It sounds like a similar situation I had learning Spanish. In english, I'd say "It's hot". In Spanish, that's "Hace calor", which translated literally means "makes heat". And it was strange to me because I wanted to know what was meant to be making this heat
That's a good idea!
At the moment, we have the ability to take our eyes off of things for a while. Because applicants are screened, we don't get many bigots or spammers getting through. And our mod bot allows trusted users to ban and delete all content from new accounts (whether they're local or remote). So we have trusted users that can watch for new people joining and then act on any bigoted ones that do slip through the cracks.
So whilst I wouldn't feel comfortable taking my eyes off of things for a week or more, I feel quite comfortable not looking at lemmy for a day or two. We've travelled several times since spinning the instance up, and even then, checking in once every couple of days has been enough to keep on top of things with the tools we have.
Which is not to say we don't need to do anything else. The real vulnerability at the moment is if Kaity or I go involuntarily inactive for a longer period of time for some reason. But until we have "server moderators" as an option, I'm not sure how to develop the rapport required to bring additional admins on. It's not not simply a matter of trusting someone, but also ensuring that they share the same vision for what this space is and what it should be, and at the moment, there are very few avenues to do that. I know from experience that bringing instance level moderators on in our other spaces that do support them, such as sharkey and matrix has been challenging to say the least, so it's something we need to take particular care with.
If I could add an instance level moderator that didn't have full admin permissions, I'd do so in a heart beat. As it is though, it's hard to trust the keys to the castle when the only avenue for building trust is lemmy interactions.
That being said, we do have a bot admin that trusted users have access to, that Kaity developed, which helps us deal with spammers and throwaway bigot accounts.
Also, we don't actually have that much going on in terms of moderation workload. Our sign ups are manually approved, but our bot helps with that so it's not all on me. Our large communities have active mods. So I'm lucky if I have to look at more than 3 or 4 reports a day.
Also, if we ever reach the burnout point, we would hand the community over before taking it down.
this is why lemmy will never beat corporate owned services
Which famously, never shut down and take their content with them :P
You create the community on another instance. You update the lemm.ee version with a sticky post and sidebar edit to let people know the new location. Do that before lemm.ee closes down, and even people that find the lemm.ee version of the group after the instance is gone will still be able to find your new location
Multiple tattoos! I used to have multiple piercings as well, but they all ultimately rejected, so now I have none
Well, the managed communities will pin posts and update their descriptions before the shut down happens, and those details will federate to every instance with users that subscribe to the communities.
Truth be told, I didn't want to kick off more drama by making a big announcement about it. I respect the stance they've taken and the work they've put in to it! So we've reconnected :)
Do you need to be an activist? Absolutely not. You have a chance to live on your own terms in a world that made that really hard. You don't owe it anything.
That being said... Visibility makes a huge difference, and it's super important that some vulnerable folk are visible and loud. But remember, they're the ones putting themselves on the line, so that in the future, it won't be as bad for those that follow, and that needs to be respected.
For me, being trans was always just a medical issue
This isn't helpful. Whether you see it that way or not, being trans is not "just a medical issue". The fact that you were able to live your life as if it were, gives you a position of relative privilege that most trans people don't share. The truth is, if you get publicly outed one day, it won't just be a medical issue for you either. So whilst you don't have to be an activist, you shouldn't be downplaying the reality that other trans folk do have to face, and honestly, you shouldn't be pretending to yourself that you are immune to them either.
Live your life on your own terms, and do so without guilt. But even if it's just in the privacy of your own thoughts, make sure you build your visible peers up rather than mentally separating yourself from them
Yeah, they did a post up clarifying their stance
https://feddit.uk/post/29902751 / https://lemmyverse.link/feddit.uk/post/29902751
So, it turns out that PieFed has instance staff that exist between community mod and admin!