TLDR: The r/selfhosted subreddit has a Discord server. The owner’s account got hacked leaving the server in a precarious state. They submitted a support ticket, but Discord has not taken action in weeks and probably won’t at all, so they are considering starting a new Discord server.
There’s a certain irony making this comment on Lemmy.
Well I’m not trying to start a community around helping people, I’m just a participator. If I wanted to maximize the number of people I could help, I might move back to reddit
edit: a word
I understand that POV, but if people want help, they’ll go to where it is. Walk the talk of FOSS. That’s how we’ll build better communities.
They won’t go to Lemmy. Anybody getting into self hosting will not just know what Lemmy is. Nor will they per se care for FOSS to the same extent you do. So having people helping around on conventional platforms seems perfectly valid to me.
They could always advertise a Matrix room and bridge conversations if the moderators really wanted to as well, instead of isolating themselves.
Do you know what a hyperlink is? You just click on it and it takes you to Lemmy. You sign up, pretty much the same way you have done for every other service you have ever used. What are we doing here? Are we not trying to build alternatives to the corpo-surveillance hellscape that the internet has become? Give users a little more credit, and a little more incentive. Otherwise, you’re sending mixed messages when you offer a way to get their photos away from google or something, but you force them to use fucking Discord for support.
It’s fine if you disagree with me, but please keep it civil. The reason I’m saying they won’t go to Lemmy is because those hyperlinks will usually lead to the relevant docs, a couple of blogpost, or Reddit. I personally have never seen a Lemmy or Piefed instance in my search results when I looked up a problem.
To give an example: I went to Google and I put in the query “how to start self hosting on a linux server”, which is what I assume someone getting into it would look up. The top site (skipping the AI response and for some reason, Youtube videos?) was Reddit. That’s why it makes sense to me to offer help on a more conventional platform for people getting into self hosting. The people among them who get into federated services will naturally find their place here. They are not forced either way.
If a little light sarcasm is incivility to you, then you’re in for a real struggle. I don’t know how most people end up self-hosting but I suspect it’s more of an organic process. For me, jeez… I can probably trace it back to using StumbleUpon browser extension, hearing about Linux, then installing it as a way to avoid studying for exams. Once I was using Linux on my computer, I suppose self-hosting was inevitable. Where did I get the info? Wherever I could find it.