3d ago

Would you all be okay to give the Piedfed migration feature a try? If you prefer a Lemmy instances, which ones would they be?

Presentation of the feature: https://piefed.social/post/667045

Example of successful migration: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45876492

Our next step would be to give this feature a try. What would basically happen is that

we would lock our community to prevent integrity issue during the migration
https://piefed.social/c/fedigrow@lemm.ee would become https://piefed.social/c/fedigrow , with all the existing posts and comments
you all would subscribe to the new !fedigrow@piefed.social , and then continue as usual

Should the migration not work, we would still be able to use the current community, and then manually migrate elsewhere.

The one caveat is that from Lemmy instances, the community doesn’t have show old posts (see https://lemm.ee/c/barcelona@piefed.social), but if you were restarting a community from scratch you wouldn’t have access to your old posts anyway.

Other federated instances like feddit.online would also see the posts and comments on the new community: https://feddit.online/c/barcelona@piefed.social

The objective of this post is to address any questions or issues before we move forward. We are probably going to leave it open for 48 hours, and then reassess based on the community feedback.

51 comments

👍, the consolidation of the duplicates/crossposts on my feed alone was enough to gradually make piefed my daily driver. I've liked the change so far, and conceptually favor decentralizing not only away from a single instance, but also a single platform.
- Yes, that feature is great. However, as some people here are not convinced, we are probably going to stay on a Lemmy instance.
  Lemmy.zip is the only one suggested so far, let's see if there are other suggestions.

Can I ask why people are ready to rely on piefed? I didn't audit the code, but from the user's perspective it looks and feels like a final project in a CS class. I don't mean to disrespect, but you seem to put a lot of trust into something that is rather raw and unproven (imo). I'm ready to be proven wrong, I'm genuinely asking.
- Disclaimer: if you prefer Lemmy, you would still be able to interact with the new Piefed community as if it was a Lemmy community (e.g. : https://lemmy.world/post/30619912). The main pro here would be able to recover all of the past content in an active community, compared to only having it archived in a lemm.ee community.
  So the Piefed/Lemmy choice wouldn't really change a lot for a user, you can still use your platform of choice to interact with the community.
  Now, about Piefed itself:
  Feature-wise, it is already ahead of Lemmy
  this community migration feature
  keyword blocks embedded in the platform rather than uBlock filters
  consolidated view of comments of crossposts (e.g. https://piefed.social/post/825756#post_replies)
  posts and user flairs: https://piefed.social/c/casualeurope
  App support is starting, with Interstellar supporting it (https://piefed.social/post/817564) and Thunder going to work on it (https://lemmy.world/comment/17459098)
  Also, I'm not sure about the "final project of a CS class" aspect, it's not like Lemmy doesn't have its own quirks and issues (!languagesettings@lemmy.zip , all of the features above missing).
  Of course, the UI could be improved (I still prefer the Lemmy UI, probably a matter of habit), but as the Piefed API has now been enabled, we can expect Photon, Alexandrite and others to support it too in the future.

Does Piefed even have version numbers yet?
Also, can I opt out of having my posts and comments migrated?
Also why the flagship and not another instance?
- Does Piefed even have version numbers yet?
  Not that I know of, is that a deal breaker for you?
  Also, can I opt out of having my posts and comments migrated?
  I guess we can try working something out if we would indeed migrate.
  Also why the flagship and not another instance?
  Would you prefer to use https://feddit.online/ ?
  
  Not that I know of, is that a deal breaker for you?
  It's just a terrible practice. How do users ensure that an instance is running the latest security patch?
  I guess we can try working something out if we would indeed migrate.
  While I'm happy to move, I'm not happy to have software falsify my actions and I in no way consent to it doing so.
  Would you prefer to use https://feddit.online/ ?
  You know me, I like to spread the load.
- PieFed will release version 1.0 today.
  
  Congratulations!

I'd say go for it.

I as a Lemmy.World user would be able to subscribe just the same, right? It's all just fediverse connectivity? Or does it need to be a Lemmy community specifically for me to do that?
- Yes, you would be able to interact the same way. You can see !casualeurope@piefed.social and !lego@piefed.social as an example.
  
  Ah, that's what I thought. In that case, I'm good with the move.
  I mean, my preference is that lemm.ee stayed alive, but, what are ya gonna do?

This sounds good yeah.
There are valuable posts on this community it would be cool if they got transferred over with the piefed migration feature.

Not in favor.
- Could you please elaborate why?
  
  PieFed has the tendency to add features that are are not compatible with ActivityPub in general (flairs, multi-communities) and I am not convinced it is ready to have a large influx of activity. It's one thing to have a server with lots of users receiving notifications, it's another to have the same server also responsible in sending a large number of notifications whenever it needs to announce a new comment or post.

It doesn't seem like a great feature if it only moves the post history to the imported instance and not to any other instances.
- It also imported the posts to https://feddit.online/c/barcelona@piefed.social , so not only to one instance.
  It stays a Piefed feature, but it's not limited to a single instance.
  Beyond that, it's better than nothing? The choice is basically between
  starting a new community from scratch without any post
  starting a community with existing post and comments for the new instance and federated Piefed instances
  It's not like there is an alternative that would work better.

I would suggest lemmy.zip as a Lemmy instance to migrate this community too.
Admins are very transparent (https://lemmy.zip/post/39959863), the instance has a good track record and monitoring dashboard (https://status.lemmy.zip/)
As !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com is already on dbzer0, that would allow to spread the "meta" communities a bit on different instances.
- It blocks UK though right.
  Be a shame if UK people can’t see this useful comm.
  
  Lemmy.zip being blocked in the UK wouldn't prevent them from accessing the community via another instance: https://feddit.uk/c/soulslike@lemmy.zip / https://feddit.uk/c/fedigrow@lemm.ee

Is there a recommended way for other instances to load the old posts that were added in the new community? Right now we only see the new content that is on !barcelona@piefed.social (2 posts)
- Happy cake day!
  Hm, you should still see at least 5, maybe nobody from lemmy.ca is subscribed to the new community yet?
  But yes, as I said it's not possible to backfill the new community on Lemmy instances (on other Piefed instances, it works though)
  
  Makes sense, and thank you!

I would be fine with a Piefed community.
I am assuming this refers to Fedigrow, right? Not casualconversation?
- Well spotted, I was lazy and just copy pasted from the other community, editing now

I asked elsewhere, but this is probably a better place for it.
Wait, Piefed migration doesn’t just work from Piefed to Piefed, but even from Lemmy into Piefed?
- Correct, you can see the example here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45876492
  Piefed to Piefed is better to migrate subscribers, and content for federated Piefed instances, but the core feature (migrating posts to the new community) work for Piefed and Lemmy

51 comments