HI – I’m wondering:

  1. If support for private communities with a restricted member list within a Lemmy instance that is otherwise public is on the drawing boards for future implementation? Timeframe? Or just a someday since we are mostly volunteers?

  2. If not, where would be the best place for me to submit this feature request?

Trying to weigh several factors as to whether or not to keep my Lemmy instance operational. My use case is I’m trying to attract an audience of users (mental health professionals) who seem to be just not interested in discussions on Lemmy if they are open to the public. If they want an anonymous account to discuss other topics (I allow these too), they can just open one anywhere. (Yes, I’ve done more marketing than most, but that’s another topic.)

Thanks, Michael

  • Terevos@lemm.ee
    4·
    9 months ago

    I don’t need a private community, although that option would be good.

    What I really want is the ability to hide a community’s posts from the All and Local pages. (only visible if you go direct or you’re subscribed)

    And if you search for the community you’re able to find it.

    • Geronimo Wenja@agora.nop.chatEnglish
      6·
      9 months ago

      This actually already exists, it’s just not in the UI yet. Hiding communities can be done via the API. I was planning on putting in a PR to expose the functionality on the front-end at some stage.

        • Geronimo Wenja@agora.nop.chatEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          The existing feature is that only subscribers will see it in feeds, but it can still be searched for or viewed manually. It’s not a private community feature. I’m just planning to add front-end access for the feature that already exists, so that admins don’t have to do API calls to use it.

          I’ll see if there’s any existing discussions about private communities while I’m at it though, it might be something the main devs have an opinion on or plan for.

          • Michael Reeder LCPC@lem.clinicians-exchange.orgOPEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Geronimo writes – “I’ll see if there’s any existing discussions about private communities while I’m at it though, it might be something the main devs have an opinion on or plan for.”

            Brilliant – thank you for checking.

            There are all kinds of situations in which a (usually small) group of people might need some privacy. An oppressed minority at a college in the southern United States, a group of employees trying to unionize, etc. Doctors discussing procedures and needing both vetted credentials to comment intelligently/safely and the general public to not see they are disagreeing with each other…

            At the same time, it would be great to have FEWER login credentials – so members of these private communities could also partake in all the advantages of the Federated communities on their same Lemmy instance.

            – Michael

  • Shadow@lemmy.ca
    1·
    9 months ago

    Federation and private communities aren’t really compatible. If any instance needs to pull your posts for federation, any user can too.

      • Shadow@lemmy.ca
        2·
        9 months ago

        Pretty much. If you want a community with limited posting access I can see that happening, but limited read access seems opposite to the ideals behind lemmy.

        I’m curious though - if you’re looking for private communities, then what’s the point of a federated platform like lemmy? What are you looking to gain from federation?

        • Michael Reeder LCPC@lem.clinicians-exchange.orgOP
          2·
          9 months ago

          Shadow – The point is to have the best of both worlds. So a person could join the Lemmy instance and participate in all the Federated communities. Then, they could be vetted for the private community (which is not Federated – only on that instance), in order to discuss more private matters.

          Not extremely secret stuff, more along the lines of “I’m a psychotherapist and I’m having depression issues myself” or “I have a depressed 23-year-old female client with symptoms of … Do you all have some treatment recommendations”. Stuff that is back-channel and maybe the whole world should not read.

          Despite their various evils – Facebook, Tumblr, and Reddit all have both open and closed communities. Of course these platforms are no doubt reading the “private” communities and monitizing it quietly in some way. Maybe even selling the data out the back door…

          Anytime people need a bit of trust and privacy at a distance this becomes a good idea. A young mother’s group wanting to exchange advice and support on breastfeeding, an LGBTQ group at a particular somewhat hostile college in Texas, etc.

          Yes, old-fashioned BBS systems (remember FidoNet?) do this – but then non-technical people have to learn a new BBS login every blessed time they want to access one of their particular closed groups. So you do it all through Lemmy for some convenience.

          – Michael