this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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196

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Here's a few things that are happening that I feel should be addressed:
-196 is reopening in reddit
-our community is causing excessive load on the blahaj.zone servers
-i finally figured out how to add newlines in Lemmy markdown

Two of these things are more important than the third but I figured they should all be addressed.
First things first, the subreddit. Even though the og subreddit is reopening now, I do not plan to close the community. At this point 196 on Lemmy and 196 on Reddit are both separate yet similar communities and this lemmy community has a sizable enough user base and is active enough I feel closing it would be stupid.

Speaking of a sizable user base, the blahaj.zone servers are under excessive load which has been causing the admins to incur fees upwards of $3,000 a month. This is in no small part due to 196 being the fourth largest community on Lemmy.
I'm not sure what the future solution of this will be. It seems like they're going to switch to a cheaper service provider which will also cause the entire website to be slower, at a lower cost.
For this reason, I think that a future migration to a different Lemmy server may be in order. I will be reaching out to major admins of other communities as well as our own ada to see if the pre-existing community can be transferred, or if we'll have to start from scratch if we choose to move. This is very much a developing situation, and I will keep you all posted.

Finally, as you can see. I finally figured out how to add newlines to plaintext meaning that all of my future postings will be much more professional looking. Check out our new and improved rules and regulations pinned post to see just how much of a difference it makes.

You guys are the community, so I'd like to see what you think. Please discuss in the comments section of this post, and I will try to base my actions off of whatever you all conclude on.

Also please point out any typos I may have made I voice typed this on my phone

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[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 135 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just be to clear, the state of the union post was an explanation of coming downtime, not a call for panic :)

We've got the solution and way forward for these issues.

You don't have to move if your main concerns are impact on our resources.

[–] TJmCAwesome@feddit.nu 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Too late I'm panicking already

[–] dontpanic@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 year ago

I’m conflicted

[–] popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 72 points 1 year ago

I refuse to go back to reddit.

There is a good reason we all left

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No matter what I am not heading back to Reddit. Just FYI I think there is a 196 on lemmy.world already

[–] abs_mess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 1 year ago

I mean, I like it here.

  • old 196 is reopening -> most likely less traffic
  • AWS is really expensive apparently, mostly image and transfer

Text is cheap to serve, but images (and video) are a PAIN. If a significant chunk of expense can be mitigated if I use Imgur or some other service and link my silly memes rather than direct upload then yeah sure, but moving the community around tends to lose people.

[–] nowitsabby@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 year ago

I don't know if moving is necessary. I like this community here and the admins have a path forward. If anything maybe we should be campaigning for more people to donate toward costs

[–] PaigePalisade@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's a bit annoying that the Reddit mods are reopening the community after moving a bunch of people elsewhere. Now we have a Raddle, Lemmy, Discord, and Reddit 196 each with different moderators.

Considering the Reddit has almost 50 times the number of subscribers as the Lemmy, I would assume that will be the most popular one, though we will probably have a higher percent of active users.

I would hope that eventually the different mods of the different 196s could do some form of cross-site collaboration to have unity between the 196s but I don't know what that could entail. Maybe the next 196 r/place could shout out the Lemmy community for example.

[–] HardlightCereal@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just FYI the Raddle admins are enbyphobic and there are serious issues with power moderators abusing positions of authority all over that site. I don't think we should be including Raddle in the conversation

[–] WizBizX05@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like there should just be a new seperate discord for r/196. As it stands, the current options either are too unofficial or are like 196cord, where it's a mish mash of two completely different communities with oposing personalities. While 196 seems pretty calm, friendly and is in general pretty down to earth, the other one has a lot of LARPers and pretty hostile to people and even besides that, the mods either don't care or are clearly not in the right mental headspace to moderate.

I joined the discord at some point and it was too fast to pay attention so I left. It definitely seems like a different platform for a community like this.

[–] BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Aww. I really loved being on blahaj, but it’s not worth causing that kinda stress on our sweet admins. I support wherever you decide to move us, except Reddit, but I think you’re already on the same page.

Is there anything we can do in the meantime to help contribute to the admins or to help otherwise?

Thanks for running this space, Its my favorite in the fediverse.

[–] Vlaxtocia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Luckily the admins have a plan to improve the servers, and that if impact on their resources are our only concern the we're welcome to stay

[–] sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah moving it off of blahaj seems like a good idea. It seems like 196 is one of the largest mid sized communities here, I can understand that creates alot of issues for the server owners.

Also, how do you the new line thing? It looks so professional and clean

[–] moss@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Add two spaces before you press enter

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Also if you put a space after the hyphen you can get bulleted lists:

Here's a few things that are happening that feel should be addressed:

  • 196 is reopening in reddit
  • Our community is causing excessive load on the blahaj.zone servers
  • finally figured out how to add newlines in Lemmy markdown
[–] HardlightCereal@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Watch this:

One fish
Two fish
Red fish
Blue fish

Im not going back to reddit, thats for certain.

[–] ezri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago

I'm confused why you'd post about moving instances without talking to the admins of this instance about it first tbh

[–] alexiascylding@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

going to a different server seems like a smart idea. we left reddit for a reason so seems counterintuitive to go back there. But yeah ive noticed the servers being all haywire and if theres a way to alleviate that cost and stress on the admins and go somewhere thats better equipped to handle the load then thats all fine and dandy

[–] Vlaxtocia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The admins have said they have a plan to fix it, and that we're welcome to stay

[–] ezri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The servers are having issues BECAUSE THEYRE WORKING ON THEM lol

Once the maintenance is done they'll be back to normal. ATM it's costing the admins $3000 a month to run the instance, so they're changing some stuff to be more cost efficient

yeah i realize that, seems like things are being fixed, browsing is much smoother now

[–] Teon@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe they need a better hosting company.
And maybe someone needs to make 196 it's own instance and collect donations. That way people can post there and possibly a lemmy / kbin instance.
lemmy196.com or 196kbin.com or any other TLD.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Is it possible to disable pict-rs and direct media uploads to the instance? Would the operators be willing to do it and rely entirely on third-party hosting?

[–] yote_zip@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

There's no way $3k/month is an accurate number to run a single community. Lemmy.world (and mastodon.world etc) combined takes ~1k/month to run, and they're far larger and more active.

Also, anyone who goes back to Reddit doesn't belong with the 196 community. No bootlickers allowed.