I think that’s a great description, in part it’s what drew me here with the idea that the discussions and topics are always from a kind and informational perspective, without the common “sneer tone” that can so often overtake conversations on the internet.

Personally my experience with users on Beehaw has been entirely kind, thoughtful, and full of knowledgeable people, whatever the topic may be. The few poor experiences I have had here were from outside instances, it’s true, and I can’t imagine just how much of that you all must have to deal with. But I have also had just as many incredibly thoughtful interactions from some federated instances as well, generally the (seemingly) smaller instances. I feel like maybe every 1 in 10 comments through the posts I go to read in All might have be negative or purposeful troll, but all the rest are at least coming from a perspective that I can understand even if I may not agree - but it’s always worth engaging because it drives good thoughtful conversation.

I have an account on slrpnk that is federated with lemmy.world and it can be unbearable to use sometimes - the slrpnk community itself is wonderful, but lemmy.world dominates the All feed, and lemmy.world comments… it’s a mix of dismissive and instigative. I feel like every 1 in 10 comments might be coming from a kind and thoughtful perspective. Comments are immediately downvoted, often times there’s comments no more than a sentence long through a whole thread. Except for moderators, but there’s just a tone that I can’t quite place among reading the interactions that feels… maybe not entirely welcoming? However I also understand they have a lot going on there, and certainly some history I’m missing.

Anyway, that’s a long way of saying I really, really value both the Beehaw community & mods and our set of instances, even if there may be a few that still have problems that I don’t get to see as a regular user. But I do know that I value all of your comments enough to see what you have to say and get to know my internet friends - Chris, your determination for community is inspiring and you’ve got some cool hobbies! And the few times I have seen moderator intervention and extended discussion, I’ve yet to come across an example where I think any of you handled it poorly. (All of you) Your contributions here are more than mod team leaders when you need to be, you feel like community members through and through - which unfortunately feels rare for a mod team!

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Regarding federation and instances - maybe the family analogy is something that can be adapted? Here on local we are the immediate family but the instances that I appreciate the most I still feel are cousins. I think many of them appreciate us as well. Unfortunately, I think the negative users overall will not be prevented from their bad habit by a sidebar and our philosophy. With that in mind I think federation with servers that focus on sharing knowledge is the most important.

From the recent post made on I think lemmy.ml regarding Beehaw’s federation - the reception was terrible. It felt terrible to read. But looking through the comments, I would say over 80% of them at least had to be lemmy.world users who have never even interacted here - or if they did were soon defederated from and clearly salty about it, all of those getting ~30-50 upvotes. It was a literal circlejerk about our instance coming from a flawed or probably just intentionally wrong perspective. Information like a game of telephone. If it weren’t so inflammatory it would have been funny, given my actual experiences here.

However, the rest of the comments though were from a wide, wide array of instances saying they would miss our presence, with it being about a 50/50 split from lemmy.ml itself. And each instance I happened to see that felt positively about us, I likewise had only ever had good interactions from members of those instances as well.

Luckily, I had already seen just how awful lemmy.world can really be, as I mentioned I’d created my slrpnk account just a few weeks ago which is actually where I saw that post, maybe just last week or so? Suffice to say, the reception from them was not surprising in the least because to me it seems clear the intent is to tear down, not lift up. You cannot share knowledge in a tear down community because no matter what, somehow your knowledge is wrong.

Users here just have a completely different intention and way of using and interacting with the internet. Users on other smaller instances feel like that intention is there too. We share knowledge with the intent of further gaining and growing our ideas and abilities and because it helps another member of our community. That is becoming more and more rare on the web and I really value our presence in the fediverse and I believe that there are others that do too.

Whatever the future may hold for our instance, I’ll likely migrate with and keep it as part of my sites, but I do worry about the continued level of engagement over time. On the other hand, I realize I don’t like the wider fediverse as much as I thought I did after my last month or so looking around on other accounts. (I definitely need to curate better, though). Anyway, I saw this post 14 minutes in and I only got distracted once so… Happy new year to all and I look forward to our next interaction!