Talk:Self-hosting

TODO?

Things I wanted to cover in the article but haven't so far gotten around to incorporating these ideas into the article, feel free to take a stab at it or question if those need to be in the article at all:

• Manufacturers understandably provide some service themselves for ease of use, for consumer rights protection regarding connected products self-hosted service needs to be an option, not the only way; and this particular way should probably be a last resort when manufacturer is being uncooperative (ignorant, malicious, underfunded, defunct, bankrupt or any combination of those)
• ^+ Maybe showcase this from a service monopoly perspective, where vendor lock-in is effectively a monopoly on a service enforced through anti-competitive choices of proprietary APIs and protocols
• Being deployed by enthusiasts, self-hosted services may not adhere as often to best deployment practices very rigorously compared to professional setups; such as having a reliable backup process, which is not strictly necessary for the service to function, and self-hosters aren't typically bound by legal restrictions on ensuring data safety that could incentivize that (nor should they be); that said, companies can make similar mistakes, and legal punishment for them hinges on the consumers' ability to prove those mistakes being made in order to invoke said legal punishment

D-side (talk) 15:47, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Definition of "server"

The paragraph defining "server" as a piece of software providing a service rather than a machine that runs such software 24x7 kinda sticks out of the rest of the article, being about the article itself rather than article's subject (self-hosting). Maybe needs to be moved or placed in a block of some kind, maybe needs its own page even. WDYT? D-side (talk) 15:50, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Reviewed the use of the term "server" throughout the article and noticed that in most places it's already qualified like "server application" and "server hardware" and tossed the paragraph (in a revision I accidentally left without a description). D-side (talk) 03:46, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Applications in the Nextcloud section

@Dosjdhdjdjdhdjdjdj hi, I rolled back your last formatting update: I meant to showcase the variety of function-specific clients for Nextcloud, they are not standalone self-hostable apps, which is why they are formatted within the Nextcloud section, it's intentional.

Outside of that, thank you!

I'm completely out of the loop regarding the use of BSD other than knowing it exists and that some prefer that. I try to keep the deeper technical aspects out of scope due to the scope of the wiki, but OS diversity probably contributes to the message that self-hosting landscape is diverse but decently cohesive despite that. D-side (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying Dosjdhdjdjdhdjdjdj (talk) 00:24, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Fellow self-hosting enthusiasts, let's remember this is Consumer Rights Wiki

As much as I understand the desire to share the cool stuff with the world, the scope of this wiki is consumer rights. The page already links to awesome-selfhosted for a comprehensive list of self-hostable apps and relevant tools for those looking for that. We don't need to duplicate it. We'd have to maintain it and I don't think we (CRW's editors collectively) have the capacity for this.

The intended audience of this wiki is conscious consumers, out of which I'd expect very few to want to mess with this. The point is to be convincing that products need to support this, and apps can serve as examples for specific points, e. g. to illustrate that this already happens in a number of categories, that demanding that from manufacturers is reasonable and provides an important last resort to keep the product useful if the manufacturer goes bust or gets malicious ideas. This is why the apps section was originally so short: other than smart home peripherals and personal data lock-in I couldn't think of other consumer rights problems self-hosting solves.

I'm not gonna remove anything since I don't feel like an authority on this wiki's mission. But as it stands now, I don't think the entire "Other useful tools" section contributes to the article's overall message. Some of the projects there have potential though. PiHole and AdGuard could be expanded into a whole section on Ad block (that page could use some love too btw).

cc @Dosjdhdjdjdhdjdjdj D-side (talk) 12:58, 27 February 2026 (UTC)