I think it’s a fair point. They won’t be able to remain federated to many instances if their point of contention is open-enrollment.
I understand needing the Lemmy moderation tools to improve and that it’s temporary, but the damage to their own communities and users may not be temporary.
Their users will turn inward and end up preferring their own communities—which is fine. However it also means that non-beehaw users will shy away from those communities in favour of others, lest their home site get de-federated at some point for the same reasons. These effects combined means slow-to-grow, low-visibility communities in the fediverse, and increases the chance that their communities may dwindle if others of the same subject become pre-eminent outside of Beehaw.
In short, while I understand their reasons, I think that it risks making Beehaw.org permanently insular and ultimately much more similar to a non-fediverse website.
I think that is currently already in the process of happening. The reactions to the announcement from Beehaw users can generally be split into 2 3 categories:
Support, we should keep our communities insular
Neutral, I support whatever the admins decide
Opposition, I’m leaving to an instance that isn’t insular
EDIT: Added neutral, because on reflection there were quite a few posts like that
This means they are already self-selecting for insularity, which means the resulting userbase is very likely to want this “temporary” solution to become a permanent one.
This isn’t necessarily an issue: if the userbase is happy with their insular nature and are comfortable with it, and it’s clearly signposted on the sign-up, then after some network healing where we build communities separate from Beehaw everybody gets what they want
I think it’s a fair point. They won’t be able to remain federated to many instances if their point of contention is open-enrollment.
I understand needing the Lemmy moderation tools to improve and that it’s temporary, but the damage to their own communities and users may not be temporary.
Their users will turn inward and end up preferring their own communities—which is fine. However it also means that non-beehaw users will shy away from those communities in favour of others, lest their home site get de-federated at some point for the same reasons. These effects combined means slow-to-grow, low-visibility communities in the fediverse, and increases the chance that their communities may dwindle if others of the same subject become pre-eminent outside of Beehaw.
In short, while I understand their reasons, I think that it risks making Beehaw.org permanently insular and ultimately much more similar to a non-fediverse website.
I think that is currently already in the process of happening. The reactions to the announcement from Beehaw users can generally be split into
23 categories:Support, we should keep our communities insular
Neutral, I support whatever the admins decide
Opposition, I’m leaving to an instance that isn’t insular
EDIT: Added neutral, because on reflection there were quite a few posts like that
This means they are already self-selecting for insularity, which means the resulting userbase is very likely to want this “temporary” solution to become a permanent one.
This isn’t necessarily an issue: if the userbase is happy with their insular nature and are comfortable with it, and it’s clearly signposted on the sign-up, then after some network healing where we build communities separate from Beehaw everybody gets what they want