Not yet, the ones higher than me are… Sorting something out.

We’re currently doing various things behind the scenes - this is definitely something we’ll look into when we can (might be another day or so).

Everyone who joined the publicly open matrix channel dedicated to setting up a new instance. We couldn’t do it on the open web to prevent domain parking.

We were setting up alternative communities on Quackhouse before the plug got pulled

Quackhouse came about from an agreement in a matrix chat. The chat was free to join and posted on this instance. It was composed of people who wanted a new instance. We didn’t hold such a discussion publicly as to prevent people from domain parking.

We were wanting to distance ourselves from Lemmy (in name only, the devs are very volatile and give it a bad name, plus lemmy being difficult to explain to more casual people who’d appreciate the forum without an overwhelming technical explanation of how it works. Lastly we wanted a unique identity, like how beehaw or shitjustworks have) and Reddit (for obvious reasons)

We wanted a fun recognisable name, we did come up with ideas like “bri-ish” and I think something along the lines of “ukonline”. We tried a pub theme also with “localpub.uk” and “thelemmingandthed.uk” but people opted for the duck theme and “quackhouse” as it sounded fun.

Personally, Quackhouse wasn’t my first choice. But it’s what everyone was happy enough with come the vote, so that’s why I stand by it.

To elaborate more on the unique identity thing, we wanted to have a name we could use to spread in lemmy circles like joinlemmy.org. generally people who already know about Lemmy and want to join wouldn’t really care about “lemmy” being in the name. So we thought it actually could detract more.

However, then we had stage two: word of mouth spreading / promoting. Generally just tell people about the site, the unique name wouldn’t require explaining the fediverse, there was an idea floating about with “Tell them it’s a UK based forum with no trackers or ads and is donation funded”, they’d see the content from federation and by the time they realise what’s happening, they wouldn’t be intimidated by the idea.

Also had a small plan to even post a lemmy client on the play store which by default points to the new instance, name it after it and everything, just for fun :P

We were and are committed to lemmy, would only jump ship from it somehow died or became obsolete (there’s no plans on moving away from Lemmy being the actual software or any Lemmy features)

It was the one we all agreed upon. Although it is better than “fake reddit UK”.

I agree. Basically all Quackhouse plans were cancelled because Tom sent a single email and didn’t show up again. We did have Quackhouse up on a limited extent and were starting to roll it out a few days ago, but they pulled Quackhouse offline again so I cannot work on it. I was hoping to have communities migrated before or around the new year, even if we didn’t set up sign-ups by then

https://lemmy.world/post/9908108

https://lemmy.world/post/9908108

Please keep an eye to us! We’re making a new instance for feddit.uk :)

We’re building a new community! Stay tuned!

Unfortunately we had planned on getting the boat out before that happened. But it happened anyway. For now the instance seems to be back up, but this was a wake-up call.

Start it again on our new instance :)

That’s what we’re doing with our new instance :)

I agree. A big objection was if we became big, reddit might be able to sue us.

The whole aim of this new instance is actually trying to see if we can attract some people to come onto it without having to really know what lemmy is. Feddit.uk sounded like a reddit knockoff, and having to explain it sounded confusing. If we could spread the word about the new instance without having to mention federation, as to not be intimidating, people may see the content provided from federation and be happy anyway, and not question the inner workings until they are settled.