While I’m not interested in encouraging /r/selfhosted users to leave reddit, I thought it would be good to have some discussion around the possibilities for a selfhosted community on lemmy.

It looks as though most users are washing up in !selfhosted@lemmy.ml, but this is but a temporary refuge in these troubled times. The single mod is not responsive, lemmy.ml is already struggling with load, and the background lemmy.ml community may not be right for us. If we set up shop here we’re just going to have to move, probably sooner rather than later.

So if we move, do we create our own instance or move to an existing one better aligned with our needs?

Given that there don’t seem to be any instances which are really ideal, the remaining advantages to choosing an existing instance is simply that we rely on someone else’s infrastructure (and the associated time, skill, and responsibility). This is a significant advantage which makes this option tough to pass up, but the equally significant disadvantage is that we don’t get our own place. It’s like renting a room in a frat house rather than building our own mansion.

The remaining option is to create our own instance. If we were to go this route, in my opinion it is critically important that the responsibility for this be shared amongst several people. This dramatically reduces the odds that someone loses interest, or lacks the resources to support the community long term. While I’m certain that everyone in this sub could spin up an instance, we all know that providing high availability to potentially thousands of users is not something to be undertaken on a whim. There’s a significant risk to the community in allowing someone to take this on themselves.

I think fosstodon (mastodon) with several admins is a good model of how something like this can work. I also think it would be a good idea to broaden the subject to FOSS rather than merely self hosting.

So the questions are…

Do you think we should create & support a community on an existing instance, or create our own instance?

If an existing instance then which one?

If a new instance then how would you like to see it operated?