Regrettably, complaining tends to be a common pastime for many individuals. I acknowledge your frustrations with certain users who may appear entitled or unappreciative of the considerable effort you've dedicated to developing Lemmy. Shifting towards a mindset that perceives complaints as opportunities for enhancement can be transformative. Establishing a set of transparent rules or guidelines on how you prioritize issues and feature requests could help turn critiques into opportunities for improvement. This transparency can help manage expectations and foster a more collaborative relationship with the users in your community. While not all complaints may be actionable, actively listening to feedback and explaining your prioritization criteria could go a long way in building trust and goodwill. Open communication and a willingness to consider diverse perspectives can lead to a stronger, more user-centric product in the long run.

The philosophy of Complaint-Driven Development provides a simple, transparent way to prioritize issues based on user feedback:

Get the platform in front of as many users as possible.
Listen openly to all user complaints and feedback. Expect a lot of it.
Identify the top 3 most frequently reported issues/pain points.
Prioritize fixing those top 3 issues.
Repeat the process, continuously improving based on prominent user complaints.

Following these straightforward rules allows you to address the most pressing concerns voiced by your broad user community, rather than prioritizing the vocal demands of a few individuals. It keeps development efforts focused on solving real, widespread issues in a transparent, user-driven manner.

Here's a suggestion that could help you implement this approach: Consider periodically making a post like What are your complaints about Lemmy? Developers may want your feedback. This post encourages users to leave one top-level comment per complaint, allowing others to reply with ideas or existing GitHub issues that could address those complaints. This will help you identify common complaints and potential solutions from your community.

Once you have a collection of complaints and suggestions, review them carefully and choose the top 3 most frequently reported issues to focus on for the next development cycle. Clearly communicate to the community which issues you and the team will be prioritizing based on this user feedback, and explain why you've chosen those particular issues. This transparency will help users understand your thought process and feel heard.

As you work on addressing those prioritized issues, keep the community updated on your progress. When the issues are resolved, make a new release and announce it to the community, acknowledging their feedback that helped shape the improvements.

Then, repeat the process: Make a new post gathering complaints and suggestions, review them, prioritize the top 3 issues, communicate your priorities, work on addressing them, release the improvements, and start the cycle again.

By continuously involving the community in this feedback loop, you foster a sense of ownership and leverage the collective wisdom of your user base in a transparent, user-driven manner.