this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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How to get involved in new initiatives for Lemmy (wirebase.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hi all. Very happy to see Lemmy’s success so far. I’m interested in contributing to Lemmy’s growth.

At this stage, the engineering team should consider bringing some additional public-facing structure, such as:

1. Published roadmap
2. Performance metrics and reporting
3. Community outreach - keeping user base in the loop on roadmap, launches, metrics, growing pains

Lemmy will continue to grow regardless, however bringing some structure will onboard new users faster and add trust to Lemmy’s image. Trust factor is important - Reddit refugees are evaluating alternatives to Reddit, and are ultimately choosing off relatively little information.

What is the best way to get involved in new initiatives for Lemmy? I have experience with this type of work (engineering manager at a large tech company), focused on building teams, product roadmaps, and continually improving customer experiences through engineering.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

So lots of talk in here ATM of it being a small project with a small and busy team etc, which is all totally fair.

I'd just like to add:

  1. You're awesome for wanting to get involved and to do some of the "other work" that is often easily and problematically neglected!!
  2. The fediverse, as you've been told here, is FOSS and voluntary, which means that if something doesn't exist it's just because someone hasn't done it yet! Which means just getting involved and doing things isn't only possible but kinda the whole point!

As for contacting devs and contributors, yes, the GitHub repos for both lemmy and lemmyui and the issues sections there.

But they are also on matrix and AFAICT a good amount of chat happens there, so that's probably where you want to go. I believe there's a link to their matrix space here: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/01-overview.html#contributing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the info! I'll check out both GitHub repos and the matrix channel

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

What's a good Matrix group (is that the right lingo?) to join to lurk on discussions? Somewhere the devs from Lemmy, kbin, etc might be found?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Not to sound rude or anything - but I’m getting big corporate vibes from this post which really isn’t what Lemmy is trying to be. If you want to offer that kind of support, look at getting involved with individual instances. They are probably closer to a product than Lemmy is. The Lemmy project doesn’t need that kind of corporate structure to it. It’s not a charitable organization or Reddit 2.0.

Furthermore Lemmy users are not customers nor is Lemmy a product and it worries me that you would want to see it in this lens.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Might have been written by ChatGPT? lol. He does have a point though, if someone wants to contribute, it'd be nice to know what the devs would actually merge.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mind you I’m happy that they seem driven to contribute and want to know more about the process and how to potentially help. It’s really just the vibe of the post that’s off putting.

For contributing to the project, you can always submit issues to discuss next steps or possible ideas and implementation. It’s not just “here’s code please merge”. Being a contributor to an open source project also involves participating in discussions about the future of the project which you can usually do through mailing lists or issues for most projects.

For Lemmy specifically there is already a process for feature requests and discussions here

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don’t mind my corpo speak man. Just trying to take the experience I have to help out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Happy to hear :) truly, thank you for wanting to get involved. My corporate trauma is speaking

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Lol, it stays with all of us

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’m just talking about contributing time to helping develop a platform. Corporations are good at process - so yes, there are definitely lessons to be learned there that should be implemented in any platform that is quickly growing (eg: putting a team of volunteers together to help out)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is opensource and does not have large team to work on things you mentioned simply because its mostly one person and people who are trying to contribute to my knowledge. Just open the github repo for lemmy or any app and contribute if you want.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The GitHub repo will be focused on software-level initiatives, whereas I’m talking more about product-level.

If the team is that small, then they need more people involved in product ownership, which is what I’m interesting in contributing towards (as others are too, I assume)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it's just too early for that level of formality. Basically they're swamped just actually executing changes versus the type of planning you're talking about. Maybe you can offer to help them in some way with that?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue with that approach (too busy to build structure), is that it’s a never ending battle. There is never a good time. It’s an easy trap to fall into.

The best way to be successful with products like this is to invest time early in building out the team. By doing so, you’re multiplying output and limiting tech debt.

I would even be happy to help with helping build out the team (identifying gaps, key roles, volunteers) as that’s something I’m experienced with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

None of this should come across as argumentative or being short. My understanding is it's just two people so I still think this isn't a time to have ideas. Shoot them a message on GitHub or whatever community they have set up for feedback and help build the ranks to get them to help they need.. ;)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If GitHub is the best way to get in touch for non-dev initiatives, then I'll do that. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Sincere thanks for your drive help contribute!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Welcome to the Fediverse. I don’t think what you’re looking for can exist here. (And that’s by design…)

Lemmy is the software that ties the instances together. GitHub link was already provided.

Instances are run independently. Each has “product ownership” in just their own instance. There are over 10,0000 instances, and that number grows daily.

So you’re going to be trying to get 10,000+ cats to sit still for a group photo. Good luck!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That would be true for metrics/performance reporting, yes. It would make sense to build something that was opt-in for instance owners to submit data.

Regardless of the mechanism -- there will need to be some way to evaluate the performance impacts of changes that are continually being rolled out.

Thanks :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, PR

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lemmy currently has two full time devs. In a world where resources are limited, your list, in my mind, are things that can be skipped to ensure quickly adding new features. Much of these asks are common for a larger team, but a small team of two, plus volunteers, anything that takes the team away from active development is likely net negative to Lemmy for the short term. If you want to contribute, great, but putting more work on a small team to allow you to contribute will only slow progress.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was thinking in terms of helping build out a team to work on non-dev related work, as opposed to pulling away time from the devs, who I’m sure are heads down. Fair points though!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the positive response. I still expect Reddit style responses where I get eviscerated for raising counter points.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It’s so toxic most of the time. Same to you!

I’m hopeful that the federated approach results in better discussion overall. Seems like it could!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You seem to be new to open source projects. This isn't really how any of these things go.

Some idividual instances might end up being run the way you seem to think the whole thing should be, but the whole project?

Just take a look at Jellyfin, it work really well with very little of the structure you're suggesting. Meanwhile, Emby went to complete shit the more they did that type of thing.

Anyway, you'll probably like these: fedidb.org and the-federation.info

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