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So I'd actually take this a step further; what I'd do would be to freeze the DB schema, reimplement it on top of the same DB, and then make changes from there. No copy required and it lets us do a gradual changeover and even a backpedal if needed.
Yeah, absolutely agreed. I think there are improvements to be made, but Reddit works, we'd just start there.
Yep. It's quite possible that it just ends up dying an early death. Such is life.
So there's a few reasons I really want federation.
Part of it, I will acknowledge, is as a kind of moral pillar. I don't like vendor lock-in. It sucks. I don't want to be part of the problem.
Then another part of it is so I can kick subcommunities off without feeling too bad about it. Getting kicked off Reddit is nearly a death knell; getting kicked off Gmail simply isn't. I don't want to be in charge of delivering those death knells, and the easiest way to avoid that is to make sure they're not death knells.
A third part is that in theory we can link up with other groups like Lemmy. I dunno if that would actually work out, but I like the concept, at least.
If they make a "community" community, they don't own it, we do, and we'd be pushing the "foundation" thing. A lot of people will be fine with that and never run into issues! Not everyone though.
But also, it's a single integrated site. A lot of people don't look at The Motte simply because it's not Reddit; they have all their links in one place. There's a number of other forums out there that maybe I would join, but I would never look at, because I don't want to add another stop to my rotation. So "we'll host your site and add it to people's comment notifications" starts looking relatively attractive.
Absolutely! :)
So, a note here. I'm not suggesting having a single metamotte-wide Foundation (well, okay, I am, but not one that specifies rules), and I'm not suggesting holding other people to the Motte's foundation. I'm saying that at some point they are required to write something reasonable - which I'd help with - and that they will then be subject to it. It's not "force the moderators to adhere to it"; it's "if you cannot adhere to it, you will not be moderating this community anymore", and then we elect new users out of the community.
But this is only if they really are breaking the intent of the community. If it's a young community without a foundation, or a private community, fine, whatever, we'll just rename it elsewhere and let someone else scoop up the namespace.
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