Hello,

There is a unique problem of the fediverse. When an instance goes offline, its communities will never sync again.

Recently, vlemmy.com shutdown. Quite a few communities synced with discuss.online and other instances. Because vlemmy.com is not longer brokering communication, these communities will never be in sync again.

We have a several options:

  1. Leave them there. Do nothing.
  2. Leave them there but make a post that it’s dead and hope people see it.
  3. Purge the communities. Act like they never existed.
  4. Build some elaborate system to work around vlemmy being gone. This would take a lot of work and collaboration with other instances.

Let me know what makes the most sense to you as users. Are any of you still using vlemmy communities? What about long-term planning? Maybe this isn’t an issue now but what if lemmy.world vanished?

Please, let me know what you think. I’m torn on this one.

Thanks, Jason

  • jgrim of Sublinks@discuss.onlineOPM
    4·
    1 year ago

    You’re welcome to bring your community here. I’ve survived a few attacks that have taken others down. I’m a software engineer and infrastructure guy. My goal is 99.9% uptime.

    I’m also working on some of these issues, or at least the tools to help identify them.

    I think many servers will come and go mostly due to cost. There isn’t a great way to cover costs today, and the cost get higher and higher as you grow. I’m in a unique situation than most, where I’m willing to take losses for a long time before donations catch up.

    Based on my experience and observations, it appears that things will vanish, and I want to find a way to preserve them and react to it without ruining the image of the fediverse or Lemmy.

    • Methane_Magnate@discuss.online
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for the invitation, your efforts, and your financial commitment.

      Servers will come and go, and for many reasons. Those to whom computers are black boxes will come, get lost, be easily discouraged, and go elsewhere. For the fediverse to supplant the dominant, monolithic platforms, it has to be stable and simple to use.

      I’m insufficiently conversant to discuss the ‘how’ of making things secure and redundant. Maybe a p2p architecture, I don’t know. But something along those lines that would have the fediverse resistant to decay.

      I had restarted the lost community before receiving your kind offer. But if I start another, it will be here.

      And again, thank you for all you’re doing.