Direct link to the article: https://sebastian.lauwe.rs/blog/lemmee-shutting-down/
Probably a good article to share to people skeptical about the resiliency of the Threadiverse
My sense is that the article (and people in general) are dismissing the loss a little too easily. Here are my thoughts:
- IIRC it was the #3 instance by size in the entire FV. That’s not nothing, and a lot of people were no doubt impacted.
- It was probably the most robust and resilient instance across the entire FV.
- The site-runner was a real pro at technical matters, and notably helped other instances deal with tech issues early on.
- The reason why the place went down, i.e. burnout and harassment across it’s admin team, is something to be concerned about across the FV going forward. It’s also something of an argument that for-profit social media networks (such as Reddit) have some key advantages over volunteer-based, FV-style networks.
It had an impact, but is was limited thanks to the decentralized nature of the platform.
About the most robust and resilient instance, I’m not sure, monthly reports on !home@lemmy.zip are pretty transparent and detailed. Other instances like sh.itjust.works have very high uptime as well.
The last point is a good one, hopefully with better mod tools we can deal with those situations better.
] > About the most robust and resilient instance, I’m not sure, monthly reports on !home@lemmy.zip are pretty transparent and detailed. Other instances like sh.itjust.works have very high uptime as well.
Yeah, the reason I say that is because Sunaurus had setup something like 10 sub-servers (most of them non-redundant) running the instance, at a cost of ~US$200/mo. I can’t pretend to be any expert in such stuff, but my perception is that (rather famously unlike certain other instances) it was overall beautifully able to handle massive influxes of users, DDOS attacks, spam issues, outage issues, and whatever else. It also had a health-status link (now defunct) and I think maybe other user/server tools, as well.
So while I grasp the intrinsic, resilient nature of the FV, Lemm.ee to me was one of the strongest instances there was, and it can never be too good when such as those go down.
To me, it also kind of touches on certain problems of dead communities only getting conserved in ‘ghost states’ by the FV. I mean yes, you can still see them if you know how to look, but they can’t be interacted with, and they’ll never pop up in any feeds. They won’t disappear, but I’m pretty sure that very few people are going to bother visiting them unless the content is absolutely stellar.
Another issue apart from that is that even when the content can be migrated to another instance, nobody can say with any certainty that such instance won’t crash, either. There’s also the fact that now that EGN’s stuff is mostly migrated (with ~160 postings lost), I can’t actually edit any of it even as the community owner. So personally, it’s another big chonk of work trying to patch up any content that has aging issues… such as Imgur content needing to be re-uploaded, info updating, and/or links needing to be fixed. I.e., I’ll need to delete, rework and re-launch so many of those aging posts when I’d much rather be focused on creating new content.
So from my POV, the situation is still a bit fraught, with the most obvious thing seemingly being migration tools needing to be improved, and community-owner tools needing a little more power. Now over on Reddit, people could say something like ‘yeah yeah, I sold my soul to Spez, but at least we don’t have any of those issues.’
So maybe if and when Reddit sets itself on fire again, the FV can be better-prepared to persuade users over. (knock on wood)
/rant?
Yeah, the reason I say that is because Sunaurus had setup something like 10 sub-servers (most of them non-redundant) running the instance, at a cost of ~US$200/mo. I can’t pretend to be any expert in such stuff, but my perception is that (rather famously unlike certain other instances) it was overall beautifully able to handle massive influxes of users, DDOS attacks, spam issues, outage issues, and whatever else. It also had a health-status link (now defunct) and I think maybe other user/server tools, as well.
Lemm.ee was definitely solid, but it was not the only one.
https://discuss.tchncs.de/ is managed by the admin behind https://tchncs.de/ , as you can see, they offer quite a few services: https://status.tchncs.de/status/tchncs
Another issue apart from that is that even when the content can be migrated to another instance, nobody can say with any certainty that such instance won’t crash, either. There’s also the fact that now that EGN’s stuff is mostly migrated (with ~160 postings lost), I can’t actually edit any of it even as the community owner. So personally, it’s another big chonk of work trying to patch up any content that has aging issues… such as Imgur content needing to be re-uploaded, info updating, and/or links needing to be fixed. I.e., I’ll need to delete, rework and re-launch so many of those aging posts when I’d much rather be focused on creating new content.
In your situation, have you ever considered hosting a blog rather than content directly on Lemmy/Piefed? That might be an easier way to manage the content over time. https://text.tchncs.de/about this be used for example, there are probably other instances around (https://writefreely.fediverse.observer/list)
Another option would be WordPress, which would allow you to link your blog with a Lemmy/Piefed community, like it was done here:
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/31759287
- https://dbzer0.com/blog/this-blog-is-now-federated-natively-to-lemmy/
As much as I like Lemmy/Piefed/Mbin, in their current state they’re not the best solution for content that is going to be edited and updated over a long period of time
] > https://discuss.tchncs.de/ is managed by the admin behind https://tchncs.de/ , as you can see, they offer quite a few services: https://status.tchncs.de/status/tchncs
Thanks; cool stuff. I just hope there’s enough resiliency and backup in terms of personnel, such that such projects can go on indefinitely.
] > In your situation, have you ever considered hosting a blog rather than content directly on Lemmy/Piefed? That might be an easier way to manage the content over time.
Well, there’s the rub-- by no means did I set out to create a blog-like project, rather that’s what it happened to drift towards over time. My main intent was to create as close an alternative to r/bandedessinee as possible due to Reddit’s self-immolation at the time. I didn’t want it to be about me, but about community participation, eventually with other people overseeing the project, with myself being more of an occasional contributor. This is doubly the case due to significant health issues and living in a place currently drifting towards… some pretty disastrous general outcomes.
But yes, I’ve tried doing a couple blogs for awhile. I frankly prefer the Reddit/FV approach because I don’t have to be as perfectionistic, ‘complete,’ and me-centred, plus it let’s me work more in a style intended to get general discussion rolling.
As I said above, if PieFed / etc eventually offered the ability to assign transferred content with matching usernames to the new account, that would pretty much solve things for me. Or if the community owner had the ability to modify old content (showing that in a public log of course), then it would also solve things. I don’t feel like I’m hoping for too much here, but maybe I’m wrong…
From what I’ve seen, it means a bunch of bitching.
This is the history of mankind summarized succinctly.
I’m not going to pretend the data is safe—it will disappear eventually.
That’s what’s valuable, yeah. Lots of great posts that I don’t want to be lost.
But, it’s not like we lost everything that was produced in that community overnight, even with the server going offline.
Fair.
I did create a list of all posts submitted to !spotifyplaylists@lemm.ee at !spotifyplaylists@lemmy.world so that all those valuable posts are not lost.
What it meant to me was that I had to unpin the link to my lemm.ee account from my Firefox home page.
It could’ve been the case that I would’ve had one less instance to choose from, but in the aftermath of the announcement, I found two new instances I wanted to try, so I’m actually one ahead in the long run.
And that’s it.
But here’s a bonus feature: many platforms allow you to easily migrate your account to a new instance.
But Lemmy isn’t one of those platforms. Right?
Generally I agree with the article that the shutdown of lemm.ee isn’t a big deal. It sucks for sure, but the Fediverse survives.
Personally I don’t care about account migration. Export/import works fine, but I get that it’s a little clunky for some.
Community migration is something that I think is more important and as I understand PieFed handles this. Hopefully Lemmy will someday and even better between Lemmy & PieFed.
Lemmy allows a user to export their subscriptions, blocks, and saved posts /comments in a JSON file from their account settings page.
That file can then be imported into a new account on any other Lemmy (and even Piefed) instance.
I migrated my account from .ee in three seconds. So yes, it is one of those platforms.
even better between Lemmy & PieFed.
It already works between Lemmy and Piefed
But Lemmy isn’t one of those platforms. Right?
Not for content but that wasn’t what you asked for.
I migrated an account loooong ago and the only thing that didn’t copy/transfer by themselves was my posts. Dunno how much better it has gotten since then but what “makes” the account is so far quite easily exportable and importable.
It doesnt mean anything but its good to get these kind of practices while Lemmy is still small. It seems the.migration process has come along way since 2 years ago.
Hopefully one day we can copy and pay entire threads and comments into the new community or have 100% transfer.
