- cross-posted to:
- lemmy
- cross-posted to:
- lemmy
It’s confusing for new users, and this instance in particular has 7k users but no interactions. It’s a bot army, with the top user being called @admin.
Extremely shady and misleading.
You must log in or register to comment.
FYI, I’m not going to remove this post or anything (and I agree as well), but it’s not likely to be seen by the right people here. /c/Sysadmin is just our community for discussing sysadmin things and I don’t know how much /u/Ruud or any Lemmy devs hang out here.
You might try cross-posting it to these communities:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Of note, lemmy.ml is the server that is operated by the primary Lemmy devs.
Oh wow, I didn’t realize, sorry! Thought I was in the right place. I could still remove it if you think it’s for the best?
Nah, you’ve already got the post and some discussion going. As said, just make it easy on yourself and use the cross-post button to get it out to those communities where some Lemmy devs might get eyes on it. :)
Will do, and thanks for the heads-up :)
[email protected] is supposed to be the community for Instance/server operators to communicate.
Right, but neither OP nor myself are Lemmy server operators.
It isn’t exclusive to operators, and frankly most of them are ignoring it. They are either meeting in chat rooms or what, but they don’t seem to like to gather on Lemmy itself to discuss the issues.
There’s a ticket to fix this on kbin which would allow each instance admin to block regular users from registering common names of authority: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/359
Damn I gotta go lock in a @potus username before it’s too late
deleted by creator
just wow. Should be reported in github to main lemmy repo
Doesn’t this depend on each instance though?
I think some form of blanket ban on certain keywords in usernames should be used. Admin being an obvious one, but I’m sure a lot more would also be problematic.
I guess what I meant is, how? It could be put into Lemmy sourcecode but since its open source that could be easily removed.
Each instance could possibly try and autoban any other instance user with that name?
I’ll admit I’m not tech-savvy enough to know how to implement something like that. Maybe someone else has a good idea though?
deleted by creator
I think they could put it in the Lemmy source code that an instance won’t display or take comments/posts from anyone with those usernames. So even if someone removed that restriction from their own instance, they wouldn’t be able to post on any other instance that has that feature enabled
The problem is, what if an instance actually has an admin with the
account?Exactly! Its not easily solved
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
@Izzent @breadsmasher IRC solved this a while back with a series of Q:lines to make it more difficult to impersonate admins etc.
Let’s not federate with that instance. Then, they can have any bots or username they want.
Usually I’d agree, but there has to be something more that can be done to prevent others from putting keywords like that in their name. Otherwise it’ll just happen again…
I think admin, administrator and those type names (system administrator, sys admin etc) should be reserved but you shouldnt ban admin as being part of a name. What about sadmin / sadminute… or badmin / badminute (and every variantion of that like MadMinotaur )and other variants like that.
Or anything relating to badminton the sport
R.I.P. /m/badminton
for other instances it’s name will appear as :
@admin@Podycust…so not such a big dealKbin doesn’t display the instance someone is on unless you click on their username for some reason. It’s not a great design choice for a federated platform.
Today I’ve learned (TiL) ! thanks 🙂
if original poster (OP) had posted there instead of in lemmy.world … would have been better … yet not a big deal 😌I don’t use kbin so I couldn’t have known, sorry.
You are right, I’m getting confused
… and I need a coffee 😋 !+1 on that coffee!
Conversely and interestingly, it seems Lemmy doesn’t show the instance of people that are on Kbin, but it also doesn’t show the @ before username for them so they’re still distinguishable (for example you show up as just EatALime, while the one you’re repling to shows as @A_A and someone on another instance like lemm.ee would show as @<username>@lemm.ee.)
I think just banning them is enough. On other instances it will indicate they are on another instance.
What if a persons real name is Admin in some weird language?
A bit far-fetched I know. Still, I think that if theres gonna be a global hardcoded blacklist of usernames, someone should be very careful which words is added to that list. Each specific instance would know better what words is good and what is bad in their main language(s).
deleted by creator
This makes me want to legally change my name to admin admin
Admin Password
Then that sucks for them
Official instance admin and community mod roles are denoted with badges, though. That’s consistent across every instance already.
I could change my name to admin or use my local instance @admin account and post here, but neither would give me any superpowers. Looking at my remote @admin user from a federated instance wouldn’t badge me as an admin for that instance either.
I don’t see the problem or see how that affects anyone. There can be an @john on every instance. Is that confusing for users, too? Should every instance coordinate and make sure there’s only one @john to rule them all? Who is the best John, and how is that determined?
That’s just how the fediverse works.
Ironically the link in OP is to the actual admin of this site
I’m confused, there’s no link in my post?
Edit: oh I see, the link doesn’t get highlighted on the website. Idk, I just sent a screenshot because it looked like they had the admin username, but I guess that one redirects to the admin of kbin, so no clue.
Interesting, so a bare “@admin” will link to whatever user has that name on your local instance? That should probably be a bug, I could type “@falafel” or whatever and end up linking to completely different people based on whatever instance someone happens to be reading from. Maybe giving all those people mention notifications, too.
I’m actually working on the problem now. It’s a tricky one to solve. There’s no context about who that user is, like at all. So we either don’t link any users. Or do a best effort.
Personally, I would think either default to the same instance as the person who’s comment it is, or just don’t link it at all since it’s an incomplete address. Like failing to include the “.social” part of the “https://kbin” URL, it’s just a broken thing.
Not actually a bad shout. When a local user submits we can fully qualify the handle if it’s short. Remote posts without a fully qualified won’t be able to be linked.
🤔
I think they meant to refer to the profile in the screenshot you sentnvm someone else clarified
Eh, why not? It’s just a name.
For those of us who understand how the platform works, it wouldn’t be an issue. However, if we want mass adoption of the platform, we need to take into consideration those who don’t fully understand the technology and avoid situations that will lead to scams where feasible. Names of authority, like admin, root, super, etc., make a user appear to have authority they don’t, which can mislead new users. (“Support our server by sending bitcoin to this address that is really my personal wallet” type scams comes to mind.) You could say that it’s the person’s fault for falling for it, but it’s something that would drive people away from the platform which can be easily avoided in the first place.
