hey folks. here’s a new FAQ on the community, since the currently pinned thread is a bit haphazard and crammed now, and we’ve had more time to go over stuff.
What is Beehaw?
in summary, we’re a community that wants to cultivate a sense of real belonging to something, to foster meaningful conversations, and to ensure everyone feels valued and respected in a way that isn’t the case with other social media out there. we’ve thought and written a lot about this. if you’d like more than that summary, we strongly encourage you to read the following essays, which explain how this community is run, what we prioritize in running it, and why we’ve designed it this way generally:
you can also read more on our Docs website
This sounds very cool! How do I join?
you don’t need to write a whole essay, however: please answer the question fully, and try to engage with at least some of the content above/on the sidebar before you register.
this is not personal, but we’ve grown a lot and are primarily interested in users who really care for the philosophy of our community. if you don’t answer the question fully, you will likely get denied or caught in registration limbo when we have a backlog of users.
How long should I expect to wait to be approved?
now that we have email working: anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours. you should get notified if you’ve used an email to sign up either way. make sure to check your spam folder to be safe this may be an issue for some users. if you did not use an email to sign up, try logging in after about 24 hours, and then again after 48 hours.
if we receive an influx of users you may get caught in registration limbo by failing to answer the questions, and it may take longer to get back to you than the 48 hours listed here.
if you have issues with anything, please report them in the following thread!
I’m in! How can I keep Beehaw running, or otherwise contribute?
our instance is 100% user-funded. you can one-time donate or become a monthly donor here. you can donate anonymously both ways. as far as we’re aware cryptocurrency is accepted by OpenCollective, it’s just more laborious and you’ll probably have to contact them to clear it.
if you have volunteer labor or advice you’re willing to give us on how to keep the site running smoothly, we also generally appreciate that. our Matrix and Discord communities are the best way to offer that stuff to us.
How do I help keep the community running smoothly?
be considerate! think about the things you say and how you want to say them; be kind and charitable; don’t assume the worst of people; but above all: Be(e) nice!
it might seem trite, but genuinely we’ve found there is no better distillation of what we want to accomplish here than that ethos. if something makes you feel like that ethos is being violated, err on the side of caution and report it (on desktop it’s the flag button in the three dot menu on any post). it can’t hurt. so far though we’ve found most people kind of know what we mean, and we’re hopeful you’ll be able to pick up on that too.
as for non-moderation ways you can keep things running: contribute to discussions! share stuff you find interesting! contribute your expertise and help out folks when they ask for it! it’s okay—and very understandable—to lurk based on the toxicity commonplace on other social media, but we really do try to make this space as welcoming as possible to everyone here and we hope you’ll find it a safer place to come out of your online shell.
What else should I know?
we always take feedback. while we can’t promise any changes, you can provide thoughts and comments on just about anything on the site in Beehaw Support, or on Discord or Matrix (where we maintain real-time chat). we try to get a sense of what the community wants and needs all the time, so we’ll frequently be asking for input from you to help inform our decisions.
downvotes are disabled on this instance and will probably always be. we find them unproductive. communities cannot be made by users on here. we do take feedback on what gets made and when to make communities, as a part of the above point. you can always find a running list of communities we have at this link, or under the Communities button on desktop.
we are all volunteers, and this is not a job for us. we would like to not have it be one, so we can just be members of the community with all of you. please help keep it that way!
in the very, very long term, we aspire to become a co-op or similar, as a part of fulfilling our ethos.
as with the last thread, feel free to sound off on other questions you have. i, other mods, and community members will try to get to them as able.
Guys, I love the intent here!
What’s the best way to help?
What’s the best way to help?
donations are probably best if you have the money (here) but failing that moral support is always appreciated
Thanks for approving me! I was looking for an art community on Lemmy as a replacement of Reddit and as far as I know, Beehaw has the biggest art community on Lemmy!
Hi everyone. This is an interesting place. I like that good behaving is part of the community philosophy. I can also understand why the creating a community is not allowed. Overall I have the feeling this is a place of quality.
However, disabling the down vote button leaves me with an uncomfortable taste in the mouth. I understand why this is done. This is my first post here, so I will see myself how its going to work out and decide at later time if this is a good idea or not. At least down voting unpopular opinions is such a bad thing in other communities, which would be solved here. And it still is self regulating, where top or hot comments have the most likes and comments. While writing my own comment here, I start to like disabling the dislike button.
Oh and thank god there is a Preview mode (like Github). I just wish there would be a realtime preview mode on the side.
I really like the policy of no downvotes. Honestly, even on Reddit I think downvoting had long ceased to serve any useful purpose, and turned into a harmful tool. Anything that truly is bad content can just be reported instead.
I think no downvotes for something like Beehaw is great. But for anything that tries to push “open” above “moderated”, downvoting is critical. Otherwise you get bad-faith contributors that are propped up.
Thanks a lot for letting me join. 🙂 Looking forward to being part of interesting communities on this platform.
Hi guys, new here, how does this: “communities cannot be made by users on here. we do take feedback on what gets made and when to make communities” work in practice? is there a space to request a thing be created? Like for example i like to talk about wrassling shows but there’s only a sports community.
On a semifrequent basis, we open up a thread to see what interest are present. We just had another round recently:
ah, thanks very much, that’s excellent!
Is there a wrasslin community? I can’t seem to find one
Following.
Thank you for having me. This community seems great!
Thanks for approving my account, I like the feel of the place and look forward to becoming more active as I get more familiar with things. One question… While I was waiting for my account to be approved I opened an account on the startrek.website lemmy instance with the same user name. Is this going to cause any problems?
One question… While I was waiting for my account to be approved I opened an account on the startrek.website lemmy instance with the same user name. Is this going to cause any problems?
nope (although you’ll probably see some things on one that you won’t on the other; i’m sure startrek.website federates with slightly different instances than we do)
Hello and thanks for letting me join the community.
Thank you all for your efforts! I really like the intent of the community here. I hope we can all flourish together :)
Thanks for having me! I hope to contribute as much as i can to meaningful discussions and help as many people as i can :)
I am really happy that this space here exists and I can be here. I already created an account at another instance, but noticed that the people there are already trying to create a new Reddit, including the downsides. So having a more controlled instance focused on being nice to each other sounds really wonderful.
I just finished reading the piece on beehaw as a community and how you try to manage disagreements or things that are inappropriately said shortly after being approved today.
It really moved me and made me feel a sense of community already. I really hope the moderation strategy works out with the growth of the instance, because it seems like moderating at that level would get exhausting very quickly. Anyways, I’m glad to be here and excited to see what the future will bring :)
Thanks for having me! I’ll do my best to engage and not just lurk/read most of the time lol! There’s some great content so far and I’m liking the move from Reddit even with the learning curve. I’ll donate when I can and if I can help more, I’ll do my best to do so.
Excited to be here and to contribute to the collective good!
