this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Beehaw Support

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Support and meta community for Beehaw. Ask your questions about the community, technical issues, and other such things here.

A brief FAQ for lurkers and new users can be found here.

Our July 2023 financial update is here.

For a refresher on our philosophy, see also What is Beehaw?, The spirit of the rules, and Beehaw is a Community


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
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hello folks! some additional suggestions have been made to round out Beehaw's current set of communities, so we've gone ahead and done that. we have four new communities accordingly, which are:

Disability and Accessibility! i think this one is pretty self-explanatory, but for anyone ambiguous on its intent, @[email protected] puts it like this:

Feel free to post anything health, chronic illness, disability or accessibility related. If you need a space for support or sharing your experiences regarding all of the above topics, this is the right place as well :)

People of Color! this is a community specifically devoted to ethnic minority groups and their issues, and for discussions and connections relating to those minority groups. we're also hopeful it'll be a good space for minorities who are migrating to Lemmy, since i'm not aware of very many communities on here to this point like that. there's an already existing introduction thread in the community by @[email protected] if you'd like to drop by.

Betterment and Praxis! i'll let @[email protected] speak for the idea behind this one, because i think it really gets at some of the stuff we're trying to help build here:

Even if it’s just growing a little bit extra in the garden for the local food bank, picking up rubbish on the side of the road, or just making an effort to use the bus, having a supportive community encouraging you makes those little choices a bit easier. Maybe you’ve always wanted to do a little bit more for your community but don’t know where to start. Maybe you already do some of these things and want to help others get started. Maybe you’re just really proud of how something is done in your community. We might not be able to solve all the problems but we can at least try to make a few small things a little bit nicer.

and, finally: Socialism! there's no shortage of communities like this on Lemmy but a commonality many people have experienced is they're... not very welcoming, in general. luckily, a left-wing subreddit got in touch with us about moving (pre-boom, even) and we think their community on Reddit fit the ethos of the site pretty well, so we've helped move them over here. as the sidebar states, this community is:

A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you’re nice about it. [...] Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it’s hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a “left vs right” debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.

we hope you'll find each of these four new communities a useful space to discuss in.


now, as for the subject of new community creations: we're definitely slowing down on batches of communities after this set. this isn't a total stop--as our existing communities grow, we'll split off new ones as needed--but we're going to try and keep additions to a minimum until the Reddit wave crests. tentatively, our next batch of community creations will probably be after July 1, and any we create before then will be on an individual as-needed basis.

we think the current set of communities covers most things adequately enough for our purposes right now. some imperfections exist but to reiterate: we aren't trying to be Reddit, so some overlap and imperfection in coverage is fine with us.

this also doesn't mean we're done taking public opinion checks. we're not sure when this will be sent out yet (it's being worked on today), but we're drafting a community survey where among other things we'll gauge interest in the suggestions i've seen that haven't already been added. be on the lookout for that.

thanks folks!

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Man, you should call these community announcements beehaw yeehaws. I think that'd be neat and funny.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's being reserved for a special surprise further down the road.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

you're putting a beekeeper on a payroll and they will name the bees after Beehaw users? :o

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (12 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it will be a mod-only community where mods post pictures of themselves in bee fursuits?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Sounds like fun but no :P

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a friend finding community, similar to Bumble, where you can only swipe right and all you get is nice people you actually want to bee together with?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And now I'm picturing a non-romance service called BeeFriends where you swipe right or left not to find a date, but to form platonic friendships.

Perfect for people like me who aren't looking for love (my wife and I will celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary in just under 2 weeks), but who thanks to various factors (e.g. social anxiety) find making friends to be extremely difficult.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Will you be releasing the dogs, or the bees or the dogs who when they bark they shoot bees out of their mouths? Well go ahead, do your worst!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hi, I submitted a post earlier today requesting to create some kids related communities with friendlier names (/c/kidsbeingsilly, /c/kidsbeingsmart, /c/kidsbeingkids, or even just a /c/kids) for kids related posts instead of the reddit versions (/r/kidsarefuckingsmart and /r/kidsarefuckingstupid, which always makes me hesitate when I want to share posts to somebody I know). Is it possible to create one or more of those communities before July 1? I know I can create those on one of the other instances, but I think beehaw is the perfect place for something like that.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Betterment and Praxis" is such an interesting concept for a community, I hope it catches on! Reminds me that if I don't have something worth posting there, I have room to improve. Excellent additions all around, thanks for keeping up the good work :)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

yeah, we had some difficulty coming up with a good name for that one which encompassed what we and Wigglet meant by it, but i think the current name captures it pretty well and so far all of the posts there have been very much in the spirit of what we want posted there

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Well it made me google "praxis" so you've already bettered one person :)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your thoughtful and responsive work. I greatly appreciate that you're keeping up with the tsunami of info, requests, and interesting stuff now that the floodgates are opening. Your (collectively speaking to all the Beehawer admins making hard choices, probably including foregoing sleep) energy and dedication make me think I'm gonna like it here, and inspire me to bring my best as well.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

honestly I never had much use for the general communities like "technology", "news", "sex", etc. I came to reddit and stuck around for the niche stuff. Even niches that I am not involved in, it is fun to see what people care about and get a different perspective. And sometimes it's a life saver to be able to access specialized communities. Holla at /r/pestcontrol, /r/bedbugs, /r/whatisthisbug and the related subs.

I can understand from an admin perspective of a specific instance why you'd want to keep a lid on things during a time of crazy growth. In terms of lemmy as a platform, having small communities that can develop shared norms and knowledge is what will make it worthwhile and avoid the general feeling of being "over run" with low quality content. the big tent groups will always be lowest common denominator. Also the general topics do not want to get full of a specific kind of common but boring post. Like /r/apple (IIRC) didn't allow tech support type question; there is a separate space for that.

In your position I would consider making a "new group request" section where people can post their ideas and others can express interest. You could request for people to do a bit of work such as writing up community guidelines to show some effort. When a group is rejected by this instance and they form somewhere else; in most cases you could allow them to link to that (unless it is you know terrible) so it can be found by others in the future. I understand that would entail a whole lot of work and headaches to run and people will be mad about it but over time it could shake out to allow actually communties.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think the other hand is that beehaw itself is more like a general "home" server. There will be instances with more niche interests that you can subscribe and interact with. And beehaw seems to be more about building a community in the broader sense. But idk, I'm not the big yeehaw of beehaw.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

In terms of lemmy as a platform, having small communities that can develop shared norms and knowledge is what will make it worthwhile and avoid the general feeling of being “over run” with low quality content. the big tent groups will always be lowest common denominator. Also the general topics do not want to get full of a specific kind of common but boring post. Like /r/apple (IIRC) didn’t allow tech support type question; there is a separate space for that.

on these points: Lemmy has no shortage of small communities--and those have overwhelmingly gone poorly and/or not really developed in that way (nor have the "big tent" groups, which you must remember are hundreds of orders of magnitude smaller than Reddit's) in the past year and a half on the platform. it's possible the new influx of users will breathe life into some of these, but most of them are completely dead and will always be, and basically just clutter the experience. i'm also not really sure what we can do objectively about the "common but boring" post you describe, since that's going to always be a subjective measure, but we do already prune comments people report as low-quality so it's not ridiculous to me that we'd also try and apply some baseline level of quality to posts.

In your position I would consider making a “new group request” section where people can post their ideas and others can express interest. You could request for people to do a bit of work such as writing up community guidelines to show some effort. When a group is rejected by this instance and they form somewhere else; in most cases you could allow them to link to that (unless it is you know terrible) so it can be found by others in the future. I understand that would entail a whole lot of work and headaches to run and people will be mad about it but over time it could shake out to allow actually communties.

this is not to shut down this idea, but in my honest experience: i don't think most of the people requesting communities will put this much effort in, which would just be a headache for us (because we'd probably just have to ignore it) and for the suggester (because i mean... where else are they asked to justify, on that level, a proposal for an internet community?). the vast majority of suggestions we've gotten to this point have been one-line or very brief suggestions, not a pitch package, and i expect that to not change.

in any case i don't think this will happen in the immediate term if we do it. that would be another space we have to really keep an eye on, and we're already covering a lot with not very many people.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Precisely this. Leaving Reddit I am now seeking a home for discussing specific software libraries, sub-genres of music and cultivating specific types of plants. Am I to understand that Lemmy/Beehaw doesn't offer this easily without setting up your own server? If so I see this as a massive showstopper for ongoing advancement of popularity. There's people passionate about a subject who will give hours and hours of their weeks to investing in a discussion or moderating etc. but who are not technically confident enough to run a server.

I'm not asking this to bitch, what is here right now is amazing and great and highly virtuous choices of new communities but I am questioning if Lemmy is the answer to what are my own current interests from a new community platform.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Users can create communities on most other Lemmy instances (the Beehaw FAQ outlines why this is disabled on this instance.) You can eg create another user on some other instance to be able to create the communities you'd like to see

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

don't forget to comment there so i can make you a mod!!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I've commented on two posts 📫 haven't made one yet as I want to think it out and have linked resources and stuff. I'm so so excited! Someone's local garden does bee fest!?! Incredible and now my village needs a bee fest

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the only major missing community I can think of is “Fitness and Health” for discussions of working out and dieting. I know “Food and Cooking” and “Sports” exist but those don’t quite fit the same vibe.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Excellent work! So happy you guys are so attentive of what the community wants :D

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

YESSS. I've been hoping for a self-improvement community. The disability community is also something I'll likely utilize. Thank you so much!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd like to ask, what kinds of communities are you trying to make space for here on beehaw? I know this whole instance isn't trying to be a reddit replacement, but it seems like there's some amount of hobby space over here? Where are the lines for what kinds of hobby spaces have a home on beehaw? i.e. will there be an anime/manga instance at some point? Where do you draw the line on specificity as well? There's a gaming community, but what about ones for specific games? I figure that's out of scope for beehaw, but I'm just trying to get an idea for what the future of the community is as far as hobbyist spaces are here, given that's largely what I used reddit for

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where are the lines for what kinds of hobby spaces have a home on beehaw? i.e. will there be an anime/manga instance at some point?

that's one of the ones which should be on the community survey we send out

Where do you draw the line on specificity as well? There’s a gaming community, but what about ones for specific games? I figure that’s out of scope for beehaw, but I’m just trying to get an idea for what the future of the community is as far as hobbyist spaces are here, given that’s largely what I used reddit for

i don't think we'll ever get to the point on here where we're so granular we make individual game communities (and i think the rest of Lemmy may cover for that anyways), but:

  • we'll probably add more granular divisions of gaming over time, so for example splitting tabletop and boardgame discussions off into their own community, or maybe a particularly popular genre of game off into its own community
  • i can definitely see the possibility of more physical hobbies like woodworking, knitting, sewing, birdwatching, etc. getting their own communities way down the line. we already have a really active gardening community, which wasn't a community i personally expected to take off.
  • we're already relatively granular with technological stuff too due to the demographics of the community so there might be tech hobbyist communities i'm not immediately thinking of which are well suited to being added eventually
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotcha, that makes sense. Honestly, the one missing space for me is a place to talk about anime/manga, like I previously specifically mentioned. Especially one that exists in such a well moderated space, lots of times those really easily veer into degeneracy/bigotry in a way that's really unhealthy, and I think having a productive place to engage with those hobbies would be wonderful. Obviously you're slowing down so please don't take this as me demanding it be added now, but I do think that beehaw would be uniquely positioned to have a specifically good anime community, which I would genuinely appreciate.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

lots of times those really easily veer into degeneracy/bigotry in a way that’s really unhealthy

Yep, it's not the only community where we're not sure how to proceed quite yet. There's a lot of interest, but for precisely these reasons, it's something we want to think about for a bit longer before making any decisions. There are a number of potential communities that fall into a "often times on the internet, these places are problematic" for varying reasons that we want to be cautious about.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the measured approach; something to be said about moderation and patience when growing something.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

luckily, a left-wing subreddit got in touch with us about moving (pre-boom, even) and we think their community on Reddit fit the ethos of the site pretty well, so we've helped move them over here

Which one?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

/r/LeftWithoutEdge, which took the principled stance about 5 years ago that maybe Reddit left communities didn't need to be all about killing everyone constantly. they're also not particularly large in terms of active users, so they nicely slot into "large enough to build a community on here around, but small enough they won't really influence the trajectory of the overall community"

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that's one of the few leftist spaces on Reddit where I actually didn't feel like I was seen as scum just because I'm an Army veteran. A very (unfortunately) common sentiment in leftist spaces is that anybody that played any part in the military-industrial complex is beyond consideration and worthy of nothing but scorn, regardless of the fact that being in the military did more to push me left than anything else I can think of.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, we don't see much point in shitting on those who've already realized how awful that whole system is. Glad you've come to realize it too.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this context, it matters a lot.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I belong to r/leftwithoutedge and it is a good group. I’m glad they found a home here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

We're glad that some of our users have opted to move over as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Nice to hear! I really enjoyed that subreddit. I felt like it was one of the few leftist places you could enjoy respectful discussions

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

All great additions!

Thanks, in particular, for the disability community. And more broadly, for ensuring that Beehaw is balanced by not adding too many communities.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Awesome to see, thanks for this! I like that beehaw uses community umbrellas to group people of similar interests (if not necessarily similar opinion) together. It looks like a great way for users to find content relevant to them while still preventing micro-communities and echo chambers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Thank you busy bees for your hard work and kind consideration during the Reddit wave! I wonder how much bigger it will get?

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