Opinion: The small but crucial detail that will lead to Feddit.UK's inevitable downfall.
Opinion: The small but crucial detail that will lead to Feddit.UK's inevitable downfall.
First off, I understand that this isn't our top priority right now, but I am scared that this can will be kicked far too down the road. I also don't want to cause a storm of drama here, nor a split. No hard feelings here to Emperor, Tom or Albatross.
Preface
When we came up with the idea for our next Instance to replace feddit.uk, we settled on a name and bought a domain for it. That domain was quackhouse.uk . We decided it was a fun-loving name and carried numerous benefits: • .UK TLD. Which was very important. • Not tied to Reddit. • Easy to say and memorable • Not tied to Lemmy. • Not tied to the Fediverse.
We were quite excited for Quackhouse, and to have such a last minute development for Quackhouse was disappointing.
Why Quackhouse?
Why did we decide the last two weren't a good idea? Well, to start, people who are interested in Lemmy and the Federation aspect would go for a lemmy instance anyway regardless of the name. I believe we aren't that stupid as to say "oh, it has lemmy/federated in it, it must be good!". HOWEVER just say you are trying to persuade your mate down the pub to join. He likes the idea of a forum for British-type subjects with no advertisements, tracking, and is voluntary donation-funded. However he isn't tech savvy. It would still be perfectly reasonable to tell him "Hey! There's a really nice community for discussing UK Related subjects! It's called Quackhouse.uk! (Mention some forums etc), Want to join?" Therefore for all he knows is that he's joined up to a site, there is content and discussion, he's happy. He doesn't know yet that there are users from other websites interacting with him, but he knows how to use it and he's happy. He'll probably figure out about it eventually but it won't be off-putting.
This approach wouldn't harm the "power-user" tech enthusiast, but it would be inviting to both and benefit growth.
Lemmy's growth problem
People were saying during Reddit's downfall to "join Lemmy" but I must be honest, even I resisted at first. The whole step of choosing an instance was REALLY off-putting. So I think an alternative approach would be to tell people about the instance instead of the fediverse in some cases.
The Feddit.UK problem
Has anyone here tried telling anyone who wasn't in the know about Feddit.uk? If you don't believe me, tell someone. Your response will most likely be: "Is that a Reddit knockoff?" Everytime I have told someone about this place, I have gotten a weird look and something to the tune of this response. Reddit isn't really the most heavily regarded site in the eyes of some, so who would want to make a Knock-off Reddit
I am not Tom and I mean no harm at all to him, but I reckon he kind of just set this up in haste as a pet project (which is perfectly fine, I have had similar experiences)
The fact of the matter is, this is a Reddit knockoff. You cannot deny it. And the main reason you cannot deny it is because it's literally in the name. However we can claim that the upvote/downvote layout is just a bog-standard forum layout (quite a few sites like Stack Overflow use it now anyway)
And I think this community is better than being named after a Reddit knockoff.
Feddit.UK's doomed future.
Feddit.UK has two inevitable futures.
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- The Fediverse loses hype along with lemmy and everyone who wants to join has joined. We fade into obscurity.
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- We keep growing, and then Reddit will eventually notice and will shut us down because we literally are infringing their copyright. We have no basis or ground to defend that.
My proposal to you:
We change domains, preferably to Quackhouse.uk. We even had a logo and a mascot designed 🦆. We were on the verge of launching it as well, domain bought, server bought.
My proposed method.
I don't think we should see this as making a new community per say, but making an extension of an already existing house and moving our good stuff over to the new part of the building. Or even better yet; just a name change
We do this in phases:
1: The hatching: Once we have everything soon enough settled, we make Quackhouse.UK as it was planned. Enable sign ups.
2: The Flock Migration: We migrate all of our main staple-UK communities over to Quackhouse. Eventually culminating in them being closed here through turning off posting.
- Shut down Feddit.UK sign-ups. Keep the instance itself running forever unless Reddit get angry. People can keep their feddit accounts, just keep it updated for legacy's sake. Put no pressure on Feddit users to migrate their accounts, but maybe offer the option.
Why not make Quackhouse a separate Instance and keep Feddit.UK unlocked? Right now, Feddit.UK is the Go-To place for British Discourse on Lemmy. We need the whole community behind this and unity. If we keep Feddit.UK up, then it will likely choke out Quackhouse's communities as there would be no reason to switch. Quackhouse was always planned to be a new home for Feddit.UK users. However, now Tom has kind of come in last minute and... Well.. our plans are a bit screwed.
Feddit.de is fine, though?
For now it is, I feel it will face a similar fate if it grows. Reddit is not going to like this violation one way or another.
All country specific instances uses feddit
While that holds a bit of water, there's no reason why we have to conform to that.
Opinion
I think it's more worthwhile inconveniencing people to resub to specific communties rather than letting them die in the inevitable downfall.
Summary
Feddit.uk is a problemed name and it needs to be changed. I propose we push on with changing it promptly, but when the time is right. It should be done in a way so that people don't lose their existing feddit.uk accounts.
I completely disagree that your two future versions are inevitable, or are the only possibilities. Having to rename and "move" (really, this means abandon fully functional communities and content), is a bad thing that's been painful when necessary - to go through it all just to rebrand the site sounds crazy to me.
The name's fine, and content is king. Make this site have places worth being a part of and feddit's future as part of the (still growing) Fediverse is comfortable.
Changing things now seems like a lot of work just to satisfy a few users' duck fetish ;).
Is "Feddit" infringing on Reddit's copyright? You could argue that only the trailing "dit" is from Reddit, and out of context that's not recognisable. The upvote/downvote stuff predates Reddit too. Not a lawyer and all that, but I think we'd be fine.
I think the arguments for simplifying Lemmy to just a site named Quackhouse.uk could also be made for Feddit.uk. Isn't it usually the communities that are the draw? When mentioning Reddit to non-Reddit people I normally talked about subreddits that they'd maybe be interested in rather than just Reddit as a concept. The same can work here.
I do like the Quackhouse name. What if the domain were used as a landing page for the open UK-based communities? That way you can tell your mate down the pub about Quackhouse.uk and they'll be able to find it, maybe also seeing the details for Matrix or a curated list of UK Mastodon instances. Would that be overload for new users?
If we move I'll happily move with it, and it would be better to move sooner before things get more established. It just seems it may be a lot of disruption when it may not be needed.
My understanding is that the Quackhouse plans were for a Worse Case Scenario. With Tom back around, new admins appointed, and with other improvements coming we're in the Best Case Scenario. It must be frustrating for people that have been working on new plans to not have them play out, but if you put up a safety net and nothing falls in you don't start lobbing things in just to justify it.
It kind of passed the point of being a "safety net" as we had already had a logo designed, name chosen and starting to plan out how it would work out. This wouldn't be such a bad issue if it wasn't for the domain name, as we could have used the ideas if the name was more unique
Got to say, I really dislike the name quack house, it sounds like a payday loan company or an online bingo company.
If you're so enamoured by it why not start your own instance?
I really don't see the problem with feddit.uk, maybe it's not the best name ever but it's here now and it's really the least of our problems.
Why not make Quackhouse a separate Instance and keep Feddit.UK unlocked? Right now, Feddit.UK is the Go-To place for British Discourse on Lemmy. We need the whole community behind this and unity. If we keep Feddit.UK up, then it will likely choke out Quackhouse's communities as there would be no reason to switch. Quackhouse was always planned to be a new home for Feddit.UK users. However, now Tom has kind of come in last minute and... Well.. our plans are a bit screwed.
Have to admit I like the name. What is toms opinion. I can see lots of folks supporting the idea of moving o the name.
But pointing the old domain to it. But be honest with yourself.
"that will lead to Feddit.UK's inevitable downfall."
It is a bloody long way from inevitable. The whole idea that Reddit or anyone can ban words that sound alike is non existent. It is possible they could claim confusion. I would also agree not using the name is a good idea. But claiming it is inevitable is just hype. Its not even likely they can get a case such as this heard in a US court. And even less likely an EU one would consider it valid.
The issue is more. Why bother pissing people off. Feddit is not a very desirable name beyond the other instances joining in.
Pointing the old domain to Quackhouse could work maybe more seamlessly, but I don't know how it'll work out from a technical side. We put a lot of time into planning Quackhouse too. A few people are very much excited to work on it also. Overnight we were basically made out to feel though that it was cancelled. I don't think it should be because we planned for something better. And I think that better future is worth the minor inconveniences of shifting communties.
And I think that better future is worth the minor inconveniences of shifting communties.
Unfortunatly like most things. You or I do not get to decide if it is worth it. Users do.
This tends to mean concerns like the amount of work put in. Dose not sway choices but instead the results and politics involved.
I like the name. So would join either way to see what happens. Others may feel the same.
But the only way you replace feddit.uk Is with the support of the admins and tom. More so tom.
Technically pointing feddit.uk to quackhouse is very easy. As long as the owner tom supports it. But the same goes the other way. And turning the currect existing community into a new name is much less work. While all the ideas can be implemented if people (admin) support it.
Heck with federation. running multiple instances is just a difference of who hosts what community. And why.
I already replied to your other comment but even on the very off-chance Reddit even notice our little instance then there's nothing they can do about it. Names are covered by trademark law not copyright, and our name is different.
Different by one letter. Big companies have faced legal issues just for using the term "Sky" or "Scrolls" in their name. Mojang, owned by Microsoft, was forced by Bethesda to change their game's name from "Scrolls" because it was too similar to "The elder scrolls". And they were completely separate games. Reddit absolutely can threaten tom with legal action at any point, and good luck finding money somehow to fight that.
You could still set up quack land yourself and migrate your own account over there? The great thing about federation is that you're still welcome here!
Why not make Quackhouse a separate Instance and keep Feddit.UK unlocked? Right now, Feddit.UK is the Go-To place for British Discourse on Lemmy. We need the whole community behind this and unity. If we keep Feddit.UK up, then it will likely choke out Quackhouse's communities as there would be no reason to switch. Quackhouse was always planned to be a new home for Feddit.UK users. However, now Tom has kind of come in last minute and... Well.. our plans are a bit screwed.
I thought the whole point of federation is that you can set up your own instances and invite your friends and like-minded gather rounders to play within it. But that doesn't stop you enjoying other instances (unless you get defederated). So my point is why don't you go and set up Quack house and start a lovely thriving community there? When you want to participate in feddit.uk communities then you can. That way your plans aren't ruined 🤗
Unless I'm misunderstanding you and the point is for quack house to choke out feddit.uk?
Reddit will eventually notice and will shut us down because we literally are infringing their copyright
How does feddit.uk infringe Reddit's copyright?
It doesn't under American trademark case law. Add to the fact it's in another country and I'm certain their legal team wouldn't bother.
Why not just rename the instance, instead of creating a completely new one? Rename it, make sure feddit.uk still redirects there, job done. People are lazy and won't migrate unless they have to - I think you underestimate the difficulty in migration (getting everyone to do it. Just look at migrating off reddit to lemmy - so many people declaring how they hated the changes at reddit but how many actually moved? 1% of them? 0.1% of them? 0.01%? I would expect the number is closer to 0.01% than 1%). Just rename feddit.uk but keep all the users and all the communities so it's literally zero effort for the users and communities, even their bookmarks will just continue to work with a properly done redirection.
Also - I'm picking nits here - but "Feddit" isn't infringing a copyright, you cannot copyright a word. It would be a trademark infringement not a copyright infringement. The law around trademarks is quite different to copyrights. Even if Reddit gets wind of feddit.uk, the likely outcome will be a "cease and desist", and feddit.uk will have to be renamed, not some kind of catastrophe. Reddit's only going to go to the effort of pursuing a trademark case in the UK courts if the feddit.uk admins are completely intransigent and refuse to take action.
That's what I'm proposing. A rename.
You seem to be a absorbing a lot of down votes but you are completely correct - feddit.uk is an uninspiring identity. What does it mean? Federated Reddit UK?
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If so that's blatantly imposing on Reddit's IP/ trademark. Even ignoring the legality what is possibly gained from the clear connection to reddit?
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The average user really doesn't care about federation so it seems pointless to include it as part of a brand.
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feddit.uk seems to imply some relationship with feddit.de and similar domains. Not only is that open to confusion, but it could be a bit of a minefield if (when) one of them falls into controversy.
Maybe feddit = federate it?
I assumed that it did, TBH.
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