Its important to keep in mind that Lemmy is provided for free and as-is. It also hasnt reached version 1.0 yet so obviously there are still many features missing. Yet there are tens of thousands of users and hundreds of admins who are happy with Lemmy in its current state.

To continue with the analogy, if the Lemmy playground is not safe enough for your particular neighborhood, you have a few different choices:

Wait for someone else to solve the problem (but this may take very long or forever)
Solve the problem yourself, or pay someone to do it
Use a different type of playground instead

Beehaw in particular has $5,470 in donation balance. This would cover my income for around 2.5 months. They could easily take this money to hire a developer and implement the features they require. Yet they believe that they are somehow entitled to dictating what I or Dessalines should work on.

Edit: This doesn't mean that I don't care about implementing better mod tools, in fact if you look at the pull requests there have been numerous improvements in this area. But resources are limited and mod tools cannot be the only priority as some people seem to expect.

Edit 2: To be very clear, this comment is only aimed at Beehaw admins and a few other individuals who are extremely entitled and think they can dictate me to work on features they specifically want. The vast majority of users and admins on Lemmy are not like that, so of course my comment is not aimed at them and Im working hard every day to make Lemmy better for the majority. But that means I cant get distracted and waste time on features that only a tiny minority wants.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (12 children)

Use a different type of playground instead

It's obvious that people are indeed doing or thinking of doing just that. Don't get complacent just because things have not changed yet. There is a threshold to cross and once it crossed, things change very very fast. Currently there's no software out that is as mature as lemmy, but if the trust thermocline is breached, people will prefer to switch to something substandard than support a project they don't believe anymore.

Your biggest benefit as FOSS developers is your community goodwill. I can't stress enough how much you need to be careful on what you say and how you communicate to maintain it.

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 16 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Look at it this way: I've spent almost every single working day for the past four years developing Lemmy. I implemented the entire federation logic and much more. Most days and nights I think about ways to improve Lemmy and it's not easy to shut off. Especially during the Reddit blackout it was extremely stressful as we were completely bombarded with requests, I didn't even have time to keep up with all the issues.

Yet last week some individuals came along who never made any contributions to Lemmy and never showed the slightest gratitude for my work. They essentially what I'm doing is wrong and that they should be in charge of decisionmaking for Lemmy. One Beehaw admin even said that all my work on Lemmy is meaningless.

I know you and many others have good intentions with your criticism. But after all the negativity of last week I simply don't have the mindset to accept any of it.

[–] The_Lemmington_Post@discuss.online 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Regrettably, complaining tends to be a common pastime for many individuals. I acknowledge your frustrations with certain users who may appear entitled or unappreciative of the considerable effort you've dedicated to developing Lemmy. Shifting towards a mindset that perceives complaints as opportunities for enhancement can be transformative. Establishing a set of transparent rules or guidelines on how you prioritize issues and feature requests could help turn critiques into opportunities for improvement. This transparency can help manage expectations and foster a more collaborative relationship with the users in your community. While not all complaints may be actionable, actively listening to feedback and explaining your prioritization criteria could go a long way in building trust and goodwill. Open communication and a willingness to consider diverse perspectives can lead to a stronger, more user-centric product in the long run.

The philosophy of Complaint-Driven Development provides a simple, transparent way to prioritize issues based on user feedback:

Get the platform in front of as many users as possible.
Listen openly to all user complaints and feedback. Expect a lot of it.
Identify the top 3 most frequently reported issues/pain points.
Prioritize fixing those top 3 issues.
Repeat the process, continuously improving based on prominent user complaints.

Following these straightforward rules allows you to address the most pressing concerns voiced by your broad user community, rather than prioritizing the vocal demands of a few individuals. It keeps development efforts focused on solving real, widespread issues in a transparent, user-driven manner.

Here's a suggestion that could help you implement this approach: Consider periodically making a post like What are your complaints about Lemmy? Developers may want your feedback. This post encourages users to leave one top-level comment per complaint, allowing others to reply with ideas or existing GitHub issues that could address those complaints. This will help you identify common complaints and potential solutions from your community.

Once you have a collection of complaints and suggestions, review them carefully and choose the top 3 most frequently reported issues to focus on for the next development cycle. Clearly communicate to the community which issues you and the team will be prioritizing based on this user feedback, and explain why you've chosen those particular issues. This transparency will help users understand your thought process and feel heard.

As you work on addressing those prioritized issues, keep the community updated on your progress. When the issues are resolved, make a new release and announce it to the community, acknowledging their feedback that helped shape the improvements.

Then, repeat the process: Make a new post gathering complaints and suggestions, review them, prioritize the top 3 issues, communicate your priorities, work on addressing them, release the improvements, and start the cycle again.

By continuously involving the community in this feedback loop, you foster a sense of ownership and leverage the collective wisdom of your user base in a transparent, user-driven manner.

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