PyLova (Python+Pavlova) is a soft fork of PieFed, aimed at improving the user experience through UI overhauls, empowering users and admins with agency, improved administration and moderation functions, and general bug fixing.

New in V0.3.0

For Users

• New 'Look & Feel' tab in settings, for customising your user experience.
• In comment video uploading and posting (counts towards files quota).
• Updated 'Files' page, allowing mass deletion of uploaded media.

For Moderators

• Can set default tags for communities, that auto-fill into new posts on community. Enabling greater discover-ability across the Fediverse.

For Admins

• New 'Look & Feel' tab in settings, to help with managing the visual style of your instance.
• Ability to view a users deleted posts and downvotes alongside their upvotes.
• New 'Rules' sidebar panel to display instance rules.

And More

• Themes can support sub-colour schemes.
• New User setup page is condensed into one, offering options for setting pronouns and bio.
• Alt text (aria label) for video uploads.
• Consistent markdown editor.
• Musk/Trump filter reworked to a 'low politics' filter.
• Hard-coded musk/trump filter removed for users who are not signed in.
• Thanks to @Dialectical_Specialist@quokk.au, Lichess boards are supported to display.
• Updated documentation by @quill7513@anarchist.nexus.
• Updated docker example by @tenchiken@anarchist.nexus.
• Visual changes to posts, tags displayed under title and titles now serve as hyperlink.
• Fix with API, images posts no longer upload against image quota and send as image type posts enabling to display correctly on Lemmy.
• Collapse-able sidebar cards.
• Sorting (hot/new/local/all) is managed by drop-downs to maintain consistency.
• Removal of 'Rational Discourse' sidebar.
• Minor fixes & changes.

New hide button works great.

Well done!

Impressive!

I did get excited thinking that it might show downvotes, but now I see that's only for admins.

Do you plan to expose downvotes received on each post/comment to the user? I've been through every single theme and setting on PieFed.social and could never find a way to display those - although I don't know whether other PieFed instances can already do differently or not (they definitely don't show by default in places like PieFed.zip).

Fwiw I think people would be very happy to see their downvotes separately from upvotes, since e.g. +10/-9 is quite a bit different scenario than simply =1 overall (controversial vs. total lack of engagement). Technically this is already possible but the tooltip display is exceedingly janky and does not work at all a good fraction of the time, when when zoomed in like 10x (which helps at least sometimes).

Anyway it's always neat to see a "new project", even if as a fork this is only kind-of half of one, it still counts in terms of offering new opportunities to users, which is always a good thing.

Thanks.

I’m not sure if I would want to publicly show who downvoted what, although I could certainly consider making this an optional toggle for admins as I know mbin instances already show this data.

Or are you referring to this?

I haven’t had any issues with this being janky, but I could certainly look into it further if that’s what’s causing issues?

Hey Mia, kinda unrelated, but I was wondering if there's a way for you to approve this account to create a community? My main is @awesomelowlander@sh.itjust.works. Wanted to start a comm here, but don't really feel up to farming rep for a few days first.

It's not an issue per se, but I think a lot of us prefer to have those value separated by default without having to mouseover to see them.

Yes that - the second one, as shown in your image - is what I mean. Lemmy offers the option to show upvotes separately from (& adjacent to) downvotes. PieFed's tooltip approach fails to work for me something like a fifth of the time, at least on PieFed.social. At least a third of the time it will not work even if I click the number >10 times at varying cadence, although most of the time then if I zoom in and carefully hit precisely the number rather than the general area it is in it will work. Ofc that could be coincidence like a server connection issue that manages to work upon subsequent clicks regardless of how I approached hitting the number.

Regarding showing who delivers the downvotes - that can be quite useful sometimes as well. I just had a serial downvoter go through every comment that I had made recently, across a wide swath of communities from memes to Fediverse matters and news and politics etc. - ironically they had never once posted and only made 3 comments in I think it was 3 years, yet they had downvoted people sth like 20k times and only upvoted iirc <3k total, so I seriously doubt that I was the only one that happened to. I want negative feedback the same as I want positive ones, but like... delivered as an adult, using words (at which point others piling them on only adds assent & therefore weight to that spoken position), not this childish "I don't like your politics so I am going to downvote everything you've said for days, without even telling you why".

Voting really is an imbalance of power if someone can do things like that, but the recipients have no power to block it. It has a chilling effect upon social media bc people will either speak less often, knowing they will receive those, or else grow such a thick skin that even a veritable flood of downvotes affects them not in the slightest. I don't like either of those options.

Though I suppose there is an argument that people could too casually block others for offering downvotes... or something? Honestly I don't quite understand that - anyone can find out who it is, with just a little bit of effort (e.g. I could make a post in a community that I moderate, so then when my serial downvoter strikes then as a mod I can see who they are, even if not as a user; or ultimately if I installed my own server then I could casually inspect the votes of everyone on every post or comment everywhere), this information is not "private" and there seems little reason to not place tools into people's hands to balance out this otherwise inequitable relationship?

But anyway I'm not pushing for it - I just hate to see how like powerful people (e.g. jordanlund) have all this ability to see and do things (e.g. see people who downvote and block them), but what can the common person do? Although some of this seems to be based on the misunderstanding that accounts that you have specifically blocked cannot still vote on your content, whereas now I think that they can. There seems nothing that can be done about that.

Btw Mbin shows who offers (links given for a randomly chosen example post): upvotes aka favorites, separately also Increases, now seemingly called Boosts, but will only show the total count but not who offered them for Reduces (I don't know if a mod can see these, obviously an admin could but I don't know whether via this same interface).

There was not a way, it was hard-coded in as a 24hr wait period.

There is now a way.

You're my guinea pig, please let me know if you see any other restrictions still applied.

Understandable. It's not super high priority, but I'll look at adding in the next update some sort of selector in the user profile for showing say current view, up/downvotes, or percentage views?

Seems to be working :)

The Lemmy method sounds pretty simple to add. I've put it on my to-do list for the next release, so I'll probably do it over the weekend.

On the second half, it's a complex issue. From what I've seen the majority of Threadiverse users are extremely against seeing this information and feel like it can lead to I guess ... revenge against users who downvote. But like your example shows, there can be harm in those sort of mass-downvoters. I originally started with Kbin myself, so I don't mind the option myself but I am also wanting this to cater to a broader userbase, and the general consensus I've seen is 'don't make it public'. I'll have to give this some greater thought before I touch it sorry.

Yeah those are the options I can think of.

I also second OpenStars point about making downvotes open info instead of the currently semi-public info that it is.

Restrictions on sending PMs are still in effect.

Also, viewing quokk.au from another instance shows what looks like outdated info in the sidebar.

Thanks, I’ll look into that shortly.

Um, the Anarchist Code of Conduct link in the sidebar seems to lead to some sort of bot honeypot. Is that intentional? I'm trying to figure out our server stance on copyright (yes I know, anarchist, but I wanted to check)

PM's should be working now as well.

I'll look into the instance stuff not updating.

As for the CoC it's hosted on dbzer0, I can't help you with that but if you ask in their Matrix chat they may be able to diagnose why you're hitting the honeypot.

As for quokk.au's stance on copyright, it's anti-copyright but I also do not want to be hosting or directly linking to pirated/illegal content (i.e. torrents) so as to not invite potential issues.

Just so we're not spamming !fediverse@lemmy.world with bug hunting, do you mind sending me a PM or joining the Matrix channel ?

The Lemmy way: yay!

The second half: yes I understand and agree - it's a rather complicated issue, which can go both ways. Perhaps it can be something left to the admin to decide whether to enable vs. not? They can see all votes themselves in any case. In general I am not a fan of restricting people's abilities "for their own good", which seems in line with the spirit of PyLova, but in any case I definitely understand that it needs thinking about first bc it does run against the grain of what PieFed has done so far.

Thanks for talking about it with me.:-)

In v0.3.2 whenever it releases.

Oh that's so freaking awesome!!! 😎

On the wider scale, I am saddened about the fight between Rimu and you - but I get it, despite how he admitted himself that he did not handle things fully properly (afaik? not that I even begin to comprehend matters involving licensing), I understand if you are just so completely "done" with that whole situation.

I just wanted to say that from my POV I see you two as allies (even though definitely not friends) in the struggle against corporate enshittified platforms.

And I love seeing the development of features that apparently you both agree are quite good - hehe even good enough for Rimu to steal:-P.

Thank you for making your code available as FOSS, and thereby contributing to the growth of the Threadiverse. I'm losing hope that we will ever attract mainstream normies by virtue of continual in-fighting but that has basically nothing to do with you, and in fact PyLova seems actually a force that helps heal the divisions a bit by e.g. decoupling the OG PieFed code from certain authoritarian tendencies lately. Such as shadow-censoring of votes even from Lemmy or Mbin users delivered to PieFed communities, rejected (if I am understanding them correctly) due to the vote quotas that are never once explained to them as a reason for rejection - although tbf Lemmy also offers admins the ability to shadow-censor whole entire communities without mention of that fact either. No software is perfect, but you are continuing to pour your love into this project, which I find awesome and want to say thank you for.:-)