Dave

That graph is so misleading. Makes it look like almost all the users disappeared but the Y axis only covers a small range at the top.

Ah right, I get you. I wonder if they have considered this. Pretty sure their free/demo tier is 100 searches not confined to a time period so presumably the platform could handle that model.

I'm not gonna subscription my heated car seats but search is a service that costs an ongoing amount to provide. The subscription isn't significant, it's $5 a month for 300 searches (or $10 for unlimited).

I know we've been conditioned to expect search for free, but if we want to get away from the "the user is the product" model then I think it's a good thing to have a subscription to a service that has ongoing costs to provide.

You're not the only one. They have a leaderboard and the top 7 results are various Pinterest domains.

You pay instead of seeing ads, so they need the account. Remembers you, though, so you just login once. Plus they have a solution for incognito/private windows too.

I really like it, has some cool features.

For the wiki option, perhaps the wiki is just where the posts are made then you share the link in a chat app or something. Then the reactions could be in the chat app?

Or for the HumHub or Zusam options, maybe you could add the reactions/gifycat integration. The platforms seem like they would work well with them if someone would just contribute that functionality.

See, I don’t believe this. It’s possible the project would die, but so often have popular projects lost their maintainers, and new people step in. They fork it, or have a peaceful transition of ownership, but the project carries on.

With Zusam, I don't think it's got that much of a following yet. I haven't heard of anyone on a self-hosted forum actually using it. Plus current development is slow (last release almost a year ago), so I do think it would die if the dev abandoned it.

Yeah, that was an interesting avenue; I suspect the user client experience will be where that fails for me. It can’t require any technical expertise.

I'm thinking that most of the non-technical people would be reading only, so it might be ok.

At this point I'm thinking of setting up a HumHub, a wiki (maybe Dokuwiki), and Zusam, and getting some of my most interested people in as a trial and see which one they prefer.

None of these options have emoji reactions or gifycat integration, though.

I think largely we are aligned on what we are looking for in a platform. The private blog idea is interesting. I normally consider blogs as public, are there private blog platforms?

So much of PhotoPrism is built on free libraries; the project uses something like 120 OSS libraries. How much of their income do you think they contribute to those projects who’s work their taking advantage of?

I don't see it like that. OSS is people releasing their work allowing it to be used commercially without limitation (other , it's what they wanted when they picked the licence, or they would have picked a different one.

Actually, I don’t have any issue with anyone charging for their software, either; it’s just that I won’t use it, and I don’t trust quasi-free projects. That’s just from experience. Most end badly, either by being bought out and going totally commercial, or just slow enshittification for the non-paying customers.

On the other hand, projects die when the maintainers lose interest. I would like a platform that I know is going to stick around. That's a difficult ask though, if it's a company like HumHub, it's very possible if the company goes under it will just die. On the other hand, something like Zusam, if the maintainer loses interest it will likely also die. It would be nice to have some confidence in the longevity of the platform before diving full steam onto it. But I guess at this point, finding something that works is hard enough, without worrying about that!

I do have reservations about HumHub, but it's the first platform I've seen that even comes close to being a familiar feel for users. I'm considering the other idea of using Dokuwiki as well, which I guess comes in as being more similar to your blogging idea.

I do see Lemmy.world admins take quick action when it's raised to then. However, Lemmy does not differentiate between community and admin reports, so using the normal report function may not be enough. Lemmy.world has a separate process for when an admin needs to be contacted.

I have seen that issues raised on Lemmy.blahaj.zone get raised directly from their admin to to lemmy.world admins, and then there is swift action. Another reason blahaj is a good instance for someone who is gender diverse, the admin doesn't hesitate to go in to bat for their members

It's worth noting that instances can defederate from other instances and also remove specific content even if it comes from users on other instances. Instances can also ban users on other instances from their instance.

Using an instance like lemmy.blahaj.zone is likely to be a very different (and much more supportive) experience, even if they are federated with the same instances, due to the ability for admins to curate.

Ah I don't have that many extensions in Mediawiki so I have probably had a smoother experience that you.

Thanks for describing your wiki setup. Being able to look back at all your events in a sort of giant scrapbook must be awesome. I'm not quite sure it will do the job I'm looking for, but I really like the idea so I think I'll have a deeper play.

I have non-technical users doesn't mean it won't work for us, because I'm sure they can read even if they can't edit, and that's mostly what they would be doing with any solution. Looks like there's also an android app.

I agree with you on how core emoji reactions are. They solve many problems and I at times I've also wished Lemmy had them, but given that I can't even find a platform that is private by default and supports a good video user experience. It's clear I'm going to have to settle in some respect.

Is federation or similar mandatory for you? As in, do you want something that allows your users to interact with users that are not part of your family and not on your platform, eventually able to completely replace the mainstream social media? Or is a completely closed platform ok, in terms of it's only your family and friends, and people have to go elsewhere (e.g. back to facebook) to interact with others?

Personally I'm not as wary of HumHub just because of it's commercial nature. Maybe a little, because some features are paywalled. But for example, I use Nextcloud, developed by a company, and trust it more for this task because of that. I use Photoprism, which the base edition is FOSS but they have proprietary extras that you pay for (like HumHub). I use Home Assistant, though I think they recently transitioned to a non-profit so maybe that's a little different, but they charge for a cloud connected component. I use ente, who are FOSS but are a company that charge if you don't want to selfhost.

HumHub have been around 10 years, so they aren't exactly new. Plus as it's extendable, perhaps one day a gfycat or emoji reaction plugin will be added (or if you have the skills, maybe you could make one).