TL;DR, Feddit.UK is down, we’re working on making a fun replacement!
A number of days ago, feddit.uk had kicked the bucket.
The community on there had noticed months ago that the owner was inactive. This was around September (Going off of memory). So they arranged to set up a new community run by the same feddit.uk admins (except the owner, the only one who had host access) which would replace it. However, on the weekend as Quackhouse was going to be launched, the owner responded to an email and made two users admins. Emperor and GreatAlbatross. However, they did not have access to the console, just lemmy adminship. Ever since, the owner has been AWOL. The community were too afraid to go back to setting up Quackhouse incase the owner showed up again.
Unfortunately, that wariness and being afraid led to the worst case scenario happening - Feddit.uk has dropped offline. We believe the instance has reached some form of file size cap. It was basically an aeroplane flying with dead pilots before then. And it appears that aeroplane has crashed.
If you are from the feddit.uk refugee base, please join the new community whenever it is ready. Do not sign up now. We are busy and still setting up and don’t want an influx of new users just yet.
For now, sit tight. I’ll update this post whenever it’s up and running and ready for sign-ups. I am not posting the name for now so we don’t get overrun with sign ups. But we would love to invite you back to our community when it’s set up.
The new community will have it’s own unique identity that doesn’t have to piggyback off of Lemmy and Reddit for it’s name. But it will still aim to be the main UK lemmy instance that feddit.uk was. By all means, it will be a full lemmy instance, still federated, etc. It should be the same experience as feddit.uk. But we actually do have fun plans to create a nice sense of identity with that instance if all goes well! I will warn you, it does have a silly name, but that was the name that was decided upon.
We look forward to having new members. All are welcome, whether or not you were from Feddit.UK or not. We will have the theme be a UK-based lemmy instance.
I’ll try and remember to update this post when we are ready.
~20CX12
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I’m slightly confused about how I am reading this
I currently own lemmit.uk as I bought it as this was all going down, if anyone with the means to put a lemmy instance up wants it let me know.
Even with the Reddit connotations it is a preferable domain to some of the ‘puns’ that have been put forward!
A bad name for the new instance will lose people.
If feddit.uk goes down again, how will we get latest updates and info on the new instance?
Taa
I’m not very tech savvy, but I’m a mod of some fairly large communities hosted on feddit.uk. Can someone ELI5 what, if anything, I need to do to keep my communities up? [email protected] is the one I’m most keen to keep going.
Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do if the server goes down. I’d suggest setting up the communities on another instance and try to get people to migrate to the new one, like what [email protected] did.
That’s what we’re doing with our new instance :)
Looking forward to it, take your time and we’ll see you on the other side
If I understand how lemmy works, the only way that anyone not on lemmy.world is able to read this is because feddit.uk is now back to life!
Good luck to you guys!
I’m in almost the same boat, head admin just went and disappeared a few months ago, all the update are done with other admin that has technical knowledge on these sort of thing, and i’m here just to manage the site but without access to the server. Now the people who manage the server started to lose interest and communication is quite hard, and i’m left without access to the server and the only admin that is still active. When the time come i think i’m gonna went your route as well.
I feel like I gently warned about this during the process, relying on an inactive admin always seemed like a bad idea. I hoped it was taken care of and that somebody else was assigned console access but no assurance was provided, no explanation as to what the actual situation was, so I left here for another instance. Turns out my fears were true and I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time here.
I have no idea why folk were so eager for Tom to turn back up again, why that was a source of any delay, or any reason to change plans for “Quackhouse” once they were in advanced stages.
I feel like all this has really crushed what was a promising UK community on Lemmy, a double-blow now, and I hope any new instance that appears is well and truly distanced from this one.
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
It’s now been a week, and Feddit is back up. Does this mean that plans to move have been cancelled again?
Would also like to know this. The communication is terrible. Is @[email protected] part of feddit.uk or separate? This is what I meant when I said it should be “well and truly distanced” from this instance. Somebody else needs to set up the UK instance, not be reliant on what ever Flaky Tom decrees. I’m not in the position to step up, and perhaps nobody is - but please could people honestly communicate that so we can look for alternatives?
I think we are going to just have to do it ourselves.
Does anyone have stats on what is required to run a Lemmy instance? What sort of data requirements are needed to host for something like the UK to access?
I’m still stuck with shitty BT 40 meg internet, but hopefully we should be getting Gigaclear in the next quarter if the marketing materials are accurate and I can self host.
britbon.gs plz
I am gravely disappointed to find that number.wang has been taken.
Anyone know what the cost of running it is/was?
😬 the name is absolutely quackers
The fact that there are Owners just doesn’t sit right with me. That is just centralisation in another form.
Where do you think servers and infrastructure and the time needed to maintain them come from?
I am not ignoring the money and labour that goes into managing an instance. I just wish there was an institutional way of it not having to be dependant solely on single/select few individual(s).
Just beacuse the alternative way is hard and not feasible (yet) does not mean you should turn a blind eye to the flaws of current state of things.
The way we’re trying to do things, is distributed responsibility.
A brace of admins for the day to day, super admins with back-end access, then a final layer of admin with hosting and domain control.
If things aren’t happening, it passes up the chain, with people having more responsibility/access. Normally, it shouldn’t need to go beyond the admins, unless an upgrade is in progress.
The tricky bit is getting people invested enough.
Conceptually, what would it look like to you?
Instance deployments are centralised, the content is decentralised.
Decentralisation means you can ignore feddit.uk and move to another instance if you want, so it’s working as designed.
Real decentralisation would mean that the accounts and communities could have multiple homes (added by the account or community mods so private data doesn’t go anywhere you don’t trust), so people could just carry on when a server admin forgets about it.
We’re not there yet, and I don’t think the current Fediverse really handles it. Something to work towards, I suppose.
Agreed, Feddit.uk just ran into this wall due to an absent instance owner.
Decentralised moderation sounds potentially difficult but would be awesome if implemented in a sustainable way.
We do have three people planned to have shell access atm. I think two have host access. We’re going to have some form of system in place where if someone gets hit by a bus, things can be okay.
Understandable. However I still would like if there was a way of democratising even the infra/deployment/admin power. I think that should be the future direction of the fediverse. I am even willing to pay for thimgs, with money and labour.
It’s certainly an interesting idea, but I think very difficult to execute.
The problem is that individual instances fit more to a model of a utility company than a governmental organisation.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. You could set up a democratic process, elect someone, and then they’d need to collect “taxes” to support the running of the infra and the work of the electees.
However, therein lies your problem. Lemmy has the same issue with its user base that Reddit did/does:
- By and large, they don’t like to (or can’t) pay for things
- They don’t like providing a service (i.e. deployment and moderation) for free.
Luckily lemmy.ml is completely free and doesn’t incur any costs, responsibilities or liabilities.
Thanks for the snark. I will do my best to not include in conversations about how to make things better.
