If Tom doesn't sort this soon this is likely the deathknell of this instance.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Feddit UK
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Community for the Feddit UK instance.
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Yup. We might want to start thinking of setting up a new instance with multiple admins and try and migrate as many communities from here over to it as we can and keep the user base.
I'd offer to set one up but I don't have the time to set one up or maintain it.
Yeah, it's tricky to know when to pull the trigger as Tom may spring into action any time.
I think step one would be to rummage together a few people who would volunteer to Admin this instance if we can raise Tom, so he can slot them in if/when he reappears. That would mean we can get refederated and everything starts ticking along.
I've run my own website and know PHP/MySQL but Rust is something I've not looked into. However, updating and doing admin stuff might be relatively straightforward. I don't know. I'm also unreliable, so it couldn't just be me volunteering.
I’d offer to set one up but I don’t have the time to set one up or maintain it.
Are you knowledgeable enough to volunteer as an admin here? I imagine duties are light and if we can get a few people onboard it shouldn't be too bad
Yeah, it’s tricky to know when to pull the trigger as Tom may spring into action any time.
Exactly yeah. We don't want to act too soon, but also leaving it too late could mean the instance gets defederated by other big instances and people leave for other instances.
Are you knowledgeable enough to volunteer as an admin here? I imagine duties are light and if we can get a few people onboard it shouldn’t be too bad
To be honest I don't know what's involved. I'd need to look into how hosting works and what's involved in things like upgrades. I'm a software engineer (dotnet C#, AWS mostly) so it wouldn't be alien to me and I might be able to help out on a temporary basis but I can't really commit to anything due to time.
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Tom was discussing more admins previously iirc. I think if that happens within a reasonable time, and enough people are added to keep responses prompt, the site will be ok.
However, if it continues with absence, it's not a good situation. Especially when images are stored locally, all it takes is some malicious party spamming horrible images (or potentially even CSAM), and the site would be a smoking crater.
I think this is probably the highest risk, in my opinion. I honestly think Lemmy needs some automated solution to monitoring and scanning for CSAM content, because as a user I don't want to exposed to it and as an admin I wouldn't want to be in the position where I am responsible for censoring it.
I think lemmy.world have kind of made a good point here: we need an admin in place who's reactive and willing to maintain the server regularly - in a moderation and a technical sense - or we should consider migrating to a larger instance.
This is no dig at @tom as he's done a phenomenal job here and has undoubtedly spent time and money in creating this instance, but it would be good to get a sense off him whether he really feels he wants to continue on with the project. If not, it should lead to a larger discussion of where to go from here, because I don't think the status quo is sustainable.
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Tom was discussing more admins previously iirc. I think if that happens within a reasonable time, and enough people are added to keep responses prompt, the site will be ok.
Yes, it's easily fixed, so no need to start panicking yet.
I've emailed Tom, I've spoken to some else who has used another email address, we'll get this sorted. Hopefully, pretty quickly.
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I think maybe the best action is to draw up plans for a new instance, in public on here.
That way, if Tom returns, the plans can be used to continue/help this instance.
If he doesn't, then eventually the plans can be used for a new instance.
It might be worth having a discord/mailing list or similar, not for the planning, but to give a location for discussions to happen if the instance vanished suddenly.
I think maybe the best action is to draw up plans for a new instance, in public on here. That way, if Tom returns, the plans can be used to continue/help this instance.
That's my thinking - I posted about it somewhere else in this thread.
If we can get volunteers to admin, then Tom only has to swoop in, promote them and we'll get refederated.
If the worst happens, we have admins in place to migrate to a new instance.
It might be worth having a discord/mailing list or similar, not for the planning, but to give a location for discussions to happen if the instance vanished suddenly.
I started a feddit.uk Matrix space. It's handy to have in case the server goes down for whatever reason (lemmy.world started their Discord server because of all the DDoS attacks and now have a Matrix space).
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Yes, that's my concern. I'll take my best shot at contacting Tom now.
The "bus factor" is the minimum number of team members that have to suddenly disappear from a project before the project stalls due to lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel.
I guess our bus factor is currently 1.
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Yes it looks like we were defederated for lack of admin activity.
Links:
Yeah I thought this might be the case. It's possibly a little pre-emptive unless there's a bunch of feddit.uk users who are causing trouble and it's just easier for them to do this, but it's a bit shit that we all lose access to one of the biggest instances because they can't reach our admin? They mention there's other instances too, I wonder which those are.
I had noticed that Tom has been very quiet recently, we could definitely see if he'd be open to allowing more admins when he's next around.
As far as I'm aware there haven't been any major trolling incidents (unlike some recent additions to that list) and it seems to be largely down to having a single, currently inactive Admin.
It has been raised with @Tom@feddit.uk before but, obviously, this has become a bit more serious and urgent. I'll do what I can to contact him.
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This is a real shame, I like our little community here, but without lw content it is too small to be sustainable, in my opinion. Also factor in that there is no active admin, then this may be the end.
It's not over until it's over, I'm not out of tricks yet but it is amazing how much stroke L.W have - defederate somewhere and you kinda kill it off.
Thanks for confirming.
So first priority is getting a list of admins so Tom can scoop them up on his King Arthur-like return. Or they can lead the exodus like Moses (other mythological analogies may apply):
- @tkc@feddit.uk is in
- @Xylinna@lemmy.world is in
- @blackn1ght@feddit.uk says they'll do what they can
- @thehatfox@feddit.uk is thinking it over
- I'm prepared to pitch in if it helps spread the load
Anyone else?
edit:
- @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk is in
- @flamingos@feddit.uk has offered help
- @Flax_vert@feddit.uk is up for helping
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pls come back @tom we need you, even to just delegate the admin over to any one of us. we can sort it out somehow.
Oh, bollox! I hope this can get sorted out soon. I really like it here, so much nicer than Reddit. Plus I got to moderate a community!! Thanks @Emperor@feddit.uk. I'd like to carry on doing that.
TOM!!
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Instances blocked by lemmy.world include:
- skinheads.[x]
- breastmilk.[x]
- cum.[x]
- kiwifarms.[x]
- pedo.[x]
- hexbear
and now
- feddit.uk
Well... hmm.
I know some people don't care for the British but still.
You could say, we aren't their cup of tea.
It's not like we don't say sorry enough.
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I think we should give this a week and then make plans to create a new instance. I've already created an account somewhere else, but I am quite fond of this instance.
I also like what I have seen in this instance and it'd be a shame to be forced to leave it. It also worries me a bit how dependent we are on individuals in some fediverse communities. I actually first migrated to kbin from reddit, but many of the communities/magazines ended up overwhelmed with spam or completely dead due to sole inactive moderators.
Yes, that single point of failure is one we have to address when Tom returns or we start a new instance. Short term getting a team of admins in place is critical, then we need to make sure the finances are solid so it can keep running as long as there's interest in it.
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This explains why all my obviously incredible content has been failing to hit....
In all seriousness, what's the move here if Tom doesn't get back to us?
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Well this is a blow, as a Lemmy.world user I had no idea this had happened. Activity suddenly dried up and I assumed everyone had just given up on UK Lemmy. This is the first real issue I’ve had with defederation, and it’s not great that it happened so silently.
What is the plan if or UK lemmings going forward if the Feddit UK admin remains “absent”? World is the biggest Lemmy instance so it would seem a major loss to loose access to them.
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Your instance is in their blocked instances.
You're right... The fuck? I don't see anything on the announcements community about it?
Edit: I think world has blocked instances in the past where the admins are non-responsive, it happened with feddit.nl not too long ago, so this could be the reason why.
I'll look into this in a bit.
How do you reach out to them? Just drop them a private message?
I'm on L.W's Discord and Matrix channels.
Oh really, for no apparent reason?
I'm 100% on board with instances blocking who they like, but I really think it should be more transparent than that. If we're blocked, we should at least get a message that we're blocked when trying to post...
Yeah it needs to be way more obvious. At least have something in the modlog with a note against why an instance was blocked.
L.W promised greater transparency and this isn't it, unless I missed an announcement. 🤷🏻
They recently banned a community on their server that I follow without an announcement too. Honestly seems like that server is going to shit.
I think they just need to be more careful - they're the big dog in the park (larger than the other instances combined) and any action can have major consequences for everyone else.
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Yeah, their list is quite long. So long that I almost missed seeing yours on there.
There are issues with several instances, from what I can tell. And they're causing issues with moderation.
I won't elaborate much more, as I still haven't heard back from Tom.
But if they're not resolved soon, we're going to eventually have a big problem.
Have we been refederated? Just seen a recent post on a lemmy.world community and it looks to be up to date:
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