2y ago

UPDATED 9-3: StarTrek.website - Lemmy info, FAQ, Patreon info, future plans, and more!

nuqneH!

Welcome to our new home in the Fed~~eration~~iverse. First of all- WOW we did not expect to surpass 300 users on this instance (and over 1K fediverse subscribers) within our first 48 hours and with little promotional effort. We are all excited to see where this long road goes.

Coming from Reddit and confused about Lemmy?

I had some stuff typed out, but honestly, this thread sums it up better. Check it out! It has infographics.

If you're still stressed out, remember that Lemmy is still new. Yes, it's ugly, but people said Reddit was ugly too (both are correct). As Lemmy grows, and #Rexxit continues, more tools will get made. Decentralization opens up a lot of possibilities we didn't have before. The future is bright.

Will other communities be setting up shop besides StarTrek, DaystromInstitute and Risa?

Yes! Eventually. Right now our focus is staying online, fast, and reliable which means keeping things focused while we find our footing. Daystrom, StarTrek and Risa were chosen to start off with because the three of them cover the "srs bsns ↔ shitposting" spread quite well.

If you are part of a community interested in being hosted on startrek.website, send me a DM and we can try to work something out.

Qapla'! How can I support?

We've started a Patreon here: Patreon.com/treksite. There's only one plan and it's just $4. If our growth continues like it has, we're going to need to upgrade our hosting very soon.

What's up with the "unencrypted DMs" warning?

Read here

I feel like I'm not seeing everything. What gives?

Lemmy is weird with languages. In your user settings, make sure “Language” is set to both “English” and “Undetermined”. You can select additional languages as well, but they aren’t currently allowed on this server. On desktop, you can use CTRL+click to select both options. This will allow you to see content for which the author has not set a language, and content which has been set to “English”.

This will hopefully be made more clear with future updates.

Thumbnails acting weird/not showing up (for users on another instance)?

Add this exception to your adblocker (replace "lemmy.world" with your instance):

@@||*/pictrs/*$domain=lemmy.world

Where can I find official server updates?

Where can I talk with Trekkies about non-Trek stuff?

We've just opened a new "offtopic" community, welcome to !quarks@startrek.website, Quarks is fun!

If you have any questions for the team, please don't hesitate to ask in this thread! 🖖

79 comments

Yes, I just have one question: was it a long road getting from there to here?
- Yes it was, BUT OUR TIME IS FINALLY NEAR 🎶🎸
  
  And now this tune is stuck in my head before bed lol

Hi, I've just been reading about the case to defederate from fb/meta instances (https://startrek.website/post/289809?scrollToComments=true) and was wondering if the team was aware of the fedipact?
- We're aware of the pact and will cross that bridge when (or if) it ever really happens. We're certainly no fans of Meta (or Reddit,or Twitter). So far it seems more likely to affect Mastodon than Lemmy/Kbin.
  
  Thanks for being on top of things and thanks for this instance
  
  Thanks I will keep an eye out for updates. For this user federating with meta would feel like assimilating with the borg.
  
  Sharing user data with a an instance with a firm that exists to monetize data seems a fundamental violation of what the fediverse is.

I don't know if it's affecting other instances, but all images from startrek.website are denying referrals to image links from lemmy.sdf.org. In other words, all image posts show up as broken unless I open them in a new tab and refresh so the referrer becomes startrek.website. It's not affecting any of my other subbed instances, and when I open startrek.website it works fine, so I suppose something's breaking in the in-between?
- It's a ublock/easylist issue. It seems to be blanket blocking xhr requests to certain TLDs including .website
  Add this to your filters as a workaround for now (replace lemm.ee with your instance)
  @@||*/pictrs/*$domain=lemm.ee
  
  Oh! Thank you so much, that worked a treat. o7

Fwiw, I am very happy to support the patreon but I don't feel great about it being attached to server perks. For some people $4/mo is nothing at all and for others it is genuinely significant. I don't want the Star Trek instance of all instances to be rewarding those who can afford to contribute financially.
- That's a good point I hadn't considered, appreciate the insight. As long as we can pay the bills with what comes in, I suppose for now we'll just stick with what we've got.
  
  Hooray, thank you! Fwiw, it is the donations model that is most common in FOSS projects (pay what/if you can) and I think it engenders a better sense of community, and I certainly feel more inclined to pay for something just so support it rather than because of any particular "perks" I might get, which are geeeenerally not really worth the money per se. I also would prefer your time to be spent on the actual server and not on having to integrate the various perks/linking accounts to patreon/etc etc.
- lwaxana_katana, great point. I agree with you. It's something I hadn't thought about until you mentioned it. I'd rather see time and energy go to making startrek.website more and more awesome, rather than have something that differentiates the can donate from the can't donate. Sometimes I have spare quatloos; sometimes I'm searching the couch cushion for quatloos. Startrek.website knows who donates. I think that's good enough.
  Sorry for not doing your name correctly. I'm still learning and not yet at the how to direct a comment at a particular person part of my learning curve.
- Especially if it's international, 3 credits isn't the same for everywhere.

@Admin
I realize I'm kind of a PITA with my idiosyncrasies, but I'd like you to consider a way of taking 'one and done' donations. I tend to avoid recurring automated subscriptions.
There might be others like me, and you could pickup a couple dollars here and there from one-offs.
I don't have a lemmy acct anywhere at this point, but I like what you're doing, and I spend time here, so I'd like to support you without making a commitment.
- That's a great point! Also I'm very happy to hear we were your entry into the "threadiverse". We'll look into some options.

Is this instance currently taking new registrations? It might be good to get a PSA out…
I understand you’re running 17.4 so captcha can be used. My understanding was this was done because new signups are being allowed.
When I look at various aggregators of Lemmy instance information however, w keep seeing that startrek.website is closed to signup.
Take for example the information available through Lemmy - Fediverse Network Statistics posted on fedidb.org.
As there are a significant number of unhappy redditors just now who might wish to join Lemmy but are discouraged, it would be good to confirm.
I really appreciate the simple pathway that was offered for users on r/startrek back before the subs went dark June 12th. It was a successful migration for me mostly, but I understand that there’s a largish crowd of frustrated folks who haven’t made it through.
- Registrations are technically restricted to be by application only, but the bar for a successful application is incredibly low.
  Unfortunately, open registration led to a flood of bot accounts across the entire Lemmy network, so that's not a viable option.
  
  Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
  Unfortunately these aggregator pages, including the Lemmy Fediverse Observer create the impression that the site is closed completely vs. taking reasonable precautions to ensure verifiable signups.

Ad Astra!

Hi, this might be a silly question - no strike that, it's definitely a silly question but one I can't figure out: is there any way to change the default sort order of comments from "Hot"? Because I'm old, I'm used to a chrono ascending view and it would be nice not having to remember to change it every time I enter a new thread.
Thankew.
- Just for posts (in your user settings) not comments yet.
  
  "Yet" implying that's an existing feature request in the queue for implementation? I hope?

Is there an LCARS theme for Lemmy? I saw another instance running the Voyager theme and it got me thinking...
- There's a Voyager theme? What instance? I'd love to add it here.
  
  Lemmy.ca has it. It used to be called wefwef.

We need an LCARS theme for this site.

Tossed a few slips of GPL your way. I'll be staying on my current instance, but good Trek discussion is a must have.

One issue I seem to run into quite a bit now is that if I try to access a community from another instance from this account I get 404 errors as example if I try to go to: https://startrek.website/c/pcmasterrace@lemmy.world
I'm wondering If this is intended behaviour or something I might have done wrong?
- I think that happens when a community hasn't fully federated with us yet. It might tags a few days, especially with the heavier-than-usual traffic across the platform.
  
  Fair, I'll just be patient

Personally I think if you can customize the visuals, you guys should totally go for an LCARS style theme as that would be amazing. Maybe even get the exact typeface for it too.

Hey! Just wanted to say thanks to the admins here. I was interested inblemmy but didn't know where to jump on until I saw the startrek server then I knew I was ready to move along home.
Alamarian!

I've joined the Patreon, but I won't be opening an account on the instance since I'll be following your communities from my own. Thanks so much!
- Counselor, I am happy to read this... and yet I am crying. Perhaps my emotion chip is malfunctioning? (thank you so much🖖)

I can't seem to dm you for some reason (maybe because I'm registered on programming.dev?), but if you were interested I'd love to get startrekgifs running here with a clean start.

Hey @Admin what are the odds of becoming @Computer?
- Lower now that you've said it out loud

Hey, I can’t figure out how to send @williams482 a message without having an account here, so I’m just posting here. I'm trying to join startrek.website but my account keeps getting stuck in the spinning circle of death. Can you help me out? account name @yerald just like here.
- Hey Yerald,
  Someone signed up with that name on our instance on June 24, and Lemmy will not allow multiple accounts with the same name. This is two days after your kbin account was created; did you attempt to create an account on here then?
  
  Oh, yeah, I did! I’d kinda forgotten about having tried a bit ago as well.

Any chance for a ShittyDaystrom? I don't want to mod it (I'm a terrible mod) but I sure would love to shitpost there.
edit: seems like the only active mod on ShittyDaystrom on Reddit has ran a script to edit all their old comments, and Reddit suspended them for it. The sub on Reddit appears to be running fine with no mods. I think it would be a fine candidate for creating a community here, the people in the Reddit sub are happily shitposting Star Trek memes with no active mods at all. If someone who is not a terrible mod, like myself, would like to take it on, I seriously doubt it will be much work.
- There are some huge fans of shittydaystrom on the team here, we'll definitely be hosting a community for that eventually. For the moment, we're worried about fracturing users by creating too many different communities.
  If you have a shittydaystrom appropriate thing you want to post, stick it in /c/Risa. I'll upvote it.

Was pretty skeptical about all this stuff, but it seems like y'all have succeeded in moving a good chunk of people from Reddit to this new place, which hopefully bodes well for the future.
Hopefully y'all will be able to keep moderation functioning well, especially considering that a lot of Folks'll stay split between here and the Reddit subs. Like the biggest reason (IMO, of course) that r/DaystromInstitute is/was one of the best subs out there was just how effective the moderators are/were.
- Was pretty skeptical about all this stuff, but it seems like y’all have succeeded in moving a good chunk of people from Reddit to this new place, which hopefully bodes well for the future.
  As long as there is enough people here to have a thriving discussion, we can be self-sustaining.

How about a cool graphic / logo and some merch to promote the server?
- Not a bad idea for the future!

How much does a Lemmy instance cost to host?
- That depends! You can run an instance on an old PC for just yourself and some friends for next to nothing, but a bigger instance with lots of traffic can easily climb to hundreds per month or more. No idea where we'll end up when things slow down, but the subreddits this server represent currently have more users than the entire Lemmy-verse 😅
  
  I'm just trying to get a rough idea of the order of magnitude. Has this instance exceeded "old PC" (For discussion's sake, an 8 core i7-9700k with 32 gigabytes of RAM) yet?

Why "startrek.website"? When the ".social" and ".news" TLD exist and seem more fitting?
- It was one of the few that wasn't taken.
  It made us laugh.
- @loremipsum @Admin also, the copyright owners are a bit shitty regarding fan things, not sure how they will react to this domain.

Just FYI all the instance, and community logos are rendering as broken images.
- We're aware thanks, something went wrong in the latest update, it'll be fixed soon.
  Edit: fixed now

What about kbin
- I'm viewing this from kbin.social right now, so that's an option.
- Lemmy seemed like an easier transition, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on the development of both.

79 comments