A couple of weeks have passed, the dust seems to have settled but there are a few important questions remaining. These give a little concern for the future.
Is there more than one admin able to update the instance?
Does someone other than Tom have access to the server in case it goes down or has a problem?
Are backups being taken and if so does more than one person have access to them?
Thanks for the questions, I was waiting to do a big announcement once we had important updates. And waiting… And waiting…
There’s been a lot of housekeeping needed behind the scenes (dealing with nearly 800 reports leading to the removal of 1,000s of spam posts, defederating some of the worst instances, communities that needed their Moderating teams adjusted, a deleted community that needed recreating, etc) but there hasn’t been any progress from Tom.
For the sake of transparency, he messaged me on here with his email and he replied once my email. I basically set out our plans and asked for full access to the hosting and the transferal of the domain to GreatAlbatross (he had offered the latter in his DM on here I don’t want to make it sound like a hostile takeover). I also set out some options - it might be, for example, that he has other projects on the server or there’s complications with the hosting so he can’t give us permanent access, in which case we’d need the code and database so we could transfer the site to our own hosting. That would involve a bit of downtime but I think everyone would be fine with that if it ensures the ongoing viability of the instance.
So that’s where we stand: Tom popped up, updated the instance and made myself and GreatAlbatross Admins (which only gives us access to the web interface, which is fairly limited, and a few super-Moderator tools for fixing things).
So the answers to your questions are probably obvious but here goes:
Is there more than one admin able to update the instance?
No, just Tom.
Does someone other than Tom have access to the server in case it goes down or has a problem?
No.
Are backups being taken and if so does more than one person have access to them?
Backups are usually pretty standard with web hosting services but, as only Tom has access to the server, I don’t know what frequency they are.
So where do we go from here?
Making GA and I Admins is only really a sticky plaster on the issue of making this instance secure for the future. We really need full access to the server and we need to get the finances sorted so there’s enough money trickling in to cover the costs.
It should be easy enough to sort this out but it hasn’t been and resolving that on Feddit.uk is out of my power. We have to rely on Tom to sort out the access we need. Without we are stuck in a bit of limbo.
So the solution seems to be: give Tom a deadline and if we can’t get access or the ability to move the instance to new hosting then we are committed to starting a new instance.
Thank you for the update and for all the hard work you’ve put in.
No problem but the annoying thing is, other than battering through the spam (which was relatively straightforward) there hasn’t really been much hard work - I’d definitely planned for more. It’s more frustrating, twiddling your thumbs waiting for something to happen so you can crack on with everything else that needs doing (for example, I don’t think there’s a way for me to sort out email registration issues from the web interface).
I have now registered lemmit.uk for possible future use. If a new instance is necessary I’m willing to hand it over.
Over on Matrix, it seems that Tom is still not around and still has the domain and hosting. It doesn’t sound like much has happened.
Emperor doesn’t seem to be around this community. But is active in other communities so hopefully will update us eventually.
Hey @[email protected] hope you’re okay. Is there any update for us?
Sorry, I seem to have missed this, so thanks for the nudge. I’m in work now but will reply properly later.
Glad you are okay.
Yeah fine, just busy.
Ok, what have I missed?
I don’t think anything has happened sadly.
I meant whatever happened that couple of weeks have passed and the dust settled since.
Nothing seems to have happened since then. It’s gone quiet on Matrix as well.
I still don’t know what that thing was…
Oh I see, have a look down the community for details. There’s lots of posts.
Very briefly, the sole admin went missing for several months. We were defederated and a plan was hatched to start a new instance. Then the sole admin re-appeared for a brief period and made two others admins.
But they don’t have access to the servers and can’t update the instance and sort out issues like the verification email problem.
So there was going to be a deadline for the old admin to sort stuff out. It needs to be soon as a new version of Lemmy is due which will cut off PWA clients if we don’t upgrade.
Well that’s a bit shit.
I’ve just registered lemmit.uk for a year just in case it comes in handy. Happy to hand it over to anyone who wants to take on the responsibility of maintaining an instance properly.
