The honest answer is that we’re still trying to get The Agora running, and a backlog developed in the process. We are working on it, it’s just going to take some time to sort through the old votes. We’ve been focused on cleaning up the process so we don’t have this problem moving forward.

This feels like a gross overreaction to the situation. Sure, I don’t love the fact that TD has a tiny presence here, but I fail to see how that should be cause to defed a large instance. Especially when that community just popped up recently, only came to anyone’s attention in the last day or so, and (to my knowledge) hasn’t caused any real trouble other than the Agora mod vote thread getting a bit spicy.

I’m sure it’s something we’ll need to address internally, but it’s just one item on that list. And for now, it seems like a low priority item.

If you want some really wild old storage tech, a normal VHS cassette could hold 3-5gb of data. But we didn’t have any use for that much storage at the time, and CDs were taking over by the time we did, so nobody bought the VHS storage hardware.

Consider this another vote for Ubuntu or any of its variants. They’re beginner friendly, and established enough that you’ll find plenty of resources written specifically for them. Linux Mint is another one I’d recommend for beginners, it’s designed to “just work” out of the box and be an easy transition for Windows users.

Then it’s just down to using it some. First and foremost, leave Windows installed until you’re comfortable with whatever else you end up trying. Whether you partition, or make a bootable USB drive, or even just a VM, use some kind of temporary space for practice. The terminal is a lot less intimidating when you aren’t learning in your main environment, you can go break things and see what happens.

So far, we have a captcha on account creation now and it seems to be working (from what I’ve seen, anyway)

It’ll be a tough balancing act though. Relatively frictionless sign-up has been great for us, and anything that deals with bots will also affect that. Whatever else we may end up doing will need to be carefully considered.

I do the opposite of taking care of mine, and they’re still going strong after 20ish years. Corcoran boots are damn near indestructible. They’ve only been semi-retired because I’ve moved other boots that are nearly as tough, but much more comfortable. Specifically Red Wings for normal wear, and Ariat cowboy boots for actual work.

I don’t even really think about it, I just comment if I have something to say. At worst, nobody reads it and I was shouting into the void for a minute.

But the Lemmy userbase isn’t massive yet, so those week+ old posts still see more engagement than you’d think.

You can buy some at the grocery store, it says “Moon Cheese” right on the damn bag! They wouldn’t just lie about what they’re selling

And to make matters annoying, restarting the service that causes the sorting bug can trigger some other bugs (federation errors iirc). So there isn’t a “right” answer until the real fix comes.

Archive.org is also doomed, I’ve seen to that one personally.

Because of federation, I just didn’t think about it too hard. I clicked on Sh.itjust.works because the name made me giggle when I saw it, and signed up immediately because the first post I saw was the boss sharing server stats and being totally transparent about operations and intentions. At the time, it was one of the smaller instances that might not last.

Choosing “wrong” never seemed like a big deal, it’s not hard to start fresh somewhere else if needed.

There are situations where it can be helpful, but in general I don’t think intentional cross-posting is going to help. It could just as easily homogenize the communities and stifle what momentum we do have.

Communities will establish themselves organically over time, as we’ve seen with every platform before this. Trying to force it, or really influence the process at all, is just as likely to rub some folks the wrong way and lead to more fragmentation.

Until things settle, it seems like a more effective tactic is to choose where you want to focus your attention and add to the content in a natural way. Instead of cross-posting, just decide on a “main” community for any given topic for yourself and contribute there in a meaningful way. If another community in the same space looks like it’s taking over, reevaluate where you want to place your focus. Help build somewhere for the sake of building, but not for the sake of the numbers.

Alternatively, just ignore the “problem” completely and trust the process. Post in the first relevant community that springs to mind. Engage with posts as they come through your feed without paying any mind to the size of the source. The most important thing is increasing total user count across the Fediverse, and diverse activity can be a huge drive for that.

Counterpoint: being able to drink a cup of coffee then immediately take a nap leads to the most restful 20 minutes of sleep you’ll ever have.

Sure I’d rather be affected normally by caffeine, but at least it isn’t a total wash.