SLRPNK Community Discussion - January 2026
Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.
Hope everyone had a good New Years :)
🌟 Community Highlights 🌟
- ![email protected] - a community for news, discussion and media regarding the international mutual aid network of collectives called food not bombs.
- ![email protected] - inspired by the far North and South regions of the globe and the unique challenges, adaptations, and resilience of practicing Solarpunk ideals in harsh environmental, social, or political climates.
- ![email protected] - The new home of The Boondocks comic strip on the fediverse.
✍️ Writing Community Resources 📚
The moderators of our ![email protected] community have started collecting some resources on possible Solarpunk story and world-building elements on our wiki. They are still looking for additional ideas, so please share good resources on the community.
⛸️ Meta Post Image: Children Ice Skating on Frozen Canals ❄️
The City of Amsterdam has over 100km (62 miles) of waterways intersecting the city, built initially as defensive moats that grew in concentric rings as the city increased in size. Today, they are part of an integral transportation network, and many inhabitants get around by boat.
When the weather forecast is cold enough, boat traffic is stopped in select canals to allow the water to freeze. It doesn't happen every year, and the last time it occurred was in 2021, when this picture was taken. The primary activity is communal ice skating, but it's possible to travel across the entire city on ice skates once enough of the waterways are frozen.
The choice of post image was inspired by the wiki additions of JacobCoffinWrites, specifically the section on seasonal roads. You can find more examples and ideas for imagining Solarpunk cities -- and you can add your own as well!
📡 Technical Updates 📡
In December we moved the Lemmy instance to a different server because we identified some odd hardware issues on the previous server (much slower than expected read speeds on the NVMe SSD raid). While doing so we also took the opportunity to upgrade the database and re-examine the database tuning at bit. While both together seems to have improved overall speed of the site, we are still seeing the regular out-of-memory issue of the database container that causes stalling of the site and temporarily breaks the XMPP account integration. Unfortunately, this issue seems to have become more acute, since the new server has a bit less free memory. We are still looking into possible workarounds but at least it has become a bit more clear now what the possible cause of this issue might be.
🔋 How to Support SLRPNK.net 🌱
If you'd like to donate to SLRPNK to help cover Internet, electricity, and domain name costs, you can now send a one-time or reoccurring donation via our F-hub donation site: https://contribute.f-hub.org/
We also offer Librapay as an option for those who already have an account there, which supports reoccurring donations: https://liberapay.com/F-hub.org/
(Note: the Librapay option supports the broader F-hub project, of which SLRPNK is a part of. If you'd like all of your donation to go toward SLRPNK, use the alternative F-hub donation link, and select 'slrpnk.net' in the 'reason' drop-down instead)
💬 Open Discussion 💬
Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction :)
SLRPNK Community Resources:
- Community Wiki - Moderators, you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
- Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
- Etherpad - Collaborative document editor
::: spoiler 🗃️ Meta Archive 📰
Our Monthly Meta posts are sometimes home to more in-depth sections written by our admins. Many of our newer members may not be familiar with some of the past guides, so for those interested, we've compiled a list below.
- December 2024 - How to Prepare for a Fascist Regime
- February 2025 - How to avoid Big Tech and maximize your digital security & privacy
- June 2025 - A brief guide on Security Culture & Adopting FOSS as prefiguration
- July 2025 - How to build community with fun projects! :::
::: spoiler ⬛ Union Resources 🟥 These are unions from around the world who can train you to become an effective organizer to form a grassroots union with your co-workers!
Sorry for the unscheduled downtime earlier today. For some unknown reason the main firewall crashed and needed to be restarted.
There is some server instability right now. We are investigating it, but don't be overly surprised if you are greeted by a generic Nginx page. Edit: seems fine again despite not having made bigger changes...
well well well. my hiatus has been ruptured by world events and local events being the same events.
friends, if you are active, stay active. if you're not active get active. liberation won't come for you, you have to go get it yourself.
remember none of us are free until we're all free.
if anyone here is unsure where to start beyond what @[email protected] has posted here, i recommend meeting your neighbors and talking to them about world events and how they impact your community. in my case, the brutal abduction of a world leader destabilizes my community because of what the plans for that foreign country's assets are in my neighborhood as we try to move assets through the hills and valleys of Appalachia with no concern for water safety of one of the most poverty enforced regions within the American empire.
a great place to start meeting local community members is at your local library. libraries are not perfect, but they provide a gathering space for open minded individuals to meet and discuss the future. if you are, like many, in a community without a public library, look for opportunities to set up gazebos and little free libraries.
love y'all, about to be real busy for a few days. never forget that justice without peace is how the state acquires slaves, and peace without justice is how the state uses its slaves. the world will not know justice or peace until it knows both
Hey guys. I just wanna say, I am really fucking thankful for this instance.
Thank you for providing it to us. You are awesome.
It perfectly matches my beliefs.
You are welcome 😊
How about starting a community or becoming a moderator in an existing one?
I have thought about starting a community for overall chat, something like "collapseSupport". However, I am unsure on what type of content that should entail. To me, it would be content adjacent to other subs, like mental health or composting. So perhaps a more apt sub name should be "talk" or "general", but that is too general. Regardless of the name, I don't think I have enough content in me to keep a sub alive.
I am a mod of 2 subs in another account, but they are dead and seem to remain dead, regardless of how hard I try (and want) to keep them alive.
I think we might have too many subs, honestly, and that fragments the community. It is something I have been thinking about. Even in this instance, we are way too fragmented.
I sometimes wonder if it would not have been better for lemmy to be 1 topic per instance, without the ability to create new communities. Or maybe have 2 communities max, 1 main community (for example solarpunk) and 1 meta, for burocracy. So, every instance would have to be for a specific topic. A math instance would be for math only, a solarpunk instance would be for all things related to solarpunk, etc. Then, a tag based system to filter out things..
Do we really need a sub for composting, a sub for DIY, a sub for solarpanels, a sub for green energy, a sub for electric vehicles, etc.. Maybe a purge is incoming? Just merge all of those into more general categories? xD
Heyo beSyl, glad to hear how much you're enjoying Slrpnk! :)
Out of curiosity, would you be interested in moderating [email protected]? It's a fairly active sub that seems to be self-sufficient, but shouldn't require too much attention or input. If you don't have much interest in that topic or would rather not, totally understand, just thought I'd offer.
Sorry for the late reply! I was not ignoring you, I was thinking about that.
I have to say no, sorry. It is not that I don't value public transport. Of course I do. It is one of the tenets of solarpunk, in my view. However, my goal for this year is to spend less time on social networks and on the internet in general. I even installed an app that blocks all such apps.. I feel like being a mod would just add to my overall stress..
Though in the future, once I "fix" some things, I might be able to help out some!
No worries, thanks for letting me know :)
I don't think it is a good idea to close existing communities with some regular contributions, but we probably need to do another round of community pruning for dead communities, yes. Has been a while since we last did that.
I just think that creating more general categories would be better.
For example, "transportation" for all things related to transportation, be it bikes, cars, buses, ecars, etc. "Energy" for solar panels, wind energy, etc etc. "mothernature" for gardening, composting, fungi, etc? Climate for climate, as that is pretty big already. "Tech" for all tech. The names might not be the best, but you get the idea.
But ya, I understand that this would have been better at the start of the instance.
You missed the bang in this community link. ![email protected]
Thanks for the shoutout to ![email protected]
Is the piefed migration still planned?
ETA community links are case sensitive. FoodNotBombs and TheBoondocks are different than foodnotbombs and theboondocks (can you even use caps in community names?)
Edit2: it actually is ![email protected] and that answers my question.
Yes, but no ETA. In January I will be busy with another project and in February I might be on an extended work related travel (to be confirmed). So maybe in March I will find the time to start looking into it in more detail. But converting the database to not lose all the old posts and accounts will not be so easy, so don't expect immediate results.
As long as it is still planned. I have been using piefed more and am liking it a lot.
Wish I knew more computer stuff so I could offer my help.
Cheers for catching those! I didn't realize that bang links were case sensitive, good to know.
AFAIK the Piefed migration is still planned to take place sometime this year. @poVoq would be able to give a better time estimate.
Something is still wrong with the FoodNoBombs link, at least in the main Lemmy-UI frontend (which acts a bit odd with these links). Edit: it is a typo in the slrpnk part.
Fixed! though oddly it worked on my end through lemmy-ui even with the typo somehow.
They may actually not be case sensitive, your typo in foodnotbombs and my typo in the creation of the boondocks... I have an extra k in there, caused issues.
Any way there is an admin way to go into the community and fix my typo?
I think due to the way communities federate, their URL names likely cannot be changed once created (at least, I don't have an option to change it as an admin when I visit it, I can only alter the Display Name, which is different).
Since that community is still relatively new, it may be easier to create a new one with corrected spelling and then delete the old one. If you go that route, I could update the meta to point toward the new community :)
I did not know if you could go into the database and change it in there or not.
Since I only have 77 subscribers currently, I am going to start a new one. I feel like such a goober making that typo.
According to @[email protected], changing the name of the community in the database would cause federation issues, unfortunately.
Hello, I'm new here, but scanning the topic list, I feel right at home.
Welcome aboard, Geo :)
Same here, gotta find your people and then help others see there is another way.
and the boondocks comm only works with the extraneous k in it (and me, not being a boondocks knowledger is wondering if there was some reference involving that extra k)
No, I never noticed I messed up that. Doh!
oh
uh-oh...
Thanks to you bringing it to my attention, it has been fixed and now the community is at ![email protected]
And we already have more subscribers than we did at the old community.
yayyy it worked out :)
I am new to SLRPNK, but not to Lemmy.
I began using SLRPNK because I wanted to use a Lemmy instance that would be friendly to my politics.
The comments in the post are the first mention I have encountered of a planned "Piefed migration". I have been happy using SLRPNK for the past few days or so since creating my account, and news of a migration gives me the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under me.
What is the rationale for the migration? As a new project, has Piefed achieved usability and featurefulness comparable to those of Lemmy? Will current users of the site have an option to continue using Lemmy, in case they prefer?
The migration to Piefed has been planned for quite a few months now, and has been brought up in previous Monthly Meta posts as far back as July 2025. I can see how it might seem like it's coming out of nowhere if you hadn't come across those threads.
The main reason we've been wanting to switch is the technical difficulties with hosting Lemmy itself, @[email protected] goes into more details here. While poVoq has been able to manage the problems of Lemmy by diligently resolving odd issues and implementing workarounds as they come up, overall it has been a troublesome piece of software to host reliably.
Piefed has developed quite quickly, and nowadays is mostly comparable in features to Lemmy, as well as having some unique features of its own (the July 2025 link goes over the big ones). Piefed appears to be more stable than Lemmy due to using proven standard frameworks, and would bring with it some fairly dramatic improvements in efficiency and resource usage.
If the migration goes well, then it is unlikely that we would continue to host Lemmy in addition to the Piefed. However this should not cause too much disruption. Piefed is now 100% compatible with multiple popular Lemmy mobile apps, such as Voyager, Summit, Blorp, etc, so if you already use those apps, everything will still work exactly the same on that end. And Piefed is 100% federation compatible with Lemmy instances, so you will still be able to access all the same communities we have access to today from Lemmy. Our alternative Lemmy frontend Photon is also Piefed compatible, so that will remain the same as well for anyone who uses that. Even the creator of our Lemmy site theme is switching to Piefed, so that would carry over too. The only major change that would occur is the change to the main website UI from a browser, but Piefed is laid out fairly similarly, and shouldn't take much to get used to (you can try it out here).
Migrating an existing Lemmy instance to Piefed is still technically experimental, so we'll have to reevaluate if turns out to cause too many problems, but if everything goes well, we are likely to make the switch at some point.
Thanks for the explanation. Will the migration retain our post and comment histories in our profiles?
That is the plan at least. We might drop image uploads as that is a whole new can of worms with a seperate database and software in Lemmy.
Subscriptions is another aspect of user accounts that hopefully would be retained. If not, some users may wish to warned, so that they can make manual copies beforehand.
For sure we will remind people to export their profile settings, but I see no reason why subscriptions couldn't be retained. Everything that in in the main Lemmy database should be transferrable to Piefed without major issues once we figured out the difference in the data structure. The problem is just that the entire image part of Lemmy consists of a completely independent software called Pict-rs that would likely require as much effort to convert as Lemmy itself, for relatively little benefit (besides the fact that is is a horrible mess, and we have like 200GB of useless junk images stored right now with no way to properly sort them from community/user avatars and profile banners etc.).
If the image database goes kaput do we lose all images on the site from before the transition? Does that include movim and the wiki? If so, I should start backing up some of my lemmy and movim posts as I'm not sure I have another copy of those images or could rebuild them to look the same.
No, the Wiki and Movim are completely seperate.
If you have some Lemmy posts with images you want to keep, then yes, please make a backup.
Are you the first, to your knowledge, to undertake a migration from Lemmy to Piefed?
Yes, at least the first that tries to retain most of the data. There is one other Lemmy instance that switched last year, but AFAIK they just started with a fresh database.
I know slrpnk is considering PieFed. I am not sure if you have seen this, but it is an interesting comment on some PieFed "features": https://slrpnk.net/post/33421250/20416621. I am referring to the comment by RedWizard.
This is in part a smear campaign by Hexbear users that tells half-truths about entirely optional features. But yes, Piefed has an opinionated dev that likes to implement quickshot ideas and sometimes they end up being a bit half-baked.
However, one of the big reasons we want to migrate to Piefed is that the code is more more "human scale", with few moving parts, well commented relatively simple code, and easy ways for us to remove and modify behavior at runtime. Lemmy is the total opposite of that and I am already struggling with the overly verbose and cryptic logs it makes for errors (which might be nice for Rust developers, but not for sysadmins).
Somehow they are pretty good as this. I remember them trying to paint lemmy.blahaj.zone as a transphobic instance.
extremely detailed, sourced comment detailing various problems with piefed
You: this is a smear campaign by those dastardly communists
Friend did you get lost during the Red Scare? This is a terrible look
That intentionally leave out most of the picture. This is how propaganda works; not by lying but by spreading selective truths.
The Piefed dev has by the way also responded to these allegations: https://slrpnk.net/post/33525301/20457257
That said, I do think some of these optional features are somewhat misguided. However, in the past the main Piefed dev has had an open ear to such concerns and did end up removing several half-baked features again when people explained why those seemed like bad ideas.
"But, your honor, what about all the days I didn't commit crimes? Aren't you leaving out most of the picture?"
The comment by RedWizard originated from this Hexbear thread, which is full of users pretty blatantly smearing piefed.
Since all of the piefed features referenced by RedWizard can be disabled in the admin menu (AFAIK), they're painting Rimu's preferences for his piefed.social instance as though it's an authoritarian decree that will be forced upon all (which is a bit ironic, coming from that group).
Making things opted-in by default is a sneaky way to get what you want while retaining plausible deniability of wrongdoing.
Edit: Removed the analogy to make my comment more succinct.
Most of the options that people are getting riled up about are off by default.
Trying to make the case that a closed-source proprietary corporate product (EDIT: They were referring to Gmail, for those curious) where we can't confirm if the switches do anything is somehow similar to a FLOSS program that can be audited or even modified, doesn't particularly hold up, mate.
This is akin to claiming Google doesn't read your emails if you're on ProtonMail.
I also wanted to ask the same, so thanks for bringing it up.
got a huge popup just now asking me to donate to the lemmy project :///
i'd donate to slrpnk instead but i can barely support myself
Yeah, that annoying popup is something the Lemmy devs added into the Lemmy codebase and there is no easy way to disable it.
And no worries about donating.
Can I mail you, @[email protected] , and @[email protected] one of the limes (each) from the indoor citrus trees I've got wintering inside to protect them from arctic vortexes which we're vulnerable to even though it's currently 56 degrees fahrenheit outside? Otherwise it would be coffee beans from the roaster in the next Hollow (pronounced "holl-uh" though "holler" is also correct) over from me
I kid I kid
(mostly. Unless you want these goods)
I will be using this post, to serve as a sort of town hall for something that bothers me. @[email protected]
Can we do something about the alias/display-name for [email protected]? I am referring to the "climate - truthful information about climate bla bla bla". It looks horrible on mobile/desktop. The name/string is just way too big. That info dump should be on the sidebar, not in the name. Just "climate" would suffice.
Part of the idea behind the long name is to communicate expectations. I do get that it's not great on some UI skins, and will think about it
Maybe something like
climate factsIt's not quite that narrow; I deliberately want to include the related politics because those are what will ultimately decide how much warming we get.