still interested, it’d be nice to have some help.

  • BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.netEnglish
    5·
    5 months ago

    I don’t know how to mod, or even if doing so would be a good fit for me (I don’t have a vision, or aspirations for power, I just like to be helpful), so I don’t want to take on a whole community by myself, but if any of the communities want, like, help and stuff, I’d be down to give it a go, even if the topic isn’t really my jam. It takes a village and all that. :)

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      Heyo, would you be interested in co-modding the Buy It For Life community with me? It’s a low-activity community, would be a good option for getting your feet wet with modding! :D

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    4·
    5 months ago

    One major change was the introduction of an image proxy. This means that images in newly added posts (and new user/community avatars) are no longer directly downloaded from the federated servers, but rather first mirrored on our server.

    I really wish the image proxy wouldn’t federate out the proxied thumbnail image URLs, though. My instance isn’t fetching the thumbnails of those itself (from 0.19.4+ instances) and always uses the poster’s home instance’s proxy URL. Just a gripe I’ve had with how they’ve implemented that feature.

  • solo@slrpnk.netEnglish
    3·
    4 months ago

    It seems to me I have an issue with the federated part. Unless I did something without realizing it, so please let me know if that’s the case!

    So, I posted an article on lemmy.world a couple of hours ago. From SLRPNK it looks like it is posted, but on the lemmy.world side it looks like it hasn’t.

    Here are the links:

    https://slrpnk.net/c/[email protected]?dataType=Post&sort=New

    https://lemmy.world/c/world?dataType=Post&sort=New

    And that’s the visibility I had when I took the screenshot:

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
      4·
      4 months ago

      That’s quite strange. Your post is not showing up from the lemmy.world instance for me as well, but it does show up from our instance. As far as I can see in the modlogs over there, you haven’t been banned from that community or lemmy.world, and your post wasn’t removed either.

      I tried posting to a Lemmy.world community just now to test it, and it showed up on the ‘new’ view there after about 50 seconds, so federation appears to be working.

      Could you try posting another article in that world news community to see if the issue persists?

      • solo@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        4 months ago

        Just did and all looks fine. I will just delete the previous one and repost it.

        Edit: for some reason trying to repost the original article did not work, but I used the archive link and it got posted immediately, as usual.

  • hazeebabee@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    Hi! I want to make a base building community. It would be for pictures of game bases (or irl bases if people set up a cool campsite or something that qualifies as a base). It’s my favorite type of game & something I don’t currently see on lemmy. If it does already exist, let me know and I’ll happily join the already existing community :)

    Otherwise, could I create that community on this instance? I wasn’t sure if it would fit with the slrpnk theme, but I think it kind of could because base building games tend to center around self sufficiency, survival, and exploration.

    I plan on posting my own bases from games & have quite a few screenshots to try and populate the community to start with. Let me know if it would be okay :)

    • clairexo@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      Heads up, when I read “base building” my first interpretation is the the political organizing term. I appreciate now knowing that it’s got meanings in completely different contexts too! Best luck in finding good community for discussion here on slrpnk :)

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netMEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Could you give some examples? I assume you mean the base building computer game genre?

      I am a bit hesitant as it could easily become mainly advertisement for specific games and also this genre often has strong colonial undertones.

      But maybe let’s just see? If it is something you enjoy and would like to share with other members here, then I see no general issue. Just keep the two above points in mind when posting please 😊

      • hazeebabee@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        That’s a fair critique. Specific games ive been playing & would have bases to share would be grounded, terraria, subnautica, stardew valley, the long dark, and maybe some others. I want to try and keep it from being all one game to both give it a wider appeal & to encourage it to be more about the creativity of bases rather than just an ad for a specific game.

        I also do think it would be fun to include irl ‘bases’, like the tree stumps that serve as a roly poly base in my back yard, or my car when I convert it to my travel base, or a fun backpacking set up (im going to isle royale this fall, im sure well have some cute ‘bases’). Maybe that’s kind of overly broad? I think it could be fun if moderated correctly.

        I’ll give it some time & see if there’s any more feedback on if it’s wanted or not. Or if anyone knows of exisiting communities that fit what im looking for. Maybe I’ll post in the new months meta post since that tends to get more eyes at the start of the month.

        • poVoq@slrpnk.netMEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          a fun backpacking set up (im going to isle royale this fall, im sure well have some cute ‘bases’).

          Definilty something to post in /c/outdoor then 👍