Multiple Firefox windows? I’m not that civilised, I just have 100+ tabs in the one window.

I like to have a 50GB+ swap file. Though Fedora is a bit weird with swap files as by default it’s stored in RAM (Yes, extra space for RAM is stored in RAM. I… admit I don’t understand the detail).

I use a shit load of RAM on Linux. You guys clearly have amateur numbers when it comes to how many applications you have open at once.

Possibly related to the whole mental load thing: https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

When you have two jobs you don’t really want a third.

It’s hard to know overall for Lemmy, but I know that both Lemmy.ca and Lemmy.nz have surveyed their members.

https://lemmy.ca/post/15125231 https://lemmy.nz/post/12001861

Both were around 87% men, where as this selfhosting one is like 96% men.

I would guess it’s explained by society. Women are less likely to be in STEM which seems to almost be a prerequisite for Lemmy and possibly self-hosting, and of those women in STEM, and ( despite what you might think about your own house) there is still a societal expectation of them running the household and doing most of the household chores, even when they work full time. A third job, selfhosting, may be too much.

Damn, and I thought the gender ratio on Lemmy was bad.

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.

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).

I don’t even care about encryption (except normal TLS). If the intent is that it’s for sharing within the family, generally with people being able to see each others’ stuff, and I also control the server, it doesn’t seem that important.

Circles seems like it might fit much of what you’re after. It’s based on Matrix and is intended for this kind of use case, but I don’t think it’s mature enough to onboard everyone to just yet. Them having lost FUTO funding means it will also probably develop at a slower rate now that’s it’s back to volunteer time (with the main devs likely losing enthusiasm after having that funding cut).

Wow, good effort on that!

you can boost or favorite, but I am – and I think you are probably – looking for something with more variety, like emoji responses, right?

Honestly, this is low down on my list. Yes, it would be great, but I have had enough trouble finding something that handles uploading videos ok. Emoji responses are not a mandatory thing for me.

Pixelfed is an interesting suggestion. It always feels like it’s intended to be public. Were you thinking each user would have to configure default privacy settings? I can see how to restrict to followers but haven’t yet found how to stop anyone being able to follow you. I think for me, if a new user has to set up the privacy settings to stop them posting everything public, that’s probably not the right platform.

BTW there is PixelDroid as a dedicated Pixelfed app, but it’s only on Fdroid.

I personally have a Mediawiki set up that my wife and I have used for years, but it’s not something I want to share wider. I haven’t found it hard to maintain, though (I’m using the docker version).

How do you use the Dokuwiki? Do you create a page for each family event with pictures and videos and things? Then other people can go and have a look? What kind of organisation structure do you use? How do others learn that there is a new page to see?

Oh I should investigate the plugins.

With your family, do you have non-technical and elderly users participating and doing OK with it?

I’ve tried Flarum in the past, but it really doesn’t handle media well. Just looking on the demo site now, no option to add a video, and to post an image you need to use markdown to add an image URL.

Is that different when it’s not the demo site?

As someone who is concerned that users won’t be able to work out how to upload a video, asking users to install Fdroid seems a step too far.

It’s simple enough for me. And many of the people who have grown up with technology can probably work it out. But there is a huge difference in effort between the two.

Say my 70 year old uncle (that does not live nearby) needs to install Conversations.

Maybe we should agree to disagree, but I do not think I can just leave people to invite other people and sort it out on their own. I’m gonna be spending my days hand holding people. Maybe my family is dumber than average.

In my experience none of the federated platforms handle video well, especially the facebook like platforms. They are built around things being public, and expect you to upload to youtube or some other video site in order to post a video. If they let you upload videos at all, it’s as an attachment. Admittedly HumHub is a bit like that, but it’s not too janky from a user experience perspective.

One thing I liked about Zusam is the automatic resizing of videos to make them reasonably sized. If I record a 2 minute video, it can be 300 or 400MB. Zusam can be configured to resize the video to a set maximum size in order to make it more reasonable for people watching. HumHub doesn’t do this, but I have wondered if I could use a cron job and ffmpeg to do it.

Do you want this social media to be for your family to use only with family members or for them to use with family and beyond?

I haven’t decided yet. Initially we’d start with people who know our kids. But if some of those people wanted to set up a page for their own kids, they wouldn’t want some of the people on our page who they don’t know. And they might want people on their page that don’t know our kids. So then all the HubHub privacy settings come in handy where people can create a space and control who can see what.

Revolt could be good as a local family group chat if you like the discord style.

I don’t really think that’s something that will be familiar enough to people, especially grant parents and other family of that generation. And I don’t think a group chat is what I’m after, self hosting a group chat doesn’t seem to have many advantages over say a Signal group chat.

You’ve probably already tried it but Pixelfed/mastodon/misskey sound like the easiest to get family on board with and seem like they would be good family social media platforms IMO.

These are generally public, and even if you have it set up as a private instance with no federation then it still feels like a shouting at the void kind of platform. None of the family I have in mind use twitter or mastodon, but everyone uses facebook. So I’m aiming for that sort of a feel. But IMO Friendica is not something I feel is good enough yet from a user experience point of view, the same with Diaspora*.

All the corporate gamification feature are probably quite annoying.

I might have missed that. What features are you thinking about? I haven’t seen any points or badges or things like that?