Going to pin this for 24 hours so all mods hopefully get a chance to see it! Sorry!

As we continue to expand on the mod tools for Lemmy.zip community mods, I thought I'd better start keeping a collection of them in a post, what the tools do, and how they can be used.

All commands are invoked by sending a PM to ZippyBot with the relevant text commands.

---

Welcome Message

The Welcome Message feature allows a community mod to set a custom "Welcome message" for a community that gets sent to a user when they subscribe to a community.

Welcome Messages can be set up by sending the command #welcome -c community_name -m "welcome message" to ZippyBot. You'll receive a reply back confirming this has been successful.

Anyone that subscribes to your community after this will receive the PM you set up. The PM will be sent by a bot account called WelcomeBot specifically set up for this task.

Important notes

• The text of your welcome message must start and end with a speech/quote mark, i.e. "welcome text".
• You can use any punctuation/markdown you want, including emojis and links.
• You can change the message by sending the same command with updated text.
• You can delete the message entirely by using the command #welcomedelete community_name.

Example

!

The full code for this looks like: ``` #welcome -c gaming -m “Welcome to the Lemmy.zip Gaming Community!

All content related to gaming on any platform is welcome here including links to news articles, discussions about the latest games, and reviews of games from across all genres.

Please remember to follow the rules in the sidebar 😊

---

This is an automated message. Beep Boop. " ``` ---

Autopost/Scheduled Posts

The Autopost/Scheduled Post features allows mods to set either a one-off or recurring post in their community, which is then pinned. If the post is a recurring post, the old post is unpinned and the new post is pinned when it is triggered.

A typical command would look like #autopost -c community_name -t post_title -b post_body -d day -h time -f frequency

• -c - This defines the name of the community you are setting this up for. This is the original name of the community when you created it.
• -t - This defines the title of the post. You can use the modifiers listed below here.
• -b - This is the body of your post. This field is optional, so you don't need to include it if you don't want a body to your post. You can use the modifiers listed below here too.
• -u - This defines a URL you can add to your post. This field is optional, so you don't need to include it.
• -d - This defines a date you want the first post to occur in YYYYMMDD format, i.e. 20230612 which would be 12th June 2023, or the day of the week you want your thread to be posted on, i.e. monday.
• -h - This defines the time of the day you want this thread to be posted, i.e. 12:00. All times are UTC!
• -f - This defines how often your thread will be posted. The options that currently exist are once, weekly, fortnightly, 4weekly, or monthly.

There are some modifiers you can use either in the title field (-t) or the body field (-b).

• %d - This will be replaced by the day of the month, i.e. 12
• %m - This will be replaced by the name of the month, i.e. June.
• %y - This will be replaced by the current year, i.e. 2024
• %w - This will be replaced by the day of the week, i.e. Monday. For example, having -t Weekly Thread %d %m might be created as Weekly Thread 12 June depending on the day it is posted.

Finally, if you want to delete a scheduled autopost, use the command #autopostdelete with the ID number of the autopost, i.e. #autopostdelete 1. You can also delete the latest pinned thread if you include y at the end, i.e #autopostdelete 1 y.

Important notes

• Using the once frequency means your post will never be unpinned, you'll need to do this manually.
• The post will be created and pinned by ZippyBot, so you won't receive replies to your inbox.

Example

#autopost -c gaming -t What are you playing this week? %m %d %y Edition -b Hey there everybody! Weekly check in time once again. So… What are you playing this week? -d Monday -h 07:00 -f weekly

This creates the weekly thread in the Gaming community.

---

RSS Feeds

This allows a mod to add an RSS feed to their community, which ZippyBot will regularly check and create a new post if a new RSS post is detected.

A typical command would look like #rss -url rss_url -c community name - but there are a few modifiers you can use.

• url - This is the URL of the rss feed, and is mandatory.
• c - This is the community name and is mandatory.
• t - This will tag your post titles with a preceding tag in square brackets, i.e. -t "RSS POST" will result in each post being tagged with [RSS POST]
• title_inc - Adding this will mean that only posts that INCLUDE the string you define will be posted, i.e. -title_inc "title must be included". The speech marks are mandatory if you use this option, and you can have multiple filters by using a commma between them.
• title_exc - Adding this will EXCLUDE any posts that match this string, i.e. -title_exc "dont include this". The speech marks are mandatory if you use this option.
• url_inc - Adding this will filter the post based on the link to the content in the RSS feed. You can use it in a way such as -url_inc "goodlink.com" to ensure that only posts where the link to the content is for goodlink.com. Speech marks are mandatory.
• url_exc - Adding this will exclude content based on the link to the content RSS feed, such as -url_exc "badlink.com". Speech marks are mandatory.
• new_only - Adding this will mean that on the creation of this RSS feed, ZippyBot won't scan for existing posts and only start looking at posts after starting this feed.

Finally, if you want to delete an RSS feed from your community, use the command #rssdelete with the ID number of the RSS feed, i.e. #rssdelete 1.

Important notes

• ZippyBot checks for new RSS posts every 10 minutes
• ZippyBot makes the RSS post, so you won't receive a notification of a reply to a post.
• If you don't use the -new_only flag, you'll get the last 3 posts on the first time this command is used.

Example

#rss -url https://rss-url.xml -c gaming

---

As I develop new tools or work on existing ones, I'll continue to add them here or update the commands.

We're always on the lookout for what we can add too, so if you have any ideas for new tools we're really open to hearing them and seeing if we can implement them.

Final important note - while all these tools work to some degree, I can't guarantee they're bug free. I may need to reset these at some point if a bug is discovered. Please let me know if anything doesn't work as expected!___

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 :)

• Lies of P
• Path of Exile 2
• Puns
• Dungeon Dialogue
• Rivian
• Epic Games

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!

• Xbox
• Star Trek

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:

[!](https://ko-fi.com/lemmyzip)

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

Edit: was not down just had to clear browser data.

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

Hi there, I'm a mod of !tesla@lemmy.world, and am thinking of moving the community off-world, to strengthen the fediverse as a whole.

!teslamotors@lemmy.zip 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.

Posting with a non-lemmy.zip account because my actual lemmy.zip account (@OtomeGamesBot@lemmy.zip) 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.

Hello everyone, I started a community featuring puns at !puns@lemmy.zip.

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

No pun intended.

:)

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 !2024lemmycanvasatlas@toast.ooo. > > 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 !canvas@toast.ooo 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.

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.

!wowculprit@lemmy.zip

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.

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 hello@sc07.company 💜 > > 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 hello@sc07.company > > # Special thanks > thank you to the moderators that helped me this year, even with how stressful it was 🔨 > - Ategon (https://ategon.dev/) > - Sugar (sc07) > - Bigcheese > - TheWaffleLord > > 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

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

> oh hey the canvas also looks a bit different... > > - PeerTube: https://sc07.tv/w/6XZFB8qQy8KCRgaF7UsuFb > - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK2Cho0DSXQ > - Raw File: https://cdn.sc07.company/canvas/2024/24h.mp4 > > 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/

Canvas is over!

And just like that, Canvas 2024 has come to a close. Here's the final version of our logo as it appears on the final version of this year's version of the Canvas:

!

Thanks again to everyone who participated! I hope to see you all back here next year for Canvas 2025!

The logo is done!

!

Special thanks to @lumun@lemmy.zip, @TriLinder@lemmy.zip, @sleepingoddish@lemmy.zip, @all4one@lemmy.zip, @grimm@lemmy.zip, @catculation@lemmy.zip, @tamlyn@lemmy.zip, @daudix@lemmy.zip, @Maciek@lemmy.zip, @tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip, @ategon@programming.dev, @fishtune@programming.dev, @jpdev@programming.dev, @sky@slrpnk.net, @amreo@mastodon.uno and anyone else I might've missed for getting this done so quickly! (Second special shoutout to the wonderful ategon for bringing p.d over after they finished their logo!)

For context, last year's Canvas took about a day and a half and I only listed 5 other names on the 'thanks' post. Now 16 of us got it done well within the first 24 hours!

I must also note @Gingernate@programming.dev and @PonyOfWar@pawb.social for tarballing us lol

And congrats to our own !squaredcircle@lemmy.zip, who also finished their logo just to the north east of us

The template is still available below for ongoing maintenance needs. Otherwise, get out there and contribute to other art (or find a place to start your own) elsewhere on the Canvas!

--------------------

🔴 CANVAS IS LIVE!

Start placing pixels!

I put us in the bottom center, just over the upper left corner of programming.dev and south east of !squaredcircle@lemmy.zip

--------------------

Original post

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 !squaredcircle@lemmy.zip has a plan, there's a dedicated group organization post on the host community !canvas@toast.ooo, and of course there's nothing stopping from putting your own by yourself

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 :)

• Fediverse
• Star Wars: Hunters
• Daily Games

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!

• Tesla
• Xbox
• Star Trek

---

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:

[!](https://ko-fi.com/lemmyzip)

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

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

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

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

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

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 ❤️

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)

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• 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.

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• 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 :)

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• 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.

---

Congratulations to the winners! @monoboy (£25) @win95 (£10) @anothermember (£10)

Entry List

1 fathix\ 2 mynamesnotrick\ 3 Grimm\ 4 Betawhat\ 5 v4ld1z\ 6 GeekFTW\ 7 Blablablabum\ 8 Keegen\ 9 Zamotic\ 10 catculation\ 11 Lumun\ 12 TacoEvent\ 13 McWizard\ 14 MrSoup\ 15 nasi_goreng\ 16 Dyskolos\ 17 Zinck\ 18 padge\ 19 monoboy\ 20 TheHobbyist\ 21 generic_computers\ 22 CluelessDude\ 23 siv9939\ 24 Blxter\ 25 BrikoX\ 26 possiblylinux127\ 27 moncharleskey\ 28 Cethin\ 29 Marty_TF\ 30 errror\ 31 locuester\ 32 oyenyaaow\ 33 Micromot\ 34 Nevloow\ 35 altima_neo\ 36 alp\ 37 Serotoninexe\ 38 TriLinder\ 39 Anonpony1\ 40 OpenPassageways\ 41 all4one\ 42 Omgboom\ 43 anti_antidote\ 44 velvetThunder\ 45 sunglocto\ 46 tar\ 47 bestonecrazy\ 48 Blisterexe\ 49 Vivendi\ 50 Osu\ 51 win95\ 52 Hathaway\ 53 tigeruppercut\ 54 TxzK\ 55 agr8lemon\ 56 gveltaine\ 57 Levsgetso\ 58 sudoroot\ 59 solarvector\ 60 mill_city\ 61 RedDoozer\ 62 unlogic\ 63 1Fuji2Taka3Nasubi\ 64 stargazingpenguin\ 65 NuXCOM_90Percent\ 66 Anxie\ 67 Zorcron\ 68 Sivilian\ 69 GregorGizeh\ 70 Poltergeist\ 71 regitseroms\ 72 felsiq\ 73 Nadaph\ 74 Chronographs\ 75 Sensitivezombie\ 76 rolofox\ 77 daudix\ 78 CaptainAmeristan\ 79 dch82\ 80 infrasoundxp\ 81 lazorne\ 82 HeavyRaptor\ 83 Crozekiel\ 84 Gingerino\ 85 Cxyz\ 86 Primer81\ 87 nebula42\ 88 Dempf\ 89 noli\ 90 lazyhazy\ 91 diminou\ 92 rayf\ 93 solsangraal\ 94 TranquilTurbulence\ 95 dabster291\ 96 arthur\ 97 WeirdAlex03\ 98 ristoril_zip\ 99 Water_Melon_boy\ 100 Cyro\ 101 Clandestine\ 102 Blizzard\ 103 Vlyn\ 104 tri_poloski\ 105 sarmale\ 106 Geologist\ 107 auzas_1337\ 108 sheev\ 109 Dulus_No\ 110 AlexPewMaster\ 111 anothermember\ 112 Eramidik

Thanks to everyone that entered and congrats to the winners!

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.

• Tesla (152 Subscribers)
• Playstation (570 Subscribers)
• Xbox (198 Subscribers)
• Apple (438 Subscribers)
• Star Trek (165 subscribers)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello all, welcome to the May server update!

Lets have a look back at what has happened over the last month, and what could be happening into the future.

---

New Communities

We've had a few new communities pop up, please check them out, interact with them, and give them a subscribe!

• Remnant
• Legal News
• Webgames
• Civil Aviation

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!

• Tesla (142 Subscribers)
• Playstation (547 Subscribers)
• Xbox (185 Subscribers)
• Apple (391 Subscribers)
• Star Trek (159 subscribers)

---

Server Updates

We've been on our new server over a month now, with amazing performance, and no downtime (outside of planned maintenance!).

This has allowed me more time to look at the secondary services and less time intervening in restarting a broken server.

To that end, I have started a collection of Mod Tools that are built into Lemmy.zip in this thread. Lemmy doesn't really come with any tools outside of the report button, so I've been trying to build the tools that I think help support mods but also make our communities friendly places to be. I think very early on there was a general consensus that moderation shouldn't be automated and I've tried to stick to that ethos wherever possible. There are no tools that take moderation actions without a community mod or an Admin stepping in to review first.

I will continue to add more tools as I am able to get them tested and running on the site - very soon I'll have the next tool up on there which allows community mods to set their own "words" for the bot to look out for - for example, you can set it to scan for the word "bread" and every time it finds that word in a new post or comment in that community, it will generate a report for the mod. This allows mods to set their own dictionary of words they don't want to appear in their communities. (We still have an instance-wide bad words list but that works differently now, and instead lets the admins know on Matrix when a bad word has been detected - these are the sorts of words that we absolutely won't allow and/or break the law.)

Luckily our application process helps to weed out most of the spammers and bad actors. We don't generally allow spam/throwaway email addresses (Although I do fully understand why people want to use them, so we do allow email forwarding addresses - I myself use Proton's email forwarding thing all the time!).

We read each and every application message and do reject those that we feel aren't genuine (the amount of applications that just say "lemmy in" is wild) - that said, we very much do appreciate those who take the time to write something funny or personal in them, and they do brighten our day!

Ps - thanks to those who have helped to test these tools out and iron out the bugs!

Over the next month I think we'll see Lemmy 0.19.4 released, bringing with it a bunch of new updates and fixes.

---

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

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

I just want to let everyone know 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 has now tipped 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!

Due to a (now fixed) issue with Prometheus, I can't show you the full 30 days of the server performance. Instead, the CPU/RAM are over the last 7 days.

Instead, have a bonus image of the current server details as I type this:

!

Now to the usual stats:

CPU - Yes, we're not using very much at all.

!

RAM - I'm pretty happy with this, the performance is exactly where I want it to be.

!

Image hosting:

!

Cloudflare overview for the last 30 days:

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Requests over 30 days:

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Bandwidth over 30 days:

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Unique visitors over 30 days:

!

Traffic: (I don't know whats happened in Singapore to drive up traffic - popular fediverse server maybe?) Finland is where Lemmy.world is hosted (along with Lemm.ee and Lemmy.zip!) which is why we see so much traffic from there.

!

So that's it for a relatively stable April - We'll see what happens in May!

As always if there is anything else you'd like to see I am happy to add it in, just let me know.

PS - next time I do one of these we'll be only a few days short of 1 year old!!!

Thanks

Demigodrick

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

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

I've noticed that Lemmy.ml user comments are showing up multiple times. Does anyone else see this behavior? Perhaps it is a federation issue.

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

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

Hello all, and welcome to the April 2024 Server update.

What a busy month we've had! I hope you enjoyed the April fools IPO announcement. Obviously, we're not going public.

---

New Communities

We've had a few new communities pop up, please check them out and subscribe if you like them!

• Weird West
• Squared Circle - Welcome to all the Kbin refugees!

---

Server Updates

What. A. Month.

Following our previous server upgrade a little while back, we'd seen that performance was steadily decreasing and the site performance was slowing down too, sometimes taking seconds to load a page.

This is what I was seeing on the 27th March:

!

As you can see, all red = not good.

I first tried offloading all secondary services to a second server (like the mobile/old UIs and some of the admin tools we run) which unfortunately didn't have much of an impact overall - the server just wasn't able to handle all the traffic and database operations anymore.

For reference, the server was a 4 core (vcpu's - so 4 threads) Virtual dedicated server with 16gb of RAM (Hetzner CCX23). In some form this was still the original server we started Lemmy.zip on, just rescaled through Hetzner's platform. At this point, rescaling it up again just wasn't financially viable, as the performance to price benefit stopped being in favour of cloud servers, and now tipped over to proper dedicated servers.

So, after researching the best long-term solutions I settled on Hetzner's EX44 dedicated server. It has 12 cores (20 threads!) and 64GB of RAM.

It is a beast.

This is the comparison performance as I type this:

!

This should give us plenty of growing room as the fediverse continues to expand.

Other things that happened in March include ZippyBot properly breaking, and dealing with a large spam wave hitting the Lemmy network.

ZippyBot decided it just didn't want to work anymore, at which point I realised that due to my own poor programming I hadn't put enough detail in Zippy's logs, which look a bit like this:

!

We use Zippy a lot, like sending welcome messages to new users, background moderation stuff, stopping spam users etc. So having Zippy not working was not ideal.

The problem was that Zippy wasn't throwing any errors, it was just stopping and not restarting, seemingly randomly. During the initial debug phase, I implemented a docker healthcheck into Zippy (another new thing I had to learn how to do!) and used another container to keep restarting Zippy if the the healthcheck came back unhealthy.

Finally, it turned out that the RSS feature built into Zippy for community mods was failing when the URL it reached out to for the feed didn't exist anymore. One of the RSS feeds had changed their URL and not put a redirect in, so Zippy was hitting a 404 error and failing silently. There is a check when the RSS feed is set up to make sure the feed exists, but not one after that. Lesson learned.

The Lemmy network saw a large spam wave attack from the EvilToast instance, which was resulting in multiple accounts sending thousands of comments/posts a minute and overwhelming some instances. To get around this, I temporarily defederated from EvilToast for the period of the attack, until their admin confirmed they had implemented a captcha and stopped completely open signups. Instances that allow completely open signups are usually targeted by spammers due to the easy way they can create so much traffic. Hopefully new instances being created into the future will learn from this and enforce at least some method of validating their users.

---

As promised, here is a breakdown of the server move process. If you don't care about sysadmin stuff, you can safely skip this next bit.

Making the move to the new server was a new experience for me (If you weren't aware, I am not a sysadmin by trade and am learning as I go!) so the day of the move was a bit nerve wrecking with visions of accidentally losing the database forever. This is the rough order of steps I took during the maintenance window.

First, I backed up the old server using Hetzner's very handy cloud backup tool. That took about 10 minutes, after which I changed the nginx config to point away from lemmy itself. It was meant to point to the status site but i misconfigured the nginx file and instead it sent traffic to Authentik (our admin SSO solution to lock down our backend services). Oh well, this was the only thing that went wrong thankfully so I'll take that.

I stopped all the docker containers on both servers (main lemmy server and secondary UI server) and then compressed the postgres database files. While this was happening, I recreated the folder structure on the new server, and spun up Portainer, and then the Lemmy services stack so that the files/configs needed were generated and all in the right place, before shutting lemmy back down until everything was ready.

I then rsynced the database between both servers, and decompressed it in the correct place on the new server. All in all this took about an hour, mostly waiting for the files to compress/decompress. At this point I needed to change the DNS records to point to the new server, so I could request all the SSL certs for the required domains. This is when I took the old server offline and changed the DNS records in Cloudflare to point to the new IP.

Once I had requested the SSL certs, I then created the nginx config files for lemmy and some of the important subdomains (i.e. the mobile site) at which point everything was in place for lemmy to be turned back on. After a very tense couple of minutes (and a few container restarts!) lemmy.zip finally came back to life just as it had been left, and pretty quickly I could see federation was working as we started to pull new posts through.

Next up was fixing pictrs as images weren't loading - that service has a real issue with memory requirements and was stuck in a boot loop, so giving it access to 10 gigs of memory (a bit overkill admittedly) brought it back to life. And we were back!

The next hour or two was spent re-implementing the backend services, checking everything was working correctly, testing emails and images, and then finally deciding on and testing a backup solution.

As Backblaze has served us so well for images, our solution will back everything on the server up during the night (UTC) and then securely store it in a private Backblaze B2 bucket, with a full versioning solution for suitable daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups. Good stuff. I do need to test this soon though to make sure it works on a restore. Will probably spin up a Hetzner cloud server and try it out.

I am happy to expand on this process if anyone is interested, just ask away in the comments.

---

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

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

I just want to let everyone know 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.

---

Donations

Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip has now tipped over 50 euros a month ($54, £43) and that's not including the surrounding services (email, URL, hosting the seperate status server - which I am covering myself).

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!

This was the monthly performance of the Old server before it was turned off:

!

You can see the demand really start to ramp up towards the end of the month.

This was the 24 hour performance on the 28th:

!

The hourly peaks were where the performance really dropped out for about 20 minutes, followed by 40 minutes of still pretty poor performance.

This is the performance of the new server of the last 24 hours:

!

Just a little bit of a difference :)

Our current image hosting stats:

!

This is our Cloudflare overview for the last month:

!

Cloudflare requests:

!

Cloudflare bandwidth:

!

Cloudflare unique visitors:

!

Cloudflare traffic:

!

And that's pretty much it. As always, if there's anything you'd like more information on, or you'd like to see included in these regularly, let me know.

Cheers,

Demigodrick

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

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

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

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

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

Hey all - hope everyone has enjoyed their February and the extra day!

Here's a roundup of everything that has happened on Lemmy.zip over February and into March.

New Communities

We've had even more communities pop up this month, please check them out and subscribe if you like them!

• Star Trek
• The Amazing Digital Circus (Personal recommendation - I had no idea what to expect watching the pilot and enjoyed it very much!)

MaddieTian has also kindly brought the Xbox community back to life - please give it a sub and support it!

(PS - if you're a community mod and would like feature your community here, let me know and I'll happily pop it up here in April)

We still have one modless community - Apple - if you're interested in taking this over let me know.

---

Server Updates

It has been a bit of quiet month since last time. There have been no Lemmy releases but (at least from my perspective) most of the federation issues we had previously have been fixed and things seem a lot smoother.

The performance changes we'd also made to the server have appeared to worked wonders (again, thanks to locuester for their support with the database) and we're sitting quite happy performance wise, with no major unplanned downtime.

Last time I discussed that we had doubled the image size from 1mb to 2mb per image, and throughout February we've doubled that again to 4mb. This hasn't really had any impact on performance or storage, and I'm happy to keep it at 4mb for now, which should allow for quite good images. They still get compressed when they're uploaded but it shouldn't have too much of an impact. Here's a 3mb image i did some testing with.

Our feedback survey closed and we've taken a look at the results/comments and we're really thankful for all your responses. Many of you were very kind about the site which always makes me smile. The feedback isn't something we can report back as %s of answers, but we have taken on board comments and suggestions. One of my key things is to rewrite the instance rules to be clearer and flow better, and also to separate out the moderator community conduct bit as its own section and expand a bit on that.

What was interesting to see though was that many people have gone "all in" on the fediverse and replaced the large tech company apps with fediverse alternatives.

Finally, ZippyBot has had a very small update to make the report confirmations less spammy by limiting who they go to and in what circumstances. I've also changed the way we deal with urgent reports by keyword filtering in the report, so if you include something like "CSAM" in the report the admins will get pinged on matrix so we're at least aware faster of an issue.

In Zippy's next update i'm hoping to include the ability for mods to add RSS feeds to their community (including filtering for certain words) but it is quite a large task so taking me and my limited python knowledge a bit longer than I'd like to get it done - but I'm almost there! If there are any other tools mods feel they'd benefit from then let me know - happy to build them into Zippy.

---

Interaction reminder (help support the instance!)

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

I just want to let everyone know 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.

---

Donations

I hate banging on about money and I'm not very good at it, but here is the general reminder that Lemmy.zip only exists because of the generous donations of its users.

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

Therefore, my ask is that if you’ve been enjoying your time here, please consider a donation - it will help keep Lemmy.zip online and all donations go to paying for the server and for the surrounding services like image hosting and email. We have options for one-off donations of any amount, or recurring donations at set amounts.

You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!

---

Graph time

We've basically fully moved over to Grafana now for stats tracking, so here are some lovely graphs for you!, covering all of February.

Cpu:

!

Memory: (the dips are either server or database restarts)

!

Disk/storage:

!

Image storage:

!

Cloudflare overview:

!

Cloudflare requests:

!

Cloudflare bandwidth:

!

Cloudflare visitors:

!

Cloudflare traffic:

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If there are any stats/graphs/insights i've not posted above but you'd like to see, let me know!

That's it for now - but as always if you have any questions pop them below or pm me.

Hope everyone has a lovely March and I'll be back again in April!

Cheers,

Demigodrick

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

So the general situation is explained here:

https://lemmy.world/post/11959030

Basically there was a moderation disagreement that lead the community to move here:

!tenforward@lemmy.world

That is why Risa has been so slow as of late. Everyone jumped ship and people like me missed it as any posts discussing the drama were deleted. See the mod log: https://startrek.website/modlog/8