I’ve noticed today that world@lemmy.world hasn’t had any new posts or comments for about a day now.
However when I go to https://lemmy.world/c/world in the browser there’s way more activity.
The post when on feddit.uk https://feddit.uk/post/2700378
Same post when on Lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/post/5717372?scrollToComments=true
If Tom doesn’t sort this soon this is likely the deathknell of this instance.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What’s CSAM? (I don’t want to google it, it sounds “risky” from the context).
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.
It stands for child sexual abuse material if I remember correctly
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.
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Yeah the plan is:
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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).
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?
Is the forum this one or am I missing something (or not been invited)? If the former, then I have posted a link (t)here.
yep that’s the one, all good
Excellent, everything seems all linked up.
Did you save it on your Lemmy client or elsewhere, as if it’s on Lemmy, it may be better to join now rather than later, as you would like lose access.
i will join as soon as i have a clear head, i’ve been travelling for a thing the past 2 days, i need some downtime to get my mind around matrix, lemmy was bad enough lol. i’m aware it’s the same sort of fediverse deal. see you all there soon
Is that the same one we’re on with a few others?
This is an different one as we clearly need a general space just in case.
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.
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.
Yes, that’s my concern. I’ll take my best shot at contacting Tom now.