Ategon

Finally fixed the issues I was having with mlmym and we now have our fourth alternate frontend in the instance! This one is similar to old reddit if you prefer that sort of browsing experience. I know some users requested it in the past

Frontend is up at https://old.programming.dev

We now have the four main alternate frontends hosted. The other three are currently in the site sidebar and ill be adding mlmym there as well now

Hey everyone! Got time to write up an update so figured I would update on events that have been happening around Pangora

Im going to be working on severely changing how the project is handled

Theres another project thats been getting made and rather than work on a separate thing than them ive decided to merge my work on pangora into their project

After that pangora will be soft forked (in both the front and back ends) for specific niche customizations but the majority of the development will be done in that other projects repository

They havent announced it publicly so ill let them be the ones to do that but if youre interested in helping develop it (or if youre an admin of an instance) feel free to reach out and I can add you to a chat for it (main languages used are java, typescript (next.js), and go)

In other news for the project I made a couple supporting sites

• https://badges.pangora.social - used to generate badges to show instance community or user stats
• https://recap.pangora.social - used to see a recap of your stats for the year

Overall this means that rather than work on a beta for the frontend ill be working on the other projects frontend to get pangora into there. Expect things like a beta when that other frontend is done and I can fork it properly

Hey everyone. Some of you may have seen the recent announcement with blahaj to defederate with the instance. Ive been handling things privately and wanted to do an announcement to catch you all up on the results of that

#1: Background knowledge

Realized that not everyone knows how the instance is structured so figured I would do a little section in the front to go over that (especially for visitors reading this from other instances)

We currently have 8 admins in the instance. Of those 2 people are currently lead admins (snowe and I). Majority of admins are part of the community team but not all of them (people are split between infrastructure, development, and community). I was planning out a team page similar to what lemmy.world has to go over this with a bit more detail and that should be coming in the future. Main thing though is its intentionally structured so one person doesnt solely have power (hence the two leads). If one person ends up messing up theres the other lead and the rest of the admin team to talk with them about it and help them do better in the future.

#2: What happened?

There was a thread in lemmy.ml about the hogwarts legacy game winning a steam award. For reference for the following images + description, snowe is the other lead admin for the instance apart from me and the other people are various other users

There was a conversation that ended up essentially devolving into a slap fight within this post (ive purged the entire conversation so people dont stumble onto it in the future but ill post images here with them for archiving reasons and to explain it)

^ These comments were what initially started it. Essentially it was an argument about the hogwarts legacy game being or being not transphobic

^ Later in the argument

^ One branch that ended up getting started due to the frontend snowe uses on mobile not showing pronouns (how most instances handle it currently is its appended to the end of the display name but some frontends choose to ignore the display name and just do the username instead)

(edit: changed the word triggered to started to make it more clear what definition of triggered I used. Forgot that tends to not be common usage)

There are other branches but it is a very large amount to screenshot and dont want this to completely flood this post. Everything should be available in the modlogs still if you want to dig a bit deeper or I can send other screenshots in the replies on this post if youre interested in what was said for certain parts

#3 Aftermath

Due to the argument above blahaj chose to defederate with programming.dev which was going to take effect 48 hours after their announcement on it. (This is due to the person in the conversation being one of our lead admins which is ultimately understandable as they represent the instance)

snowe has sent a message apologizing to ada (the lead admin for blahaj). I dont know the contents of what was said but if they want the two of them can choose to publicize it.

One of our admins should not have escalated the situation and participated in this slap fight so on behalf of the admin team here were sorry about that

Internally we have a guidebook for admins to follow for the various aspects of the instance (moderation, applications, etc.). Ive refined this guidebook with a couple new rules for admins that should be taking effect in the future

• admins will be required to have two accounts, one for admin activities and one for non admin activities. This is how some admins have already been interacting in the fediverse and basically makes it so comments done on the non-admin account should not be taken as that admin speaking on behalf of the instance. Generally the admin account will be things done relating to admin duties (e.g. my posts here in meta) while the non-admin account is other various conversations. Admins can be as anonymous as they want with the non-admin account similar to how our users here can be as anonymous as they want with their accounts
• im adding in some guidelines for tone while chatting for the admins so comments made that are on behalf of the instance should be respectful and not devolve to slap fights

Like I said before in #2 ive also purged the entire conversation to avoid people stumbling onto it and seeing a slap fight with an admin that has since apologized. As the community exists on lemmy.ml I cant fully do this due to how federation works in lemmy but the mods in the community have been doing the same which should federate.

This should not have happened in the first place and we as an admin team will be better going forward

I hope the blahaj instance sees our actions and chooses to reverse the defederation decision but at the end of the day its their instance and they can choose whoever they want to federate with (note federation is done directionally. I will still leave our direction of federation open)

Edit: Blahaj stopped their defederation (shown in an edit on their announcement) so the two instances will still be federated both directions going forward

Another edit: its a work day, its midnight here, and some comments here are also devolving into slapfights. Ive locked the post since this has already taken up most of my free time to try to handle and moderate this. My dms are always open if you want to dm me regarding the situation

We now have our third alternate frontend setup, voyager. This one is a mobile first frontend

https://v.programming.dev

Mlmym coming next (old reddit style) but ive been having issues with it so unsure when

Continuing with alternate frontends for the instance, we now have the photon frontend hosted at https://p.programming.dev/

Voyager should be coming tomorrow

Hey everyone

Its been a bit since the instance has been started and the community handling has become mostly stable so we are changing how community creation works

You should now see a button in the UI called create community that you can use to create a community without needing to go through our community request zone. Instead of filtering communities ahead of time we will retroactively check on new communities and delete them if they dont match the instance

This should be a much better experience for community creation instead of needing to dig around for the community request community. This also means the vote threshold is no more as it doesnt seem needed anymore now that its stable here and things shouldnt be coming in too quick

The UI still isnt ideal since its not apparent that the creation will be moderated afterwards but hopefully in the future we should be able to make something to show its happening (and possibly limit the community until its approved but make it still happen through the button). But for now ill be updating the sidebar with info on the new system

In the future I will draft up a mod welcome guide and mod guidelines and post a link to them here once I get time to do so

Please do not community spam. Try not to mod more than 5 communities unless you have the time to handle that many things

If we notice someone is community squatting by mass creating things and then doing nothing with them theyll be handled and the communities will either be deleted or put into the adoption community !adopt_a_community@programming.dev

Hey everyone! Ive been messing around with getting alternate frontends hosted for the instance

To start it off we now have the alexandrite frontend hosted at https://a.programming.dev

(a in the front to match how other instances have been doing it so its consistent)

Im also attempting to get voyager, photon, and mlmym hosted as those are the other main ones. If you have any suggestions for other frontends let me know and I can try to get it set up

Note for all of these its not guaranteed they will be supported forever since it depends on the developers of them to update to the most recent lemmy versions. If we end up dropping one due to lack of support for recent versions ill announce it here

Hey everyone! Finished up a recap system for lemmy where you can request your stats for the past year (things like posts made, comments made, top posts for the year, etc.)

Hope you enjoy! Theres a role it assigns you and an image you can copy at the bottom

Finished up a recap site for lemmy similar to the recaps other sites like spotify, etc. have been doing!

Shows things like how many posts youve made, how many comments, your top posts of the year, the top communities you participate in, etc.

Theres a little role it assigns you and an image at the bottom that can be easily shared into the thread

Currently supports any instance running a lemmy compatible api (lemmy, pangora, etc.)

Lets you generate and then copy shields.io style badges to show different stats exposed by the api

For example for this community I can generate badges such as

Subscribers

Monthly Active Users

etc.

Theres a system built in that lets you customize how they look and then generate them again with those looks. Supports badges for instances, communities, or users

Link again just in case your software doesnt handle the first one

Hey everyone! Thanks for being part of p.d in 2023

Ive been working on some things so figured I would give a little sneak peek into some new things that will be arriving in the next couple months

Lemmy Recap

Originally wanted to get this out before the new year but ended up getting sick so itll likely drop sometime this week. Youll be able to see stats like how many posts you made, how many comments you made, your top post, etc.

Icon & Banner Poll

Once im done with the recap ill be running some polls for what people like more between a new logo I designed and the old one and It would possibly have the icon for the instance switch depending on how the vote goes

Pangora shields.io badges & bot list

Adding some new supporting sites for pangora. There will be custom shields.io badges that can be used to display instance, community, or user stats and a bot list to list the bots that currently exist

Supporting sites

New supporting sites for programming.dev such as an improved status page, a donation page, a team page, etc.

Programming challenges

Im bringing back programming challenges but they'll be mostly ran using a supporting site and will be much less frequent (probably 1 challenge a week)

Lemmy Event: Safe Crackers

Should hopefully be running a new event in february called safe crackers that people in any lemmy instance can participate in

Hope you enjoy the instance in the coming year!

If youre interested in chatting we have both a discord and a matrix community at https://discord.com/invite/kwyxvYEYt4 and https://matrix.to/#/#p.d:matrix.org

If youre interested in helping out with coding various things for the instance such as the supporting sites or a new backend + frontend thats been getting built feel free to let me know and I can add you to the areas for that. Languages used are mostly Javascript, Typescript and Java

Back with another community health check-in to see how communities in the instance are doing

• Lively- 5k users/month or above
• Active - 201-4999 users/month
• Moderate - 51-200 users/month
• Quiet - 11-50 users/month
• Dead - 0-10

Communities

• Lively communities: 1 (1%) (~)
• Active communities: 14 (7%) (+1% from last month)
• Moderate communities: 19 (10%) (-5% from last month)
• Quiet communities: 64 (34%) (+9% from last month)
• Dead communities: 90 (48%) (-4% from last month)
• Total communities: 188 (+11 from last month)

• Active communities increased a bit
• Moderate and dead communities decreased
• The amount of quiet communities increased a bunch

Advent of code

Advent of code was at 136 active users/month before this month started and now its at 839 (as this month was when advent of code occured)

Least active communities

(These are ones that will be prioritized for making active) (theres a lot in the dead category so these are random ones from that, not all of them)

• !perl@programming.dev
• !erlang@programming.dev
• !dart@programming.dev
• !swift@programming.dev
• !graphql@programming.dev
• !lua@programming.dev
• !flutter@programming.dev
• !matlab@programming.dev
• !latex@programming.dev
• !lisp@programming.dev

In the future im going to try to automate these stats so I dont have to do this manually