Sooo if you skim the previous posts on here, you’ll know that Feddit.uk’s only Admin (@Tom@feddit.uk) has been missing for a couple of months and in that time we were defederated by lemmy.world (although we’re back now) and we are one upgrade behind (just a minor fix) with one much bigger one whistling down the pipeline that may defederate us from other instances that upgrade (it may not but I know most of us don’t want to roll those dice).

We’ve tried various ways of contacting Tom and had no reply so we are forced to move forwards with moving to a new instance.

So, this is the plan:

Phase 1: Register a domain hndone by greatalbatross.

Phase 2: Sort out hosting - done by me.

Phase 3: Start instance - pending a final inspection of the hosting in the next day or so.

Phase 4: Onboarding - this will happen in waves:

Wave 1: Admins go in and make sure nothing is broken.

Wave 2: Moderators sign-up and re-start communities, get any bots running and just generally get a second set of eyes on things so we can be happy that we are ready to let people in.

Wave 3: We’ll start adding people already on Feddit.uk by hand - invitations will presumably have to go to inboxes on feddit.uk so we can ensure no-one is poaching a username for devilment. This will give the system a bit of a stress test.

Wave 4: We’ll let people apply to join and this should get things moving quicker.

Wave 5: Open registration.

Phase 5: Shuttering Feddit.uk - the Moderators will post pinned messages in their communities directing people to the new ones and then we’ll start the sad process of closing down the communities that we can.

Events should all start moving pretty quickly and, whole I may be being optimistic, we will likely reach the point of no return (specifically Tom’s return) in a week or two.

Current Admins:  

There’s a Matrix space that we’ll keep as a fallback in case if problems with the instant (although it will be renamed at some point). It also provides secure encrypted communication if anyone needed to flag anything up privately (and Matrix is built into Lemmy - add your Matrix ID into your profile and it provides a secure messaging button in your profile, so if you need to contact an Admin you can do it directly from there too, at least for me).

Sorry about all hassle, none of us wanted this but it is forced upon us and the feeling from everyone’s previous comments is that we didn’t want to lose what we have here, even if we have to rebuild in a new instance.

I’ll throw the floor open to comments and questions.

  • smegEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    Good work! It’s a shame it has to be done but ultimately Tom has helped us all to find that Lemmy is something we quite like, and even though it’s not something he wants to carry on with he’s provided the first stepping stone in wherever we go next. If we’ve not got a new name yet I’d vote for definitely keeping the .uk suffix as I find that really useful, though I’m not that fussed about the reddit-like name as that’s what a lot of us have decided to move on from!

    • FlaxEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      It does! It might have a UK flag within the icon, hopefully recognisable enough. The name doesn’t reference lemmy or reddit at all, instead we chose to carve out our own identity. Think similar to how beehaw or shitjustworks does it (minus the defederation threats that Beehaw had, we are 1000% committed to the fediverse and it does run lemmy).

      The hope with this is so someone can tell their friend about it without having to explain lemmy/the fediverse, so instead of saying “join lemmy!” You can easily say “join [redacted].uk!”, but again, it is definitely 100% federated and running lemmy.

      I hope I didn’t overcomplicate things 😖

      Once you migrate on there, it should be the same experience as Feddit.UK essentially

    • GreatAlbatrossMAEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      We have a name, and you’ll be pleased to know it uses a .uk suffix. We’ll post it once we’ve at least got a landing page up.