Probably a good article to share to people skeptical about the resiliency of the Threadiverse
Sebastian Lauwers: "What Lemm.ee’s shutdown means (and doesn’t) for the Fediverse" - Mastodon
Submitted 3 weeks ago by ragingHungryPanda@lemmy.zip to fediverse@lemmy.world
https://mastodon.online/@teotwaki/114780256363464851
Comments
Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
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.
Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It had an impact, but is des 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.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
] > 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?
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
From what I’ve seen, it means a bunch of bitching.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
This is the history of mankind summarized succinctly.
MimicJar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Lemmy allows a user to export their subscriptions, blocks, and saved posts /comments in 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.
TachyonTele@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I migrated my account from .ee in three seconds. So yes, it is one of those platforms.
Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
even better between Lemmy & PieFed.
It already works between Lemmy and Piefed
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
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.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
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.
lazycouchpotato@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Arthur@literature.cafe 3 weeks ago
Direct link to the article: sebastian.lauwe.rs/blog/lemmee-shutting-down/