The Beehaw project is entering some significant challenges - Beehaw
beehaw.org
There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring. Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online. In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps. Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee. Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running. Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion. All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful. Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base). The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around. Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future. Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      112·
      1 year ago

      I once got told that if I even tried to defend or discuss my point of view (after the first and only comment on that thread), I’ll be banned. Because I said that if you randomly pick out someone from a random population, you’re less likely to pick a minority, because they’re a minority. And that’s how statistics works.

      • legless velociraptor@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        Beside the point, but maybe still worthmentioning: if the “majority” is in truth just another minority, but the biggest one, with, say, 15% of the population, and therefore by default calls itself the majority, you’re still more likely to pick an individual of one of the 24 other minorities. What you’re unlikely to do, is to pick an individual of a specific minority, no matter which one. The “least unlikely” is an individual of said “majority”, because it’s the biggest minority. It’s still relatively unlikely, though, and likelier to pick an individual of some other minority, just not any specific one.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          yes, but you still have a higher probability of picking one of those than any other individual one of the others. you do have a higher probability of picking any other than that single one, but that’s not saying much. If you pick a random sample, the biggest minority will still be the biggest minority.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          The point was about proportional representation in media. The key word there was proportional.

          If I picked all my actors by picking names out of a hat (meaning it’s impossible to discriminate), there is a high chance that there won’t be a lot of asians in my result. But that’s not because I have anything against asians, but simply because I live in a mediterranean country, and there are far fewer asians here than you’d find in asia. So even if I ended up with 19 mediterranean people, and one asian person, that’d be a proportional representation.

          But I was the aggressor for not agreeing that “biasing the results but only if you personally don’t like them” is good proportional representation.

          And calling me the aggressor for stating an objective, undisputable mathematical fact in a relevant discussion is exactly why it’s a toxic echo chamber. The truth there is decided by majority. Not by the real world.