[Meta] FreeGameDev changes NEW: https://freegamedev.net

[Julius]

EDIT: Go to https://freegamedev.net to find our new & vastly improved forums.

You might have been following this topic: https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=7780

So my current proposal is to host an instance of Lemmy. With the recent release of version 0.9 it seems sufficiently stable to give it a try, and I have been testing their main lemmy.ml instance for a few weeks now and am quite happy with the functionality.

Lemmy is an ActivityPub (similar to Mastodon) enabled link aggregator / forum akin to commercial websites like Reddit.

My proposal would be to make it available on the main freegamedev.net domain, with this forum.freegamedev.net being still available. But for technical reasons you will have to make a new account on the Lemmy page.

Then the main general communities from this forum would be turned to read-only mode to serve as an archive and equivalent ones would be created on the Lemmy instance.

The hosted projects (in so far as they still have active forums) could decide to keep their forums here, or also switch over to our proposed Lemmy instance. However given the technical state this forum is in, some sort of migration will be necessary sooner or later IMHO. If they decide to switch to their own forums, ideally of course it would be a federated platform like Lemmy, so that we could still federate with them.

Any feedback or objections?

[ffaf]

I have briefly tried Lemmy and found it usable (and has RSS, always a bonus).

[PeterX]

What is the benefit of Lemmy (in contrast to these forum) for us free game dev.ers?

Greetings
Peter

[Julius]

The first and foremost reason is that these forums have become unmaintainable due to the outdated software and complex hosting situation. It is basically only a question of when not if we will have to shut it down IMHO.

So then the question comes up: what to replace it with? And for that, see the linked discussion

I personally would like to have something that works well on mobile and has the potential to federate with other websites to interact with the larger game dev and open-source community. I also think the open community model of a site like Reddit works better for "hosting" communities like we are doing on this forum now.

[Jastiv]

I'm very aware that we need to replace these forums and have for several years now. I mean, we don't even have a private message capability. That said, I'm not sure a redit like interface would promote good discussion. I mean, I spend time on Redit, but I honestly don't feel the discussions get very deep, and I also don't feel like I get very close with the people on there.

I think when it comes to redit, there is a lot of scrolling. Sometimes I check forums and find they haven't been updated in months, other times I find a lot of news articles and things I really don't care about or even want to read, in order to get to the one or two topics I am interested in. I feel like I am scrolling through a lot of fluff and people who don't even know what they are talking about, and yet somehow, they are on par with regulars (that is basically why I don't spend hours reading redit, while I do spend hours reading message forums, and I even spend time on the horror show that is facebook (although discussions there are pretty crap, at least I know the people, get memes and can join communities of interest rather than scrolling through random stuff.)

[Julius]

Hmm, I kind of understand what you mean. But isn't that rather a result of the mainstream audience and size of Reddit then the functionality of a Reddit like UI?

The only differences I see when it comes to the UI of a Reddit like forum and a phpBB forum are:
1. Threaded replies (i.e. instead of a single linear response list)
2. Semi-automated sorting of reply threads (i.e. by default the most "popular" comment threads end up at the top)

Edit: and the entire UI is a bit more geared towards link sharing, but I see this only as a minor difference as also on a phpBB like forum many of the starting posts reference an external website.

[drummyfish]

Reddit-style comments would solve or at least minimize the threads constantly drifting offtopic and being split, I'd support that... any offtopic reply will simply have its own comment subtree. Checking Lemmy out in lynx makes it seem to run without JS, that's great, although checking out the repo they're a typical SJW Rust project with a code of conduct *throwing up*, hoping the site won't be adopting that, otherwise good.

I'd definitely appreciate a comfy reddit-like site I can visit since I've been kicked from raddle

[Jastiv]

If we switch to Lemmy, does that mean any project would be able to make their own subredit type group?

[Julius]

Yes, although we would probably moderate that a bit to avoid the situation of a lot of abandoned communities.

[PeterX]

Ok, I have read the mentioned thread.

So there seems to be no point for Lemmy that makes it _neccessary_ to use it, but for other solutions there's no such point, too. So we kind of can choose randomly.
First glance at the Lemmy UI seems good, and if it is really decentralized (not sure if it is) that is cool.
That is is without Javascript, is a big plus for me, too. And from the mentioned thread it seems that Lemmy ls less ressource-hungry than for example Discourse.

If we must migrate anyway, then do it! And do it now, please! (Just my opinion on this as it is an issue since 2018 or earlier, no try to boss you around)

Greetings
Peter

[Julius]

if it is really decentralized (not sure if it is) that is cool.

It's federated, so kind of like email. Not exactly the same as decentralized, but somewhat similar.

[DrAltaica]

The first and foremost reason is that these forums have become unmaintainable due to the outdated software and complex hosting situation. It is basically only a question of when not if we will have to shut it down IMHO.

So then the question comes up: what to replace it with? And for that, see the linked discussion

I personally would like to have something that works well on mobile and has the potential to federate with other websites to interact with the larger game dev and open-source community. I also think the open community model of a site like Reddit works better for "hosting" communities like we are doing on this forum now.

So thisis just a bandage on a gaping wound and an 10 years will be in the same state with the lemmy being outdates and unmaintained?. Find something that simple enough that you can keep it up by yourself.

[Julius]

How so? Should we make our own forum software, or what are you proposing?

I think the issue is rather related to a complex hosting (and domain ownership) situation which does not allow me (pretty much the only main mod still regularly active in this community) to access the forum software and even if I could access it, the software has accumulated so much technical debt that I would not try to fix it either.

[PeterX]

So would creating a new domain and forum server be the solution? What would it cost? Could it be crowd-funded? I would like to donate to such a solution. Would it be a solution at all, or would it make things worse?

(Of course writing the forum software ourselves isn't an option.)

Greetings
Peter

[Julius]

Charlie (who owns the domain, but does not run the servers) gave me access to the domain DNS settings a while ago, so in theory I could point them at a new forum. But the nameserver it currently uses is a bit annoying. I don't think the domain is really an issue as Charlie is around from time to time, but it would make it a bit easier if I would take it over.

As for the server... that's not really a money issue, but finding time and motivation to set things up and maintain them afterwards.

[PeterX]

As for the server... that's not really a money issue, but finding time and motivation to set things up and maintain them afterwards.

Okay, but why is maintaining the current server less work?

[Julius]

It isn't, we are just freeloading off a server that runs some other stuff, which is the reason the forum isn't being properly maintained and I can't get access.

[Lopy]

I haven't read the entire original thread, but there are some issues I can see with Lemmy.

Beside the aspect and features that a new tool may have, there is also the type of messages it leads you to post. Depending of the text box size, presentation or even hard character limits, people will write messages of different sizes. Another factor is the ease of sending a message, which is why I think that having a forum work on mobile would lead to a significant change. Now, people may personally prefer longer or shorter messages, but they should probably think about what their preferences are before switching over. By looking at Lemmy, it seems messages tend to be shorter there than here, and significantly more threads are left unanswered.

I do not believe that splitting the community is necessarily bad. A FLOSS enthusiast interested in games would not necessarily have much interest in the LilyPond changelog, or even the one for a given game. Much like programs, there are legitimate reasons to make different things that on the surface look similar. In the case of a community, that could be specialised topics, a different posting format, or even "community guidelines". The real issue is low discoverability. Someone landing on a FLOSS site should be able to easily find every single other one, even if it takes a considerable amount of (FLOSS) hoops. Also, to make this more likely, at least basic access should be available through a web browser, except where a high barrier for entry is desired (Gemini). Lemmy seems to have very coarse grained categories, meaning that some might be thrown off from the noise and want another place to discuss.

While I do not bring a silver bullet, there seems to be other kinds of options that have not been considered. One of them would be a Q&A software. While the intended use is let people answer questions, something like www.question2answer.org (GPL2-or-later) seems closer to the current forum than Lemmy. A question corresponds to a thread, and conversation to comments. When someone wants to post a more structured comment, or start a small tangent, they post an answer, and people can then comment on the answer. If a real new thread is wanted, it can be started as a "related question". Categories can be up to 4 levels deep, with tagging. Users can customise their profile, and there seems to even be private messages.

[PeterX]

With Q2A there seems to be the possibility to have topic categories. That is important for FGD. But categories seem to be done via tagging. In the end the mod will often have to add the proper tag(s) himself.

Q2A seems to be simple to install.

[Julius]

I used Q2A before. It's ok as a website, but also semi abandoned by its developers. Furthermore I really want to get away from the silo type of website and rather do something federated. While our Hubzilla ( https://social.freegamedev.net ) already does that to some extend, I think right now only Lemmy combines federation with a suitable user-interface for replacing these phpBB forums.

[PeterX]

I used Q2A before. It's ok as a website, but also semi abandoned by its developers. Furthermore I really want to get away from the silo type of website and rather do something federated. While our Hubzilla ( https://social.freegamedev.net ) already does that to some extend, I think right now only Lemmy combines federation with a suitable user-interface for replacing these phpBB forums.

Some of my questions have already been answered here, but I'm feeling a bit unsure about what it really means, so I ask here:
Lemmy seems to be a bit like Reddit (at least on the first glance), right? And it is federated. But what does "federated" mean from the forum visitor's point of view? I guess people can have their own conversations and friends, like with Mastodon, right? (Which would be useful for game maintainers.)

Seems cool...

Greetings
Peter

[Julius]

Lemmy does have private messages, but it does not fully federate user accounts with Mastodon/Pleroma yet (it is a near-term planned feature though). For now federation in Lemmy means that you can subscribe to communities on other Lemmy instances and also comment and post to communities on other instances. Think of it like Reddit, but that subreddits can be on different servers under different domains. So if you have a Lemmy (and soon Mastodon/Pleroma etc) account somewhere, you can easily contribute without having to go through registering an account etc.

[Lopy]

So the thing you want from federation is shared accounts! I did some digging, and it turns out you can apparently set Q2A up to accept Mastodon accounts. Mastodon is an OAuth provider (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/oauth/), and Q2A has multiple connection plugins, notably this one https://github.com/alixandru/q2a-open-login which accepts OAuth (GPL2-or-later, hidden in the README).
The other thing with federation is discoverability, but I think a link list works pretty well for that.

Concerning the apparent "abandoning" of Q2A, the changelog (https://docs.question2answer.org/install/versions/) seems to reflect a feature-complete project with maintenance updates. Which should be a good thing to avoid having to update. New features are handled through plugins (https://docs.question2answer.org/plugins/).

Q2A does have categories and tags, but they can both be toggled off by admins, which might be what you saw PeterX.

[Julius]

Oauth2 isn't the same as being able to subscribe from your commonly used service to a community on FGD though. Ideally people could have FGD posts just show up on their Mastodon or Lemmy (app) timeline and comment from there, without ever to actually navigate to our website at all.

As said above I know Q2A pretty well, including the Oauth2 function. It works, but it is a very old code-base with a lot of technical debt that isn't being fixed anymore. I feel that it would hardly be an advantage over phpBB at this point.

[PeterX]

From what I learned about Lemmy, it is really cool. If it isn't too much work for you, @Julius, I'm totally for using it. It seems as if Lemmy might perhaps even have smaller amount of admin work to it.

As far as I have learned about Lemmy in the few minutes/hours I'm on Lemmy now, it is best for low traffic. As this forum really has low traffic, that's a good solution. And I like the concept of combining forum and fediverse.

Greetings
Peter