Hello sh.itjust.works community,

Many of you have been eager to get an update about when the sh.itjust.works instance will get it's upgrade to the latest version of lemmy. Here's a update along with a tentative timeline.

In December 2023 I purchased a new server for this community. It took me awhile but I eventually made the time to get it racked at the local datacenter. For the sysadmins lingering and those interested here are the specs:

• Dual Xeon 2.9Ghz CPUs (32 cores total)
• 256GB ram
• 4 x 1TB SSD in raid 10 (with room to add 6 more disks)
• 10gbit networking

While I'm ready to proceed with the upgrade, I've decided to first migrate this instance over to the new hardware. Here are two reasons.

1. Those of you who have been around long enough may remember that I've been running this instance on "borrowed" unused resources that were available at the time. There are no more resources available for this instance to grow.
2. There are reports that the latest version of lemmy may use more resources. Given we are among the bigger instances, should I end up in a situation where I need to increase resources to keep things fast I'll be restricted.

Here's the tentative timeline:

• If anything major goes wrong on the 27th I will revert back the changes and bring the instance back up on the current server.
• If anything major goes wrong on the 29th I will revert back using an earlier snapshot. If that fails, I will restore from a backup.

During these two planned events those who want to provide moral support or who want to get periodic updates are more than welcome to join us on our matrix channel

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Update February 29 2024
We've successfully completed the upgrade to v1.9.3. I'm happy to announce that we did it in an astonishing 27 minutes, a whole 93 minutes under what was expected. The extra leg work that was done over the last few weeks combined with the better hardware definitely played a part. Looking over the processes, it looks like the service responsible for images is still doing some work so it's possible that you will come across some broken images. I'll be keeping on eye on that over the next bit and make adjustments if needed. Thank you all for the support and to all of you who kept me company on our matrix channel. Have a good evening.

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Update February 27 2024
We've successfully completed the migration. I'm happy to announce that this instance is now running on its new hardware dedicated solely to this community! We experienced just under 40 minutes of downtime which is a whole 50 minutes less than expected. Please give this instance a chance to catch up what it missed but we should be good within the next 30 or so minutes. Thank you

Please share your thoughts, concerns and opinions. Try to keep it constructive.

Link to announcement

Hey all,

Similar to the lemmy.world announcement, we have defederated from Rammy.

Want to discuss this more? I created a [Discussion] post for us to do just that.

Some of you may have noticed that there's a new bot in town. But this time, its one of ours.

What should we name it?

Post your entry.

Rules.

• The 5 most upvoted entries will be brought to a vote.
• The winning entry will become the display name of the bot.

This instance has been upgrade to 0.18.0.

The lemmy developers have removed the built in captcha so I had to enable email verification. They will be re-implementing this feature in the next update.

Lots of new improvements in this version. The Link i wanted to share is on the lemmy.ml instance and they appear to be down at the moment. Hopefully not related to this update.

Stay tuned.

Edit: Lemmy.ml back up, Here is the post: link of the update

Hey all,

As discussed here, I am looking for 3 new moderators to help with this community.

Please review this post and vote for the candidate you would like to see help on this community.

In no particular order, the candidates are:

• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]
• @[email protected]

I invite you to review users post history when deciding on voting.

This thread will be open for 72 hours (until Friday June 23rd, 8PM ET) at which point voting will stop. Any votes after this time will not be counted. I will try to lock this thread after that time so people do not accidentally continue voting.

Everyone gets 1 vote, including the users being considered. The top 3 will be given mod powers of this community to help with organization of discussions and votes.

Please vote by calling the persons name. For example, if I you wanted to vote for TheDude you would reply with: TheDude

Since making the announcement last night to become community driven, The Agora has quickly become an active place full of discussions, proposals and voting. In order to keep things going I'm looking for volunteers to help facilitate the conversations and apply the rules that have been determine by this community.

As a mod of The Agora you should be active on our main matrix channel and willing to help facilitate conversations between other mods and users.

As a mod:

• you will still retain your right to vote just like anyone else.
• may be dismissed by the community if its felt you are abusing your powers or pushing your own agenda.
• will help maintain order.
• follow the rules of the community.

Not sure you want to help mod this community but would like to nominate someone else? go ahead and nominate someone.

Hey all

Today, I am thrilled to share two significant developments with you that will determine our shared future.

Firstly, the issue of donations. Since the inception of this instance, your most frequent request has been the ability to make contributions to support my initiative. While initially, I had never intended to accept donations, I've come to realize the value this brings in ensuring our platform's sustainability. In response to your requests, within the next week, I will be introducing several options for those of you who wish to donate. I want to emphasize that these donations are entirely optional and will directly support our instance's operational necessities - dedicated hardware, colocation fees, email services, and more.

The second announcement needs a full disclosure: it could be an extraordinary idea or potentially not so. Since the beginning of this instance, I've seen a number of insightful posts, recommendations, and ideas that the community has put forward, often superior to what I could have conceptualized myself. Even our instance's name was born from one of your suggestions.

Frequently, I'm approached by users seeking clarity on our rules and guidelines or expressing their thoughts on existing rules. In reflecting upon this, it became clear to me that I've been attempting to determine what's best for the community. But who am I to make these decisions? Just two weeks ago, I was a user among you all. Hence, I'm moving away from the traditional role of decision-making.

Instead, I want to hand over the reins of decision-making to you - the community. I'm excited to announce the creation of a community called agora where you can express your desires for the future of this instance. It's up to you to come together, discuss, and reach a consensus. If you wish to add, remove, or modify a rule, make a post, garner support from other members, and I'll implement the change. This invitation extends beyond our immediate community - I welcome input from everyone across the fediverse. Again to be clear, I gave an example of modifying rules but this applies to anything that I have the ability to do on this instance.

As the instance owner, I only have one caveat to add - any decisions made should not jeopardize the instance's existence or result in legal complications. Aside from that, I'm eager to see where this new direction takes us.

Thank you for your ongoing support, creativity, and engagement.

Like many of you, I woke up this morning to discover that our instance, along with lemmy.world, had been unexpectedly added to the beehaw block list. Although this development initially caught me off guard, the administrators at beehaw made an announcement shedding light on their decision.

The primary concern raised was our instance's policy of open registration. Given my belief that the fediverse is still navigating its early stages, I believe that for it to mature, gain traction, and encourage adoption, it is crucial for instances to offer an uncomplicated and direct route for newcomers to join and participate. This was one of the reason I decided to launch this instance. However, I do acknowledge that this inclusive approach brings its unique challenges, including the potential for toxicity and trolls. Despite these hurdles, I maintain the conviction that our collective strength as a community can overcome these issues.

After this happened, the beehaw admins and I had a good chat about their decision. While our stances on registration policies might diverge, we realized that our ultimate goals are aligned: we both strive to foster communities that thrive in an atmosphere of safety and respect, where users can passionately engage in discussions and feel a sense of belonging.

Although the probability of an immediate reversal are slim given the current circumstances, I believe we have managed to identify common ground. It's evident that, even in separation, we can unite to contribute positively to the broader fediverse community.

In the coming weeks or months, we plan to collaborate with other lemmy instance administrators to suggest enhancements and modifications to the lemmy project. Primarily, our proposals will concentrate on devising tools and features that empower us, as instance administrators, to moderate our platforms effectively.

In the meantime, while I understand may not be ideal for everyone, users who choose to participate on the beehaw instance will be required to register a separate account on their instance.

Thank you all for continuing to make this community great!

Common Fortigate, do better. I really love your firewall.

"Give it to me!" She yelled.
"I'm so fucking wet, give it to me now!
She could scream all she wanted.
I was keeping the umbrella.

** Full disclosure, not my joke but still one I love to share

Good morning,

Some of you may have experienced a small hiccup this morning (eastern time). I went ahead and upgraded our lemmy instance to 0.17.4. I also took this opportunity to make some small adjustments to the instance that required a restart of services. These changes were mainly related to increasing Federation worker count in hopes to decrease synchronization times with other instances. A small fix to help slow down the storage growth was also applied (limiting log sizes that get generated).

Everything should be back up now. In the future my goal is to be more transparent with scheduling downtime.

edit: updated link