Lemmy.zip Server Update June 2024

Hi All!

This month marks the 1st birthday of Lemmy.zip. Originally intended as a side project, I think I’ve ended up spending more time on this site than my actual job.

June 10th is the official anniversary, and so we’ll be doing a small giveaway on this day to celebrate.

In the meantime, lets have a look at how things went in May.

Communities

This month, I want to focus on the existing abandoned communities we have that have the potential to really grow.

Tesla (152 Subscribers)
Playstation (570 Subscribers)
Xbox (198 Subscribers)
Apple (438 Subscribers)
Star Trek (165 subscribers)

If you fancy becoming a mod of one of these communities, please let me know.

We’ll also be doing some form of community tidying up over the next couple of weeks, so we’ll be checking with mods if they want to keep unused communities or if we can remove them/put them back out to other mods.

Server Updates

Other than a small bit of downtime caused by me, the server has been stable as a rock this past month, with most of the work being carried out on keeping the various services we use up to date.

The extended downtime during the maintenance window (and extension of said maintenance window) was due to the backup process not correctly handling old snapshots. All the backups were safe and offsite, but a lock on the repo wasn’t cleared and so the process the server normally follows where it cleans up old snapshots wasn’t firing, causing extra storage space to be used up. In order to clear it, the server needed some time where files weren’t being altered, so I temporarily took lemmy offline in order to let the tool do its thing, which lasted for about 40 minutes. Thankfully that shouldn’t happen again, and wasn’t technically the end of the world either as we were still getting daily offsite backups, but was very inconvenient!

We’re waiting a lot on the next version of Lemmy to be released (0.19.4) which should hopefully be soon. In the meantime, I’ve been going back over Zippybot’s code, tidying up various bits and pieces and trying out different things we can add to make Lemmy a better overall experience. For example, we now send a rejection message if we decline an account, unlike the default experience which is just to ghost the user. Thankfully we don’t need to do this much, but hopefully it guides genuine new users to get in touch if they feel we’ve made a mistake (which we might do, we’re only human!)

We’re also exploring making bans more transparent. We really don’t issue many bans to our own users at all, as you can see from the mod log. When we do though, there isn’t really a way for that person to know why they were banned if they’re not aware of the log. So we want to use the same technology as we use for sending application rejections and also send emails to let someone know why and for how long they were banned, and most importantly how to appeal. Again, we really don’t issue that many bans to our users, but I feel people need a clear and simple way to get in touch if they don’t think we’ve been fair.

We have also put up some new front ends that people can use if they fancy trying something new:

t.lemmy.zip - Tesseract - This is a fork of Photon (which is our current mobile site) except that it has quite a few extra features built in. Take a look if you’re primarily on mobile!
a.lemmy.zip - Alexandrite - An alternative Lemmy desktop experience.

If there are any other front ends you’d like to see, let us know!

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

Please don’t be a lurker! :)

Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you’re enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can’t express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!

I am also looking at future fundraiser ideas (fundraiser committee anyone!) - if you have any ideas please let me know either in the comments, via PM, or on Matrix.