Reads like my log when I do maintenance, repairs on my home server. It’s a nice hobby but even there it can be overwhelming. I can’t imagine having hundreds or thousands of people rely on you (and probably not even get paid for it). It’s truly amazing work. Thanks to all the fediverse admins.
Pro tip: maybe drop a donation link in the comments ;)
I still think we should focus on the professionalization of fediverse hosting. Unless your instance is just a hobby for you and a handful of people, being an admin or moderator of an instance can be a full-time job. People talk about donation-based instances as a model of sustainability, but there is no instance that is actually in the black if you account for the time of admins or moderators.
True, but this is also an argument against letting instances get too big, there’s many, many problems that only happen when you let instances grow too much, we already have many that are way too big
I would totally support a campaign that eatablished instances to close registrations if they had more than 5% of the total users in the fediverse, and only open again when/if went below 3%. This would ensure that no instance dominated the landscape and it would prevent abuse from the admins in large instances.
Thats a really interesting topic! Thank you for bringing it up. I‘m an admin irl for linux and windows based systems as well as a hobby coder (I have built a big commercial crm for a company though).
In any case, I would probably make „premium“ instances where you need to pay to sign up but you get high tier support, maybe some merch, etc. i‘m a friend of donations but it should not be a very time intensive „hobby“. I know it could work if someone was really smart but thats actually not fair because people put in the work, no matter if they’re smart so they deserve to be paid.
Ironically, I‘m also a reddit mod (currently mid transition) and the treatment of the mods by spez really stung. Source https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14ahqjo/mods_will_be_removed_one_way_or_another_spez/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
So yes, moderation and especially admin work are real jobs and deserve to be paid (either in money or in some kind of currency, for example cool job offers or whatever).
Let me know if you have more thoughts on this.
My primary argument against any attempt to keep donations as the main model of funding: everyone talks about the fediverse “being like email”, but we don’t hear of “donation-based” email providers, do we?
At the end of the day, hosting a Mastodon, Matrix or Lemmy server is work, perhaps even more work than hosting an email service. I don’t think it is fair to try to get service providers to put up these servers online and then try to find a way for them to support themselves. To me this feels like asking a photographer to “work for exposure”. Unfortunately, Big Tech and VC-funded companies flipped this around and convinced users that these services should be all like this, but the reality is that this kills independent software developers and service providers.
Yes, absolutely. I appreciate your input.
I do think that it has been a problem before but tech has made it a lot worse.
In any case, I think we could try new things. Like the first people joining help with funding so that the admin team can grow. Then, when funding is no issue, peeps can come in for free. And those who actually pay for it get a founders badge or whatever. Maybe some extras. Because people who have more and invest more should definitely be recognized, just not with power (plutocracy).
If you charge from the early adopters, you will have a disincentive to get them to join and you’ll never be able to bootstrap the network.
I am actually trying the opposite with my instance, the first 250 members will have free access, after that access will require a subscription of $8/year.
Makes sense. I thought about doing it the other way round but I thought it would probably stay in the red since peeps then go somewhere else and the early adopters do not necessarily post a lot.
If you have peeps who are actually invested, it’s different. Say, if you post quality content once a day, it costs nothing, otherwise you have to pay. Or you become an active mod, etc. The actual quality is hard to check but the regularity is automatically provable. Then you take probes once a month and be done with it.
I do this on a minecraft server and it works good. People have ranks based on playtime that reset every month (regularity), donator ranks and staff ranks. You need to be careful with staff ranks since some sit on them but financially I‘m at least cost neutral. I just reduced the hours I put in so that I don’t burn out while not making any income.
Its not perfectly applicable but I hope you can see the underlying principle I‘m following.
Yeah, one thing I need to do is to make sure that the people who are coming in for free are not just lurking around. They are not heavy consumers of the service, but the idea is that the first ones should come to help bootstrap the instance content.
As for what you are doing for your minecraft server, I think it is quite reasonable if you treat it as a hobby. You are not doing it expecting compensation, so at least you should be doing it in a way that you can be healthy and sustainable.
I would HOPE the Vivaldi devs working on vivaldi.social get paid. That’s a lot of pressure.
Those folks do good work, so:
Thats a lot of merch! I like it. And yes, I hope so too. Have a good one.
