You Should Know

Particularly in these early stages, really clear and transparent communication and plans are key I think.

Nice to see some info on the sidebar links, hopefully will be combined with posts and further info as things progress.

Help people buy into supporting the service they use, but knowing who they are supporting, why, and what their support via Patreon enables.

I think a lot of people would be happy to pay small amounts, but what are the running costs, and what is the roadmap and requirements and cost to scale and improve performance etc. What happens to additional funds over and above the running costs? (Fair compensation for time should be a thing!)

Another consideration is aside from the financial side, what other support will be required to scale and what are plans for that - additional admins, any other mods for "official" communities etc.

It's a very exciting time, delicate but full of potential!

While I understand what you're getting at, users can be viewed as "the product" if they are contributing content (posts, comments, votes, and other forms of engagement) and "the customer" if they are consuming this content in any way.

Without content or readers there would be no Lemmy, just like for Wikipedia with no editors or readers there would be no purpose for that site either. The terms "product" and "customer" aren't intrinsically related to monetary value.

This is so sweet and wholesome that I might faint from a sugar OD!

...I'm sorry, but blind positivism won't get you, Lemmy and nothing else to anywhere. Nothing is perfect neither free of "predatory capitalism" -- one day, you will "be the product". And there is nothing you can do about it, because this world ain't a fairy tale where we've got fairies flying around and giving us anything we want -- we need money. And lots of it.

Shout at me, swarm at me with negative downvotes like it's the best thing you can do (which probably is), but this is the real world, giving it to you with a couple words, fair and square.

The second quote often leaves out the rest of it.

The full original quote was.

The customer is always right in matters of taste. Notice how that means something completely different than the quote everyone uses?

That is all I have to add.

It has also been said that “the customer is always right”.

If i'm not mistaken, the original saying was more along the lines of "The customer should always feel he's right". Anyway, the gist is that any side is "always right" should never be the mindset of any sane business or service.

Not entirely related to the topic, but something that I think everyone shold be aware of

It truly does remind me of the wide-spread forum days, but with the bells and whistles that comes from connectivity across the board.

The comparison to Wikipedia is a really good one.

While we're at it, big thanks to the instance owners :) I'm donating an Euro a month, it's not a lot but at least something

Thanks a lot for the post! Super nice to hear. Would also like to point out that "the customer is always right" was originally meant for sales. I.e. if they want a meat themed car, sell it to them, dont tell them its in bad taste. So for more ways than one treat those that serve you with respect. Theyre serving the community, not your servants.

I kinda like looking at Lemmy as a sort of Internet Pub on steroids (Activity Pub). Kind of like a busy street with all kinds of pubs, libraries, bookstores etc. But where those places have something to sell like liquor, coffee or books, Lemmy does not really have anything to sell but just offers a place of conversation. It alsof isn't for everyone, anybody can join but each pub had their own rules.

I see a Lemmy admin like a barkeeper of one of the many pubs around. We sit in this one pub with one owner but we meet a lot of people from other pubs around. And if we like, we can walk across the street and visit somewhere else or even move there permanently. We have options, we as users have more power and especially actual alternatives to go to.

Donating is a thing to help the pubs keep existing. Like tipping the waiter. I'm a big fan of OpenCollective and Patreon for how they allow these small groups of people to take back parts of the internet for themselves!

There is no need to commercialize this space, it's largely for conversation. Here there is no need for the waiter tot eastdrop on conversations, to make the pub all smart or to guilt you into a VIP pass tot enter.

I really hope we can find a way to tip the waiters and barkeepers incidentally like we would in a pub. Like a donation, and maybe also a more prominent place like a tip jar for the instance visible in posts or just the website. I think we can make it work, if we really try.

Yeah the big pubs might come knocking, but its up to each of us to decide if we want to visit any of their places.