First off, I understand that this isn't our top priority right now, but I am scared that this can will be kicked far too down the road. I also don't want to cause a storm of drama here, nor a split. No hard feelings here to Emperor, Tom or Albatross.
Preface
When we came up with the idea for our next Instance to replace feddit.uk, we settled on a name and bought a domain for it. That domain was quackhouse.uk . We decided it was a fun-loving name and carried numerous benefits: • .UK TLD. Which was very important. • Not tied to Reddit. • Easy to say and memorable • Not tied to Lemmy. • Not tied to the Fediverse.
We were quite excited for Quackhouse, and to have such a last minute development for Quackhouse was disappointing.
Why Quackhouse?
Why did we decide the last two weren't a good idea? Well, to start, people who are interested in Lemmy and the Federation aspect would go for a lemmy instance anyway regardless of the name. I believe we aren't that stupid as to say "oh, it has lemmy/federated in it, it must be good!". HOWEVER just say you are trying to persuade your mate down the pub to join. He likes the idea of a forum for British-type subjects with no advertisements, tracking, and is voluntary donation-funded. However he isn't tech savvy. It would still be perfectly reasonable to tell him "Hey! There's a really nice community for discussing UK Related subjects! It's called Quackhouse.uk! (Mention some forums etc), Want to join?" Therefore for all he knows is that he's joined up to a site, there is content and discussion, he's happy. He doesn't know yet that there are users from other websites interacting with him, but he knows how to use it and he's happy. He'll probably figure out about it eventually but it won't be off-putting.
This approach wouldn't harm the "power-user" tech enthusiast, but it would be inviting to both and benefit growth.
Lemmy's growth problem
People were saying during Reddit's downfall to "join Lemmy" but I must be honest, even I resisted at first. The whole step of choosing an instance was REALLY off-putting. So I think an alternative approach would be to tell people about the instance instead of the fediverse in some cases.
The Feddit.UK problem
Has anyone here tried telling anyone who wasn't in the know about Feddit.uk? If you don't believe me, tell someone. Your response will most likely be: "Is that a Reddit knockoff?" Everytime I have told someone about this place, I have gotten a weird look and something to the tune of this response. Reddit isn't really the most heavily regarded site in the eyes of some, so who would want to make a Knock-off Reddit
I am not Tom and I mean no harm at all to him, but I reckon he kind of just set this up in haste as a pet project (which is perfectly fine, I have had similar experiences)
The fact of the matter is, this is a Reddit knockoff. You cannot deny it. And the main reason you cannot deny it is because it's literally in the name. However we can claim that the upvote/downvote layout is just a bog-standard forum layout (quite a few sites like Stack Overflow use it now anyway)
And I think this community is better than being named after a Reddit knockoff.
Feddit.UK's doomed future.
Feddit.UK has two inevitable futures.
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- The Fediverse loses hype along with lemmy and everyone who wants to join has joined. We fade into obscurity.
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- We keep growing, and then Reddit will eventually notice and will shut us down because we literally are infringing their copyright. We have no basis or ground to defend that.
My proposal to you:
We change domains, preferably to Quackhouse.uk. We even had a logo and a mascot designed 🦆. We were on the verge of launching it as well, domain bought, server bought.
My proposed method.
I don't think we should see this as making a new community per say, but making an extension of an already existing house and moving our good stuff over to the new part of the building. Or even better yet; just a name change
We do this in phases:
1: The hatching: Once we have everything soon enough settled, we make Quackhouse.UK as it was planned. Enable sign ups.
2: The Flock Migration: We migrate all of our main staple-UK communities over to Quackhouse. Eventually culminating in them being closed here through turning off posting.
- Shut down Feddit.UK sign-ups. Keep the instance itself running forever unless Reddit get angry. People can keep their feddit accounts, just keep it updated for legacy's sake. Put no pressure on Feddit users to migrate their accounts, but maybe offer the option.
Why not make Quackhouse a separate Instance and keep Feddit.UK unlocked? Right now, Feddit.UK is the Go-To place for British Discourse on Lemmy. We need the whole community behind this and unity. If we keep Feddit.UK up, then it will likely choke out Quackhouse's communities as there would be no reason to switch. Quackhouse was always planned to be a new home for Feddit.UK users. However, now Tom has kind of come in last minute and... Well.. our plans are a bit screwed.
Feddit.de is fine, though?
For now it is, I feel it will face a similar fate if it grows. Reddit is not going to like this violation one way or another.
All country specific instances uses feddit
While that holds a bit of water, there's no reason why we have to conform to that.
Opinion
I think it's more worthwhile inconveniencing people to resub to specific communties rather than letting them die in the inevitable downfall.
Summary
Feddit.uk is a problemed name and it needs to be changed. I propose we push on with changing it promptly, but when the time is right. It should be done in a way so that people don't lose their existing feddit.uk accounts.
Def the best approch.
Some systems are better then others. But most just say "image."
But honestly screen readers are not the only issue. The vaste majority of visually impaired have some vision. As such we tend ro tey and use it. Speach is slow and impracticle in most real world situations.
The issue is more websites. Filling the page with well crap. And the greaking trend of grey on white. Why is that shit so popular. It is unreadable by most. But even then these is so much code around the actual text. That when you are forced to ask the PC to read a section. It has to read through the wholw freaking page. As so many try to stop select and copy. They also effect readers ability.
What annoys me more. The wev was invented to prevent this shit. Early HTML was designed to be adapatnle by folks like me. Bur every "improovement" has pulled it further from the plan. While corps do not bother to spend the money sorting it.
OS is beyter then most. But still misses it dar to often.
i went down a rabbit hole last night about this, and found that there still isn't good support for alt text tagging on lemmy.
closest i found for emojis is something like this: 👋
at the end of the previous sentence, i included an emoji of a hand waving goodbye, and i have attempted to tag it using markdown. but, my suspicion is that it tries to read the alt text as a link, and it therefore doesn't work.
this is apparently the best lemmy can do for emojis. i think that is not good enough, and this needs to be improved by the developers
thank you for providing me with a teachable moment about accessibility.
i will do my best to keep readability in mind for the future. <3
Sorry. On the samsung phone it just says.
"Closest I found for emojis is somethibg like this"
Then nothing.
The samsung one requirs me to hit each paragraph. I find that the most usable.
I will try it out on mynlinux desktop. But honestly that machibe is set up with 4x 32inch monitors. So its rare I use it. Ajdbits not good.
Honestly i dont really like emojis. I can undersrand the old smilies. :( As they eblarge with font. Some stuff cobverts them to emojies but most screen readers just conver back to colon close bracket.
Most of the other stuff yeah as dar as I know most yonger people with visual impairment just ignore them.
Its not an issue when uskng them with people you know. My ex GD is the only one who seems unablento remember. (My vision was better when we dated and emojis were not a thing then)