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:
- Domain: @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
- Hosting: me @Emperor@feddit.uk
- Instance: 20cx12 and @flamingos@feddit.uk
- Finance: TBD
- Ambassadors: TBD
- Customer services: TBD
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.
Thank you for taking action to help migrate the nascent community!
I should add, this is a great case study of a federated system responding to a difficulty. Let’s jointly make this a positive case study.
It's a good point - it's very much along the lines of the Internet founding principles: if a node goes down it can be inconvenient but the larger network is flexible and adapts.