Version 0.19.X Deployment
Hello world!
I'm sure many of you fine folks have been wondering why we have not upgraded to version 0.19.X yet.
The whole team here has been getting asked this question quite a bit, from both members of the community and other instance admins. We want everyone to know, YES, we will upgrade to version 0.19.
We do not have a hard date set for when we will be upgrading as of yet, as we have about 7 associated task items that go along with this upgrade for things we need to double-check and confirm there will be no breakage.
Another big reason why we have not upgraded is due to reports from other instance admins that the front-end GUI can have performance issues. While a large portion of folks access our site using apps on their phones, we would rather not degrade the user experience for the rest of everyone else.
Worst case in terms of UI slowness, we would ask everyone to use either Alexandrite () or Photon () to mitigate the potential performance issues.
One final point to mention to address the delay is that we usually wait 1-2 weeks after a new release before applying it to production. This was complicated by the fact that there were multiple releases right after each other, with each new release having issues we hoped would be patched in the NEXT version. A new version would come up, and we would have to evaluate the stability and performance of it, which would take about 2 weeks, and then ANOTHER version would come out, which we would need to test. This was further complicated by the fact this was during the holiday season.
| Version | Release Date |
|---|---|
| 0.19.0 | 2023-12-15 |
| 0.19.1 | 2023-12-20 |
| 0.19.2 | 2024-01-10 |
| 0.19.3 | 2024-01-24 |
For us, stability is paramount, as we care very much about keeping everyone happy here.
While we can appreciate the rapid release of patches on 0.19, I hope everyone can now understand the delay. If all goes well, we will set a release day in the next week or two, most likely on a Saturday around 1800 UTC.
-jelloeater85
"Iโm sure many of you fine folks have been wondering why we have not upgraded to version 0.19.X yet.
The whole team here has been getting asked this question quite a bit, from both members of the community and other instance admins. We want everyone to know, YES, we will upgrade to version 0.19."
The issue here was never that decision, which on the whole seems sensible. It was the lack of comms. If there had been an announcement of that plan or delayed after say a week or 2, you'd probably have less of those questions. Users are stakeholders, and talking only to devs and other instance runners while ignoring users shows the level of respect you have for the users of the instance...
The ironic thing, is the communication and openness at the start was the best thing about Lemmy.World, and then later down the line, it just became an after event to communicate to users. "Decided to defederate x, y and z on Discord.". Silence on attacks for months, and silence on upgrade plans.
There is many roles on Lemmy.World, and communications probably needs more focus...
We understand your frustration, but we had in the last few weeks a team restructuring and that was at that point out of our sight.
We had some mixed signals from the devs and admins at that point too, so we were unsure if we want to upgrade or wait for a another week, then those bugs struck, with federation, Timestamp incompatibilities and some other bugs. But earlier the week we had the courage to say, we could see 0.19.3 as a upgrade candidate, we did not want to announce "Hey, we upgrade to 0.19" then quickly go "Sorry no upgrade because of a critical bug" and then after new version "Hey guys upgrade time" and so on.
and announcing defederation is something to do adhoc most of the time, so it cant be like "Hey we will defederate x,y and z in a week" then, because then the reason why LW wanted to defederate that instnace floods the comments.
Please understand we all are just here on our freetime, no one here gets paid for this. So please consider this a hobby project. You can demand something like this on reddit or twitter, but not in a open source and volunteer driven Website.
I don't need to and I choose not to use reddit or twitter. lemm.ee are doing a great job. lemmy.ml is also a great option. It's a shame that they're nailing it better than world is.
Was a topic labelled 0.19 upgrade and something along the lines of "0.19 has been released by Lemmy. We are going to be waiting a few weeks to see the stability of this. Once we are satisfied, we will update here with more information."
And "due to certain federation bugs, we are going to hold back on upgrade to 0.19 until these are ironed out, we will update when we plan to do this".
It's not hard, and it seems like you're coming up with excuses rather than considering feedback...
Hexbear defederation happened before they even federated. No consultation, or discussion, just "oh, we decided to do this, and whether you care or not, ah well". lemm.ee had a post, reasons for, against and welcomed the communities view on this. Maybe you guys need to check them out and learn from them. I think it's only 1 guy too, so probably more than repeatable as a process...
Considering this is the most staffed and resourced instance, you'd expect a reasonable standard.
Ok next time we straight up swap to the beta release of lemmy as you wish. If there is a issue, will redirect them to you.
So I suggested how you could do comms better, and also a sensible approach to defederation decisions, and that is your response.
Rather than thinking, "oh, is there some way we can do this better?", just get defensive and blame the person giving feedback.
It's human to err, but to refuse to learn, well that's quiet something... I had expected a more mature response.
Considering my original point was about how users on Lemmy were an after thought. Not worth factoring in to decision or consulting, you sure aren't really do a good job refuting it...
Lemmy world was the instance I originally joined when the whole exodus kicked off and others closed their doors. I was very grateful and had enormous good will for it. I never expected in the space of several months to have 180'd on it...
Yeah my response, was a bit harsh! I will forward your feedback to the rest of the admins.
It wasnt my choice to defederate, but defederation is a non destructive thing and federation could have been restored if there was a discussion from users with evidence that they improved themselves. We would have thought about refederating with them after 0.19, because then every user can decide themselves if they want to see them.
I appreciate you taking feedback on board, and I apologise if I was harsh about this and I didn't mean for this to be aimed at you individually. It was a general frustration with general decision making and communication. It's not the first time I've raised this and I care about Lemmy, it just gets frustrating when it feels the feedback is getting stonewalled.
I appreciate the position on consideration of refederation. it does make sense to consider it post 0.19.