As explained previously, ~~this instance is still running on the Lemmy dev's free hosting offer~~ which was graciously extended (thx!) a bit for me to look into transferring it to my own server.
I haven't been making as much progress with it as I hoped in recent weeks (due to various factors), but to be honest the little work that I did put into it made me realize that I am really not a big fan of the tech-stack that Lemmy uses.
As I have been running and using some other Fediverse software, I also realized that the communities-only nature of Lemmy is isolating it from the rest of the Fediverse and to be honest I am not too happy with the homegrown community lately.
So I am seriously considering a reboot of slrpnk.net using a different software and now might be a good time for it as there are only very few active users of this instance and I have to transfer it to my server soon anyway.
Options that I considered are Pixelfed (for a more creators/artist focussed instance), Akkoma (to be closer to the main Fediverse) and the new Kbin.
The linked roadmap convinced me that Kbin might be the best option. It uses a tech-stack I am much more familiar with and combines Lemmy like communities with Mastodon like microblogging.
So while I have not 100% made up my mind yet, consider this an early warning that this instance is probably going to undergo some major changes and if you would prefer to stay on Lemmy, it might be better to migrate your account somewhere else.
However Kbin is in theory compatible with Lemmy, so it might end up not such a big change after all. Do note however that there is no migration path, so accounts and communities would need to be re-created.
Let me know what you think :)
I would not attempt to convert the user-database at all. Most accounts are probably dormant (or spam accounts from before), and for GDPR reasons I would rather not like to take over a lot of user data like email addresses and passwords. Better to delete those and start fresh.
I wonder though what happens if someone tries to address an previously existing account or community on the same url via federation...
We probably also need to have a transition period during which previous users can reserve their user-names so that no impersonation can take place.
That makes sense and is understandable. Yeah I was curious about that and if federation would complicate things. I know these accounts show up as copies on Mastodon ( username@slrpnk.net ) but I assume those would get deleted with it. Some sort of transition period is a good idea and might help resolve that if possible.
Is there a way to backup our community list on lemmy?
I don't think so, but it should be easy to recreate. But for now I think I'll stay on Lemmy after all. Kbin probably needs a bit further maturing before it can fully replace Lemmy.
That makes sense, meanwhile maybe our instance will grow with the Reddit exodus.