Hello everybody,
It’s time for a update on feddit.uk.
This time, it’s good news, and stability.
I’ll keep things concise, then elaborate later in the post for curious people:
- feddit.uk has been stabilised, and we have access to everything we need to move forward with it.
- The new domain name will not be used as the main instance, feddit.uk will remain the domain.
- Emperor and myself are responsible for instance and domain respectively.
- The domain has been transferred to me.
- We will be working with Tom to transfer the instance to new hosting under Emperor.
- The instance is currently running at capacity, which requires manual intervention every so often. This will be permanently resolved once the server is migrated.
- Images may be disabled while the system is prepared for migration, other services should be working
“What went wrong?”
“Why has conflicting information been showing up at times?”
The honest answer is, for the last few months, there have been two paths forward. These plans were constantly being updated, and the needle swung between viability for Plan A, and Plan B, often at the last moment.
At first, when Tom wasn’t able to respond:
Plan A, new Admins added, new admins carry on the work.
Plan B, new site made, Emperor and I splitting responsibilities to make sure we had a bus factor >1.
As time went on, we started down the Plan B.
Lots of long discussion over names, discussing with community members, registering domains, and getting back-ends set up.
I was battling ansible setup, when suddenly, we had admin, and swung back to Plan A.
Things calmed down a little, but we were still lacking back-end, and needed to discuss how things would work long term.
Eventually, we started having to make A/B plans again:
Plan A, start doing back-end work, and work out long-term plans.
Plan B, build a new site.
It all came to a bit of a head on Christmas
(when doesn’t it? Never agree to do on-call over the holidays, folks)
feddit.uk was down, Emperor and I still didn’t have back-end.
So Plan B started again.
I put on Bridget Jones Diary, in the hope that my partner wouldn’t notice I was about to spend two hours trying to build a new lemmy instance from scratch.
(Don’t ever do this. They knew. I still need to make it up to them.)
And it was just about working.
But Emperor was unwell, and I felt it would not be a good idea launching with half the team unavailable.
A few days later, Emperor is back in business.
Great, lets continue with Plan B.
And I recieve a message that we’re getting back-end access.
Plan A time. The needle swings again.
So that’s where we are now. Plan A. Everything is now in place.
feddit.uk stays up, and we work on it.
Questions that might come up:
“When are you going to a new host?”
Once Emperor and I have had time to run through the process, and schedule a day to make the change over.
When we have set a date, we will communicate it.
“When are we going to 19.2 (or higher)?”
The aim was to perform the upgrade after the site was migrated.
This morning, the site was upgraded, and we are dealing with a few of the impacts of this.
(Tom has been very busy, and we’re very thankful!)
"What about email verification?
Email should now be going out correctly.
We may go through the list of accounts that have not been validated, and re-send the email verification.
Who is “Teasmade?”
Teasmade is the face of site processes. Validations, password resets.
If you message admins, you may get a response from them.
They may end up with a backstory and personality down the line.
“I like/don’t like the name Teasmade”
We’ll happily hear alternative suggestions.
“Why didn’t you continue with migrating to a new site?”
Because even with full migrations, we would never be able to move everything.
Now that we’re able to improve feddit.uk, we aim to achieve a lot of the same goals, while keeping existing communities intact.
“Who is running things?”
Currently, it’s a combination of Tom, Emperor, and GreatAlbatross (me).
Tom may stay on as an admin post-migration.
"What happens if one of you disappears?"
Our overall role definitions are based on responsibility, realistically we could function on just one until new admins could be recruited.
“What is happening on the technical side at the moment? Can I be involved?”
Once the system is on a new host, I will do some writing up, and we will consider people for back-end access.
Until things are more settled, and we have change-control in place, we’re keeping configuration simple.
There will definitely be talk about the technical issues encountered, as people may find it interesting.
In the meantime, if there are reasonable features you would like to see, and you’re happy to send us documentation, we’ll absolutely look into them.
“How can I contact someone outside of the Lemmy instance?”
We have a Matrix channel (run by emperor).
For general queries, you can email teasmade at the domain (just trying to keep spam down a little).
And we have general complaince addresses (abuse/trouble).
“I wanted to sign up, but I couldn’t/the email didn’t arrive”
If you email Teasmade, we can sort it. We do have to do this manually, but we’re happy to do so.
Other questions?
Pop a reply in, we’ll do our best to reply.
Emperor, Tom, and GreatAlbatross.
Great to hear that there’s now a team of admins fully in place and server situation is stabilising. Hopefully this means the feddit.uk can now grow and become a lasting UK presence in the wider Fediverse. Do you have any ideas for community building going forward?
Anyways here’s to a brighter new year for UK lemmings.
For now, we are working on getting things nice and stable, and making sure we have handled likely eventualities.
Past there? We have a few ideas, and are always open to suggestions. I like the idea of a tea club.
What relevant qualifications do you possess for being this sites admin Big Albatross?
What qualifications do you require? Stepping up when things are looking dicey? Being able to plan, organise and delegate? We’ve done plenty of that, although there will be more delegating going forward - it’s just been a bit of a scramble to get everything working. That said, having seen what he’s done the last few days (and over the previous month or two) he’s more than qualified in the IT front too - we’d be in a worse place right now without him.
What’s your favourite rock? I quite like amethysts and Blue John.
I have inherited some Blue John from my mother’s side of the family who were Derbyshire-adjacent and I have been down the Blue John mine.
Other than that, it is difficult to pick because the other get jealous, but the best photograph of me was taken while I was sitting on the odd green rock in the middle of Hattuşa, the Hittite capital. So possibly that one.
I’m sure we can have regular contests.
I had an idea for a Britiverse - linking together the UK parts of the Fediverse. I know the leading UK Mastodon server tried to start a kbin instance but I am not sure how it went. If we could have channels of communication open we could be assured the other services are well-run and direct users to them if they wanted a specific social media platform. Much more manageable than .world’s plan for Fediverse dominance by running big instances for each one.
edit: but the important thing is that Feddit.uk belongs to everyone, so we are open to suggestions. Sensible ones will be considering, daft ones perhaps not so much.