Incoming long-winded wall-o-text that could have probably been 3 sentences. Idk this is what you get for 99% of what I post being just fuckin' links I guess lol sorry.
So I've done a bunch of testing between various instances since before the weekend (including some random ones I didn't mention) and gotten plenty enough feedback from all of you guys who helped. It definitely seems like Lemmy.zip is gonna be the new home for SquaredCircle. Everyone seems to be able to access it, everything is working smooth as silk, things are federating out in a timely manner. On top of that the admin provided links to check the instances federation which could be quite useful in the future if issues occur. The rate at which its picking up subscribers is also faster than we have had on kbin outside of maybe the first month or two (many of whom are likely not even active anymore) which seems like it's gonna help a lot with our growth too. Currently at 89 users in 5 days.
Fedia was in consideration but is a hard no as a bunch of instances you all use aren't even acknowledging its existence (when they should) and the ones I use that are seeing it seem to be federating at delays that would make having discussions or timely news posts completely impossible (6-12hish). I did test a couple other mbin instances but again, federation was lackluster at best.
That being said with the other instances I tried I didn't really find anything too impressive to want to say 'we can use this place as a backup'. (I am also loathe to use one of the other bigger lemmy instances as over the history of lemmy/kbin a lot of defederation has happened (and could continue at a higher rate given their size) and then people could get more easily cut off from the community and cause issues.)
Tying into that: Kbin. We now know Ernest isn't dead at least lol, so while the place may be (at the moment) in shambles the project does continue and the site appears to be safe, if sadly partially reliable. My intention was never going to include deleting this place cause my data hoarder ass doesn't know the meaning of the word 'delete' so tl;dr~
https://lemmy.zip/c/squaredcircle will become our new home..
..but if it makes sense to all of you: https://kbin.social/m/SquaredCircle/ will become our backup.
Realistically we shouldn't need a backup with lemmy.zip from what I've seen. Bunch of us have been posting and commenting for days now (and as someone who has been using it in general for 6+ months off and on I've had little issues) but we're all already here anyway and if Ernest is working on things then it would be a shame to toss this place in case it does get better. Easier to use it as a backup we may not need than build up a second community from scratch to confuse more people.
So assuming that makes sense with everyone, we basically have two weeks left in the original time estimate left. It's up to you all (if you haven't moved over to the lemmy.zip community already) whether you wanna go all in (heh) now or wait out the 2 weeks. If anyone does wanna stay here for the next 2 weeks I'll keep posting stuff across both communities but by the 18th at the latest I'll be full time on the lemmy community and just keeping an eye here for spam now and then until we need it.
Also given federation is slow as shit I'm going to also link this onto the lemmy.zip community so any of you over there will know it's been posted instead of waiting 12-24 hours lmao.
