Kalcifer @ Kalcifer @sh.itjust.works

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Joined

2 yr. ago

[…] Even a voluntary survey is defeating the purpose of avoiding corporate forums. Why are they gathering the data? What are they going to do with it? How can we be assured they’re destroying the data even if we are okay with their goal? Nah. It’s a step in the wrong direction for lemmy as a whole.

I could certainly be misinterpreting, but your statement seems to imply that the census is intended to be non-anonymous and that it won't be publicly released. For clarity, I am proposing a census whose data is anonymously collected, and will be publicly released by the admins once completed. Although, from this statement:

How can we be assured they’re destroying the data even if we are okay with their goal? Nah. It’s a step in the wrong direction for lemmy as a whole.

Perhaps you don't trust that they'll release the data? If so, perhaps there would be a way to publicly host the data live as it comes in?

[…] Why? Because they don’t need to know shit about you, me, or the cookie monster as long as we follow the rules. […]

You specify that they "don't need to know". I was specifically proposing a hypothetical where they only had some level of desire for the data and not a need.

[…] They might want it, but they don’t need it

For clarity, if admins do want (not necessarily need) the survey data, you would still oppose it? If so, why?

[…] Never thought to use a clasp, thats neat.

Ha, yeah, I got annoyed with having to tie a knot on another friendship bracelet I made every time that I wanted to wear it (plus the knot was uncomfortable for me to feel when wearing it), so I decided to just buy a pack of generic clasps and tied them on. Though, I've found through use that they're honestly not the best designed clasps — the opening for the clasp is annoyingly small to fit the ring into, the opening is at an inconvenient angle to easily use for a bracelet (though maybe they're designed for necklaces, I'm not sure), and the spring is a bit too strong to easily pull back with one hand (when attaching a bracelet onto another wrist, one really only has one free hand to work the clasp). But they're better than nothing 😜

Thank you 😊

It could be done without having to clone all data though. Reddit is hosted by AWS and their data is distributed on multiple servers, so replace AWS by a bunch of people like you and me providing disk space for the data and tada, you can decentralized the database and just give people access to interacting with it directly (through code) or via various front-ends that people would create. […]

If I understand you correctly, there is an open issue for Lemmy for an, I think, similar idea of co-hosting communities.

Noted! Thank you for clarifying 😊 Perhaps this link that you provided in another comment ^[1] would be more accurate to what the server does now?

[…] It’s perfectly possible to create a frontend that puts it’s own limits on username length, and there’s some that no doubt already exist, so a brute-force test of those limits isn’t telling you anything reliable about what Lemmy’s internal limits are.

I don't dispute your concern; however, for my needs, in all practical purposes, if the frontend did place its own unique restrictions on the username length, it wouldn't matter, as the uncertainty of the length of the username when creating an account through the frontend is why I created this post.

That being said, I think it's worth distinguishing between the two (API and frontend) in the solution section of my post. I will update it.

I used ‘unscientific’ because it would be a pain in the arse for someone else to reproduce […]

This is obviously an argument of definitions, but, at any rate, I disagree that a qualification for something to be scientific is that it must be easily reproducible; for something to be scientific it simply simply must be reproducible ^[1[2[3]]].

Hm, I think what's confusing things a bit in this conversation is that my original question is a bit of an XY problem — I asked about the maximum username length of a Lemmy account, yet I was, in reality, looking for the username length limits imposed by my instance (the answer for one instance may or may not apply to other instances). So that's my fault for not being accurate/clear enough in my initial question.

[…] Either something is solved or it isn’t, but it shouldn’t be marked ‘solved’ with links to answers of questionable accuracy.

This is a fair point, I think. Do you propose an alternative word? At what point would you say that it is justified to use "solved"? I used "solved" because, for my purposes, the question is answered (I know now that SJW has a max username length of 50, which is the only information that I personally needed).

[…] They’re just links to what some people reckon, but dressed up with ‘accessed’ and ‘published’ in a footnote format that in other other contexts would suggest a level of credibility that they don’t have. […]

This may be how you are interpreting it, but I assure you that isn't how I am using it. I personally try to make that clear through the language that I pair with it. For example my usage of the word "appears" in the post suggests, imo, that something is likely, but not necessarily factual given the current body of evidence (as provided by sources), but it carries potential of being incorrect. I recognize that my understanding of things may be flawed, so I leave a sort of "trail of breadcrumbs" to where I found information for others (like yourself) to verify and/or dispute.

[…] It gave some academic veneer to a format that usually more conversational. […]

I would argue that this is argument is moot given that this community, or at the very least this post, isn't exactly the place for casual conversation, as it is a support community ^[1].

::: spoiler References

1. Name: "Lemmy Support" !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml. sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Accessed: 2025-02-08T04:22Z. URL: https://sh.itjust.works/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml.

   

   • In the description of the community, it says:

     Support / questions about Lemmy. :::

[…] It certainly would’ve helped though, if you’d got an answer from someone you were more ready to believe.

Believing a Lemmy developer's claim simply because they are a developer of Lemmy is an appeal to authority, imo. I would still ask for some documentation as proof, or for them to point to functionality within the code, or similar.

[…] If I was using software, and asked a question that the developers of it could easily answer, and they didn’t, I might think about using something else. […]

There is no contractual obligation for the Lemmy developers to provide me with any service ^[1]. I would agree insofar that I think that there is some level of advertisement provided by their behavior towards their base, but I personally don't feel entitled to anything. Of course, this is just my personal opinion.

I think you can be an outsider to a particular system, and still be able to provide valuable information about it. […]

I completely agree! It is also illogical to argue otherwise ­— sort of an appeal to authority, imo.

For clarity, I wasn't claiming that you were incorrect due to your self-professed insufficient level of expertise. I was simply responding to your argument that "it's silly to ask you for advice because you don't use Lemmy" by arguing that your premise is unjustified — your argument is valid; however, I don't think that it's sound. I interpret your logic as follows:

1. (By your argument) If one is inexperienced with Lemmy, then it is unwise to ask their opinion.
2. You claimed that you are inexperienced with Lemmy.
3. Therefore, it is unwise to ask you for your opinion.

This is a valid argument, as it follows by modus ponens; however, it is unsound, as the premise is not epistemologically justified, as I cannot know, pior to you telling me, what your experience is with Lemmy. Hence why I said:

I don’t know you, so how would I know what your level of expertise is regarding Lemmy?

[…] I wasn’t reacting to being questioned, though, I was reacting to being singled-out for being questioned. You marked this as “Solved” based - also - on a test from you, and an answer from TootSweet, but it didn’t look like to me that you ever questioned whether those answers deserved a follow-up. Neither of those, in my opinion, are really good enough, but I’ll say why in the answers to your individual comments about them.

This isn't to discredit how you have internalized the exchange, so I apologize if I made you feel this way, but I want to assure you that it wasn't my intent to single you out. I was simply looking for clarification because I felt that I might've found a potential ambiguity that I personally wasn't sure of.

[…] To my mind, though, what I said wasn’t a claim. A claim would be if I’d said “lemmy.world is 26, sh.itjustworks is 50” with no further info. Instead, I gave command-line instructions for you to run yourself, so you could get the answers for those instances (and any other instances) from Lemmy’s backend itself. […]

Eh, this is becoming rather pedantic, imo. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

I saw your edit, yeah. […]

Then what is it about me using your comment as a source makes you think that I viewed your response as "not good enough"?

[…] Admins don’t need demographic data at all.

What makes you so certain of that?