Thank you for all your work. I must remember to toss some coin your way.
improving Zippy to be much more talkative when something goes wrong with it
Crash recovery could be improved with a single flag/bool. Set when started. Unset as the last action before graceful shutdown. When starting, notify of crash if the flag is already set - or give normal start notification if the flag was flipped on normally by zippy.
That would make it less ambiguous.
blocking hexbear and lemmygrad (as two suggestions) upon account creation
I would wholeheartedly support a complete defed from hex, grad and ml if it’s possible. From what I have seen, their users bring little of value and much discontent.
Maybe even lemmit.online as well, considering it tends to just drive traffic away from Lemmy with no way for unified communication between Lemmy and what their bot has hauled in.
Make choices for the instance as a whole rather than per new user. Blunt, but effective. Would probably want a community vote - I talk a lot of shite.
There has also been talk of banning X links, another thing I would support.
Given the principle, the used based preblocking + explainer will work better then 👍
I suppose nudging it on to the user also does a bit of self-filtering of good users from bad. Those who don’t use the tools aren’t really getting into Lemmy as it should be, are unlikely to contribute much, will probably have a bad experience, and then wander off. Vice-versa applies.
The pre-blocking itself pushes that principle, but in your position I think it’s a pragmatic choice and a difficult one to balance. Can’t say I envy your position!