• Mex@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    If Tom doesn’t sort this soon this is likely the deathknell of this instance.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      Yup. We might want to start thinking of setting up a new instance with multiple admins and try and migrate as many communities from here over to it as we can and keep the user base.

      I’d offer to set one up but I don’t have the time to set one up or maintain it.

      • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, it’s tricky to know when to pull the trigger as Tom may spring into action any time.

        I think step one would be to rummage together a few people who would volunteer to Admin this instance if we can raise Tom, so he can slot them in if/when he reappears. That would mean we can get refederated and everything starts ticking along.

        I’ve run my own website and know PHP/MySQL but Rust is something I’ve not looked into. However, updating and doing admin stuff might be relatively straightforward. I don’t know. I’m also unreliable, so it couldn’t just be me volunteering.

        I’d offer to set one up but I don’t have the time to set one up or maintain it.

        Are you knowledgeable enough to volunteer as an admin here? I imagine duties are light and if we can get a few people onboard it shouldn’t be too bad

        • blackn1ght@feddit.ukOP
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, it’s tricky to know when to pull the trigger as Tom may spring into action any time.

          Exactly yeah. We don’t want to act too soon, but also leaving it too late could mean the instance gets defederated by other big instances and people leave for other instances.

          Are you knowledgeable enough to volunteer as an admin here? I imagine duties are light and if we can get a few people onboard it shouldn’t be too bad

          To be honest I don’t know what’s involved. I’d need to look into how hosting works and what’s involved in things like upgrades. I’m a software engineer (dotnet C#, AWS mostly) so it wouldn’t be alien to me and I might be able to help out on a temporary basis but I can’t really commit to anything due to time.

          • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            To be honest I don’t know what’s involved.

            Me neither. I may spin up an instance to have a nos around but I assume the general Admin business is a bit like the administration of a web forum in which there’s a backend with relevant tools and the settings, presumably a way to upgrade from there. I’m pretty familiar with that kind of thing over the years.

            Access to the actual server is likely to be different again but if there is a web admin panel then getting a few people signed up to that should help at least resolve the current issues.

            • tkc@feddit.uk
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              1 year ago

              I’ve got dev/sys admin experience, so happy to help out, I’m just probably not the most reliable, but it seems like we would have a few candidates to help pitch in, so between like 5? of us (presumably including Tom), the duties should be light if we share the load.

              • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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                1 year ago

                I’ve read that 5-6 is a decent number of Admins for an instance as it provides redundancy and spreads the work out so no one person feels like it is too much hassle.

          • merridew@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Given my level of technical knowledge, I can confidently say that I am unable to offer support in any way.

            But I’ll second that this is a great instance – one which I’ve really enjoyed seeing grow and begin to pick up steam – and anyone able to step up has my gratitude.

        • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
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          1 year ago

          Tom was discussing more admins previously iirc. I think if that happens within a reasonable time, and enough people are added to keep responses prompt, the site will be ok.

          However, if it continues with absence, it’s not a good situation. Especially when images are stored locally, all it takes is some malicious party spamming horrible images (or potentially even CSAM), and the site would be a smoking crater.

          • spacedogroy@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            I think this is probably the highest risk, in my opinion. I honestly think Lemmy needs some automated solution to monitoring and scanning for CSAM content, because as a user I don’t want to exposed to it and as an admin I wouldn’t want to be in the position where I am responsible for censoring it.

            I think lemmy.world have kind of made a good point here: we need an admin in place who’s reactive and willing to maintain the server regularly - in a moderation and a technical sense - or we should consider migrating to a larger instance.

            This is no dig at @tom as he’s done a phenomenal job here and has undoubtedly spent time and money in creating this instance, but it would be good to get a sense off him whether he really feels he wants to continue on with the project. If not, it should lead to a larger discussion of where to go from here, because I don’t think the status quo is sustainable.

              • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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                1 year ago

                It basically means “pornography with children in it”, though I’m unsure of the specifics of the abbreviation, and likewise don’t want to google it.

          • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Tom was discussing more admins previously iirc. I think if that happens within a reasonable time, and enough people are added to keep responses prompt, the site will be ok.

            Yes, it’s easily fixed, so no need to start panicking yet.

            I’ve emailed Tom, I’ve spoken to some else who has used another email address, we’ll get this sorted. Hopefully, pretty quickly.

          • Phil K@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Personally, I gave up when he hadn’t replied to an email I sent a month earlier.

            If you look over on the Matrix space then it looks like they are finalising a name for the new instance.

          • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Yeah the plan is:

            • Draw up a list of volunteer Admins so if Tom came back he can slot some of them in and we can start the process of ensuring the long term survival of the instance. If that isn’t happening:
            • We spin up a new instance and those volunteers become the new admins.

            We’re on the fall-back Matrix channel discussing it. So one way or another, we will sort it out. The tricky thing is when to pull the trigger. I was hoping the new update would make Tom resurface but that hasn’t happened and we have the looming 0.19 upgrade that could start causing problems.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
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        1 year ago

        I think maybe the best action is to draw up plans for a new instance, in public on here.
        That way, if Tom returns, the plans can be used to continue/help this instance.

        If he doesn’t, then eventually the plans can be used for a new instance.
        It might be worth having a discord/mailing list or similar, not for the planning, but to give a location for discussions to happen if the instance vanished suddenly.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          I think maybe the best action is to draw up plans for a new instance, in public on here. That way, if Tom returns, the plans can be used to continue/help this instance.

          That’s my thinking - I posted about it somewhere else in this thread.

          If we can get volunteers to admin, then Tom only has to swoop in, promote them and we’ll get refederated.

          If the worst happens, we have admins in place to migrate to a new instance.

          It might be worth having a discord/mailing list or similar, not for the planning, but to give a location for discussions to happen if the instance vanished suddenly.

          I started a feddit.uk Matrix space. It’s handy to have in case the server goes down for whatever reason (lemmy.world started their Discord server because of all the DDoS attacks and now have a Matrix space).

          • clara@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            i have saved this matrix link as a backup, if things get bad here i will join

            should we post this over to feddit.uk meta forum too? it might be good to have a “here’s our lifeboat link, you should join now” post present on that forum, while we still can?

        • thehatfox@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          Starting a new instance is an option, although it depends on finding willing admins and organising some logistics. I’ve had a brief look at the Lemmy docs for setting up an instance, and it doesn’t seem too complicated at first glance, at least for initial setup. I’d be more concerned in the longer term about handling (major) upgrades, given Lemmy is still a young project prone to large changes, and properly managing parts like pict-rs.

          Anyone with a reasonable level of Linux admin experience should be up to the task, and I would think they would be easy enough to find in the Fediverse. I’d be potentially willing to throw my own hat in the ring, although I’d have to give it some more serious thought regarding time commitment.

          There are other matters to consider besides the technical challenges, like funding, legal, and community management generally.

          We should really only consider a new instance as a last resort though. I don’t know the current admin but it still seems possible for them to either return or hand over the reigns here.

          • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            I agree, we’ll see how it goes. A couple of us have emailed Tom and that should, hopefully, get him on here and we can sort it out.

            Getting other admins onboard should be fairly easy (as Lemmy tends to lean to the tech savvy) but, as you say, we also need to nail down long-term issues to make sure the place is proof against any one person going AWOL.