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founded 1 year ago
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1
 
 

Hello and welcome to the November 2024 edition of the Lemmy.zip Server Update!

Long time readers will know the format by now, but please have a good read and give this an upvote if you enjoy it :)


Communities

Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)

As I said last time, I was going to start clearing up old and unused communities. I've reviewed most of the communities and mods have been very good at coming back to me, so thank you. We've managed to reduce the list of communities now, which should make it a bit easier for those looking to host communities here or those that are new to Lemmy in general.


Server Update

We've had a couple of maintenance periods for the usual front end and back end updates, but I'm glad to report that the server has been mostly stable for a good few months now. I made some little tweaks to the database based on some feedback around shared memory running out (thank you @BrikoX!) otherwise our uptime in 2024 (so far, let's not jinx it) has been 99.8946% (including maintenance downtimes, i.e. when we moved server).

I have also recently taken the time to update the Terms of Service - nothing has changed materially, just an update to wording around GDPR and age limits/NSFW content.

Finally, my plan is to try and complete work on our "ban notifier" - we don't issue many bans, but there is no communication from lemmy if we do this. So a banned person has no idea why or for how long. Using webhooks we can share this information with the user and give them an appeals channel, I just need to put the finishing touches on it.


Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!


It's Graph Time!

As I missed the update for last month, these graphs are over 60 days instead of the usual 30 days.

CPU:

RAM: (The drops here coincide with the server/database container being restarted.)

Storage: (Yeah that one is pretty boring)

Here are things right now as I type this:

Image storage:

And now for Cloudflare stats (which are back to 30 days)

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Region traffic:

(as a reminder, Lemmy.world and lemm.ee are hosted in Finland - as is Lemmy.zip! - which is why we see so much traffic from there.)

Anyway, that's it for now.

As always, if there is anything you'd like me to add to these going forward, let me know! Otherwise I hope everyone has nice November and I'll see you again in December :)

Cheers,

Demigodrick

2
0
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Here is a thread to celebrate those who support Lemmy.zip to keep the (virtual) lights on and the data flowing!

If you'd like to donate and get your name on this list, head over to OpenCollective and select one of the options.

There is absolutely no pressure to donate though. Anything you can give is spent on keeping Lemmy.zip going.

Lemmy.zip Donators (Past or Present)

Lemmy.zip Supporters

Lemmy.zip Friends

Lemmy.zip Heroes

Thank you again to everyone who is (or has been) supporting Lemmy.zip.

Perks!

Donators get some special perks - including the ability to choose custom emojis for everyone to use, and to get their own me.lemmy.zip profile - just like this one.

In the future, we're looking at other ways to reward those who donate. If there is something you'd like to see as a reward, let the admin team know.

If you'd like to stay anonymous please email me at [email protected] or send me a message on here :)

3
 
 

The community appears to have been deleted

4
 
 

Every time I load a post it scrolls me past the post body. Any way to turn that off? I wasn't able to notice any relevant settings.

I'm seeing it on the darkly theme, but it looks like it's is a lemmy-ui native theme. So maybe this happens across other default themes as well.

5
 
 

Basically title, curious as I know this had been brought up a while ago but never really followed up on the topic

6
 
 

Hi All!

Welcome to another monthly Lemmy.zip server update!

I have been increasingly busy in "real life" so haven't had much time to dedicate to Lemmy.zip recently (I got married!) however things are calming down now and I'm able to spend a bit more time keeping an eye on things. I had a few messages/requests and I think I've responded to them all, but let me know if I've missed anything.


Communities

Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)

There are also some existing communities that are looking for mods. Fancy trying out being a mod with a pre-existing community? Now is your chance!

PS - I finally have some time to start clearing up old/unused communities - I will be PM'ing mods soon!


Server Updates

It's been a little while since my last update so I'll go over some of the things that have happened or are happening:

We had a great Canvas event again, with the Lemmy.zip logo once again being lovingly recreated, and a few of our community's logos popping up, including the amazing SquaredCircle logo too!

You can see more on the completed Canvas here.

Did you know - we have a public dashboard showing all of our up to date federation/server data? You can check it out here!

Given some of the recent wider fediverse moderation issues/drama that has happened recently, I thought it might be sensible to confirm our position on moderation and how we decide what actions we take. We're not a massive instance, and we do get very few issues deriving from Lemmy.zip thankfully (I know moderators on larger instances probably have a trickier time of it), however our aim is not to interfere, silence, or in any way censor our communities, as long as the content is legal (in the UK/EU specifically, as that's where we're hosted) and it isn't going to cause harm to someone. You can see our full set of policies on our legal site - if you think something isn't clear enough or is missing, let me know and I will update/add it!

I'm also not usually one for podcasts, but I did stumble across this podcast on spotify that in the latest episode talks a bit about moderation in the wider Fediverse (more mastodon leaning, but the points I thought were interesting given the different ways servers are run). I am not one for mass block lists, we take each server as it interacts with us. Anyway if you're interested in that sort of thing, then I would recommend taking a listen - It's called DotSocial if you want to have a look on other platforms.

Finally, the Status Page has had a bit of a tidy up and now lists each frontend for clarity. I'm happy with the current set of frontends, but if you see one being used elsewhere you think we could host, let me know!


Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

If you've gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!


Graphs n' stats n' stuff

Pretty graph time:

CPU usage over the last 30 days:

Memory (RAM) usage over the last 30 days:

Disk space use:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overall stats:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Top country taffic:


That's it from me this month, I'll probably also miss the next one of these too covering September as I'll be in a much hotter country than the UK at the end of the month for a holiday, but will try to play catch up when I'm back.

As always, if I've missed anything or there is something you'd like to see added to these, let me know! I'm always open to adding more to this.

Cheers,

Demigodrick

7
 
 

I can no longer load the https://t.lemmy.zip/ page anymore. It sits and loads what seems indefinitely. The m.lemmy.zip still works. Is it down for maintenance or something? No idea where else to ask this.
Thanks

8
 
 

Hi there, I'm a mod of [email protected], and am thinking of moving the community off-world, to strengthen the fediverse as a whole.

[email protected] seems like a good candidate, but it is currently moderated solely by ZippyBot. Would it be possible to request this community?

Hope it's okay to post this here. Please let me know if there is a more appropriate place to post this.

9
 
 

Posting with a non-lemmy.zip account because my actual lemmy.zip account (@[email protected]) receives a "Load failed" when trying to post it here.

Consistently getting stuff like

FetchEvent.respondWith received an error: no-response: no-response :: [{"url":"https://lemmy.zip/login"}]

and I get the most errors on Safari on mobile.

ani.social is a Lemmy instance on 0.19.5 where I am a non-bot account and I do not run into this problem there.

10
 
 

Hello everyone, I started a community featuring puns at [email protected].

If you have any puns or other word play, please post it to our community!

No pun intended.

:)

11
 
 

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/4202022

Over the last 2 weeks, I worked to adapt the code that was used for making the 2023 r/place atlas, adapting it to work with this event, as well as making it work on GitLab and Lemmy.

The site is at atlas.mariusdavid.fr, the lemmy community is [email protected].

The goal of the atlas is to register the meaning of the elements(/arts/placements/zones) of the Canvas, as well as (optionally) meta element about the element itself (like which community placed it).

It offer both the possibility to create new entry or to edit existing ones.

It is ready to receive your contribution (I’ve already put a few elements I worked on). You can start by clicking the “Draw” button, then drawing the element and filling other informations (all but the title are optionals. The 4 specific kind of links (Lemmy, Matrix, Discord, SubReddit) are just to better format them, but any kind of link can be put in the “Website” box). Once finished, you’ll have a piece of JSON code that you can copy-paste in a post on the above community (not this [email protected] one). A bot will then make an MR on Gitlab, which will allow preview, review and approval. (note that opening the MR might take 10 minutes, and making the preview another 10 minutes. Technically speaking, it work by polling, which is not very efficient for quick reaction time).

The full source code is also available on sc07’s GitLab https://git.sc07.company/marius851000/fediverse-canvas-atlas-2024 and there is also a Matrix room at https://matrix.to/#/#lemmy-canvas-atlas-discussion:mariusdavid.fr (avaible from the general Canvas space).

ps: There is no formal method to describe an entry. I will recommend starting by describing what is presented, then putting more meta information, like which community (or user) placed it, who drew it and this kind of stuff.

12
 
 

Im funbreaker I like old tech, am autistic and this post was for some reason really hard to write. i'm also a language geek, i'm trying to learn German and maintain my level in Spanish.

PS: anyone have a decent, relatively inexpensive track ball? Mine's decided to go on the fritz.

13
 
 

[email protected]

This is a community where you just post random junk. Have you ever been tempted to troll a community with fake posts? Now you can safely without causing harm. This community is a haven for fake and silly posts.

14
 
 

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/4077161

the event has concluded! thank you all for participating!

this has been incredibly fun to run, as it was last year (although there was a bit more hiccups this time around)

⚠ Crossposters: link back to this post as it will be updated with more information ⚠

Event date: July 12th, 2024 @ 4am UTC til ~~July 15th @ 4am UTC (72 hours)~~ July 16th @ 4am UTC (72 hours + 24 hours) (it was extended due to a massive performance issue that caused major downtime)

Future events

I'm planning to host another one next year, so stay tuned 👀

If you have suggestions for canvas 2025 or any other events, post them in this post (thanks Ategon)

Supporting the project 💜💜💜

I have spent a little over 6 months completely rebuilding Canvas from the ground up to support future features, and i would love to work on more fediverse events

poster sales

posters of the final canvas will be sold, if you would like to stay updated with information on those, follow the Mastodon account or send an email to [email protected] 💜

the shop site will also include stickers for the following instances:

  • mastodon.world
  • lemmy.world
  • blahaj.zone
  • toot.community
  • toast.ooo
  • Canvas 2024

✨ I wanted to have the shop setup before the event ending, but i couldn't get it setup quick enough unfortunately

direct donations

Donating via Stripe is the best way to donate directly

contributing to the code

canvas is open-source and is on a self-hosted gitlab instance at https://git.sc07.company/sc07/canvas

at time of writing; the gitlab server randomly restarts due to resource limits

Timelapses

i need to rewrite the timelapse script as some people pointed out some weirdness with the other ones (that's also what delayed this post by almost 3 hours)

Data

The database has all of the pixel placements, so it's possible to regenerate the log file, but that's currently not implemented (so nothing is lost) Format: {timestamp}\t{username}\t{action}\t{x}\t{y}\t{hex} (for the most part)

  • Raw pixel log file (could be missing pixels due to crashes, i'm unable to confirm at time of writing) (47mb)
  • Possibly patched pixel log file (contains the first 10ish minutes that got dropped from the raw file + an attempted patch, but could include duplicated pixels) (47mb)

chat.fediverse.events

This will stay up as long as i can keep it running for, i'll make some improvements eventually as well

tools (like a canvas atlas)

if anyone is wanting to build something for canvas, i'd be willing to host the project & give it a subdomain of .fediverse.events

just send me a matrix dm, a dm on discord (grahhnt) or an email [email protected]

Special thanks

thank you to the moderators that helped me this year, even with how stressful it was 🔨

and the contributors to the code once the event started: 💻

  • Ategon
  • Marius
  • soda_cans

and thank you, once again, for participating this year, i hope you enjoyed it as much as i did 💜

i'm going to now go enjoy my 21st 🥳🎉

  • grant
15
 
 

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/4043001

oh hey the canvas also looks a bit different...

If this is your first Canvas post you've seen...

Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas, much similar to r/place

https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/canvas-2024-live/

16
0
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Hey everyone! In case you haven't heard yet, the next instance of Canvas is almost here, starting on Friday the 12th at 12:00 AM EDT (July 12, 04:00 UTC). Canvas is a collaborative art project on the Fediverse, akin to Reddit's r/place, where everyone gets a few pixels at a time to add to a shared canvas.

Last year, we added our instance logo to the canvas, and I think it would be great to do something like that again this year.

Here's a template-ready version based on last year's final result. It's 71x47 pixels:

A pixelated version of the Lemmy.zip logo, with ".zip" added in the lower right corner with an orange underline

(in the actual final version, the orange line under the ".zip" was extended into a full border all the way around, but ran into the bottom of the nose and lower left whisker, so i trimmed it off. if we want to add that back, it should be nudged one pixel lower)

Here's the template so you can see how it'll look on the Canvas.

UPDATE: Here's a version with the border, this bumps it up to 73x49px: The same image as above, with the underline under the ".zip" replaced with a 1-pixel wide orange border

You may notice the Canvas is only 500x500 this time (as opposed to 1000x1000 last year), and it's also been opened to the entire Fediverse (versus just Lemmy last time), so we may have to fight a little to keep our space.

The big question is where to put it? Should we arrange a space for ourselves now or just wing it and find a blank spot a few hours in?

If anyone has any other ideas for things we could add alongside/instead of the logo, feel free to shout them out! If you're in the Lemmy.zip Matrix space, you can also join the Canvas Talk room for discussion and coordination


If you want to join any other projects, I know our [email protected] has a plan, there's a dedicated group organization post on the host community [email protected], and of course there's nothing stopping from putting your own by yourself

17
 
 

Hi all,

Welcome to the July edition of the server update! Let's take a look at how things went in June and might go in July.


Communities

Take a look at these new communities. If you enjoy them, give them a subscribe :)

There are also some existing communities that are looking for mods. Fancy trying out being a mod with a pre-existing community? Now is your chance!


Server Updates

Since the last update, we upgraded Lemmy to versions 0.19.4, then version 0.19.5 which fixed a few UI bugs. There is still a known issue with code blocks (text that looks like this) where if you're on the default theme on the website, the text displays with a white background. There should be a fix for this in 0.19.6.

The next Canvas event starts on Friday July 12th - we'll make a post with the details about this a bit closer to the time. Last year was great, the Lemmy.zip logo looked great on the board!

I'm thinking about adding another Admin or two to Lemmy.zip, with a focus on content creation and engagement. The time I have to dedicate to the site is rapidly decreasing, so if you're interested, drop me a message here or on matrix and we can have a chat!

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!


Graph time!

Here's some screenshots to show the performance of the server over the last 30 days:

RAM usage:

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors:

Worldwide traffic:

That's it for now - as always, let me know if you have any questions or there any other metrics you want to see!

Cheers

Demigodrick

18
 
 

Hey there, this is the weekly thread for all general topics and any questions. You can also join us on Matrix for a chat!

19
 
 

Hey there, this is the weekly thread for all general topics and any questions. You can also join us on Matrix for a chat!

20
 
 

Hey there, this is the weekly thread for all general topics and any questions. You can also join us on Matrix for a chat!

21
 
 

Hey there, this is the weekly thread for all general topics and any questions. You can also join us on Matrix for a chat!

22
 
 

Hey all,

Today, 10th June 2024, marks Lemmy.zip's first birthday.

Back on the 10th June 2023, I was as disillusioned with Reddit as many others here were, and wanted somewhere I could go where mods and users weren't treated like an end product.

At the time I had been messing with a lot of home server stuff (think Jellyfin and the *arr suite - usenet is great 😉) and figured I could spin up a docker container or two, how hard could it be right?

I'd never even heard of ansible, never changed an nginx config file, hell I'd never had more than one other person use something I'd spun up before. But after a couple of hours, there it was - Lemmy.zip. And suddenly, people were actually joining, posting, and making content. It felt unreal.

Since then, and with an awful lot of help and support from Sami and the community, I feel like we've got a really good, solid, stable and active Lemmy instance, our own corner of the internet where we can't be abused for corporate greed. In this first year, I have spent an awful lot of time learning how to run a so-called "social media" site, how to protect the backend, and how to build a bot to do all the boring stuff.

Linked in this post is a very brief overview of the last year - yearone.lemmy.zip - which gives some detail on how things unfolded at the start.

I am insanely thankful for all the lemmy.zip users, even the ones who only visited briefly. You're all brilliant (yes, even the lurkers 😘 ) and I hope you all continue to enjoy Lemmy.zip for many more years.

Running your own Lemmy server has its ups and downs. Days like today, when I can debug various issues without stressing, push new code to ZippyBot like its second nature, and have the ability to celebrate massive milestones like this, make all the bad times worth it.

I remember about a month or two in to the sites operation, and we'd just upgraded to the latest lemmy version - there was a period of about 5 or 6 hours continuous downtime and nothing I tried was getting the site working again. I was sat with my head in my hands, completely out of ideas, ready to give up. But thanks to the guidance of some fantastic people in the wider Lemmy community, eventually the site came back to life. Many mistakes have been made (many server backups have been restored 🙃) but we've continued to learn and grow, and I think the site is all the better for it.

We've got over 2,500 signed up users, we've recently tipped over 500 active users a month, we're in the top 20 lemmy instances - and in reality, that's all thanks to the mods and users of lemmy.zip. Without you, there wouldn't be any point to the site!

(Interesting fact - our longest serving user is Firestorm Druid - I don't have any medals yet sorry, but you deserve one!)

Looking forward to the next 12 months, I'm hoping we can continue to grow and continue to be a Lemmy instance for everyone. With the increasing enshittification of Reddit (and the wider "traditional" social media sites), I hope many people can escape and make their way over here. The Lemmy of today is a much different place to what it was 12 months ago. Even from purely a technical standpoint, federation is infinitely more reliable, and there are many long-standing servers to choose from now.

So once again I say a massive thank you to everyone. To the mods, you're the backbone of creating content across the whole lemmy network. Its often a thankless job, but here's hoping this goes a little way to expressing the gratitude we all have for you.

To everyone that has donated - I'm still humbled by your generosity. Thank you, you keep the lights on and the bits flowing.

And to the users of Lemmy.zip - thank you for being here. You make this whole thing worthwhile :)

Happy Birthday Lemmy.zip 🍻

Demigodrick ❤️

23
0
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Hello all!

To celebrate Lemmy.zip turning a whole 1 year old, we're hosting a small giveaway to say thank you for being here ❤️

We're giving away 3 prizes to 3 lucky winners. This will be 1 x £25 Steam giftcard, and 2 x £10 Steam giftcards.

The giveaway will be open for 48 hours from 19:00 UTC on the 9th June, to 19:00 UTC on the 11th June, which nicely covers our Birthday on the 10th :)

You can enter by making a comment in this very thread! Your comment can say or be absolutely anything you want (within reason!)

Once you've made a comment, you should get a message back from ZippyBot confirming you've entered and a ticket number. For transparency, at the end of this we'll publish the entry list and ticket numbers.

You must be a Lemmy.zip user to enter (comments from anyone else will be ignored!) and you will need a Steam account and be happy to send me your username so I can gift you the value via Steam. Your Lemmy.zip account must have been created before the 5th June 2024.

At the end of the giveaway, I'll lock the thread and Zippy will pull three random entries. The first username pulled will win the first prize (£25), and the other two users will win the other prizes (£10).

I've put a few FAQs in this spoiler tag if you want to know more:

FAQs

  • Q) Can anyone enter?
  • A) You must be a lemmy.zip user, have a steam account, and your lemmy.zip account must have been created before 5th June 2024

  • Q) Can I have a giftcard for a different platform, i.e. xbox or playstation?
  • A) Unfortunately not. Those platforms (to my knowledge) don't allow me to purchase a giftcard in the UK and you activate it anywhere in the world. Steam allows currency conversion on gifts.

  • Q) How quickly will I get my prize?
  • A) Steam requires that someone must be on a user's friend list for 3 days before giftcards can be sent, therefore I will share my Steam profile with the winners (or vice versa) and after 3 days of being friends on Steam, I will send the gift over. (Unless you live in the UK, in which case I can send you a code within 24 hours)

  • Q) I think my entry was valid, but I didn't get a reply from Zippybot with my ticket number. What do I do?
  • A) Send me a message asap! You can try commenting again too.

  • Q) Are Lemmy.zip user donations funding this?
  • A) No, just making it clear here that the donations to Lemmy.zip only ever go towards the server and Lemmy.zip infrastructure. The funds for this are coming from my wallet :)

  • Q) How does Zippy select the winners?
  • A) Zippy randomly shuffles the list of entrants in the DB. It then randomly shuffles the list again in Python. Then it randomly selects 3 winners from that double shuffled list. You can see the code for this here.

  • Q) What if something goes wrong?
  • A) If for any reason something goes wrong during the giveaway, it will be paused until it can be resumed. If too much time lapses, the giveaway will be restarted.


The Giveaway is now open :)

24
 
 

Hi All!

This month marks the 1st birthday of Lemmy.zip. Originally intended as a side project, I think I've ended up spending more time on this site than my actual job.

June 10th is the official anniversary, and so we'll be doing a small giveaway on this day to celebrate.

In the meantime, lets have a look at how things went in May.


Communities

This month, I want to focus on the existing abandoned communities we have that have the potential to really grow.

If you fancy becoming a mod of one of these communities, please let me know.

We'll also be doing some form of community tidying up over the next couple of weeks, so we'll be checking with mods if they want to keep unused communities or if we can remove them/put them back out to other mods.


Server Updates

Other than a small bit of downtime caused by me, the server has been stable as a rock this past month, with most of the work being carried out on keeping the various services we use up to date.

The extended downtime during the maintenance window (and extension of said maintenance window) was due to the backup process not correctly handling old snapshots. All the backups were safe and offsite, but a lock on the repo wasn't cleared and so the process the server normally follows where it cleans up old snapshots wasn't firing, causing extra storage space to be used up. In order to clear it, the server needed some time where files weren't being altered, so I temporarily took lemmy offline in order to let the tool do its thing, which lasted for about 40 minutes. Thankfully that shouldn't happen again, and wasn't technically the end of the world either as we were still getting daily offsite backups, but was very inconvenient!

We're waiting a lot on the next version of Lemmy to be released (0.19.4) which should hopefully be soon. In the meantime, I've been going back over Zippybot's code, tidying up various bits and pieces and trying out different things we can add to make Lemmy a better overall experience. For example, we now send a rejection message if we decline an account, unlike the default experience which is just to ghost the user. Thankfully we don't need to do this much, but hopefully it guides genuine new users to get in touch if they feel we've made a mistake (which we might do, we're only human!)

We're also exploring making bans more transparent. We really don't issue many bans to our own users at all, as you can see from the mod log. When we do though, there isn't really a way for that person to know why they were banned if they're not aware of the log. So we want to use the same technology as we use for sending application rejections and also send emails to let someone know why and for how long they were banned, and most importantly how to appeal. Again, we really don't issue that many bans to our users, but I feel people need a clear and simple way to get in touch if they don't think we've been fair.

We have also put up some new front ends that people can use if they fancy trying something new:

  • t.lemmy.zip - Tesseract - This is a fork of Photon (which is our current mobile site) except that it has quite a few extra features built in. Take a look if you're primarily on mobile!
  • a.lemmy.zip - Alexandrite - An alternative Lemmy desktop experience.

If there are any other front ends you'd like to see, let us know!

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here :)

I am sure that long term readers are bored of reading this now, but it is really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.

It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.

If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads.

Please don't be a lurker! :)


Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and is mostly funded by the community!

We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.

If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.

We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!

I am also looking at future fundraiser ideas (fundraiser committee anyone!) - if you have any ideas please let me know either in the comments, via PM, or on Matrix.


Graph time!

Here are some graphs from the server and from cloudflare etc. This paints a picture of server usage and traffic to Lemmy.zip.

CPU Usage over the last 30 days:

RAM usage over 30 days: (PS this is perfectly fine, the drop is where the server was offline during the update, the fluctuation is normal)

Image storage:

Cloudflare overview:

Traffic/requests:

Bandwidth:

Unique visitors: (this is an increase on last month)

Global traffic:

Another relatively stable month (other than a slightly funky maintenance window) - maybe this will be the norm now!

Remember to check back in on the 10th June to celebrate our 1st birthday :)

Cheers,

Demigodrick

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Hey there, this is the weekly thread for all general topics and any questions. You can also join us on Matrix for a chat!

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