As a former Redditor looking for a new home - I was first directed to Lemmy.ml - which has a stickied post asking users to find another instance to join. I was directed by an r/solarpunk moderator to this instance (makes perfect sense!) and at the same time I had seen some suggestions in similar spaces to make a kbin.pub instance for myself, and somewhere in there I was thrown the idea to join Mastadon as well.

As I’ve come to understand, these all exist within Fediverse, and wherever I join I’ll be able to see and post and comment to the content of other Fediverse alternative instances (although I haven’t really tried, I don’t quite follow this) - so no reason to get to caught up on where to sign up… In browsing on lemmy.ml I came to understand these instances are hosted by an admin team who basically set the secondary rules (after Lemmy/Mastadon/Kbin’s own code of conduct /rules). So then I came back to slrpnk and found this instance has changed admins and server hosts.

This whole preface is actually mostly a large question (as I still don’t fully ‘get it’) and to maybe give people who have the same questions a space to ask away… at the same time it might help to contextualize my newcomer questions:

    1. I don’t know if this will work, @poVoq (doesn’t look like it worked, how can we @ a user?) do I have it correct that you are the sole admin? If so, thanks! And are you looking for help in the longterm or shortterm even?
    1. Are you comfortable with the Reddit refugees joining here? Is there any qualms or worries you (or anyone else, for that matter) has about this instance and an influx of users?
    1. (as a very base-level techy person, forgive me if the following words can/should even be strung together) Can there be multiple servers? Can different admins with different servers provide support (or “host”) for this instance? Would there necessarily always be a head admin?
    1. Is there a known cap to how many users can join an instance/this instance? Maybe providing a ballpark estimate might help us realize when/if/how to support the expansion of this instance (if and when it is a collective desire. - not just some newcomer like myself deciding so).
    1. a) Is there a way to [un]subscribe, show or hide certain communities within this instance? And is there a way to track how many users are “subbed” to these communities?
    1. b) Can certain communities be labeled as essentially “not currently active” and/or “pending moderation?” And can we see who are the moderators of any community?
    1. c) I would assume that the influx of expats from Reddit would be overwhelming for just the admin to ultimately manage. Is that the case?
    1. Are you able to sticky threads? Is that an admin only ability or is it possible for moderators within (or without, even) the communities too?
    1. With the authority of having your own server and being the only admin, is there anything we should or shouldn’t ask in terms of how this instance is hosted and under what circumstances it would be shut down? As kind of a floor-level question, what happens if the server goes down? Does the instance get wiped? Is it basically unusable but still exists?

I hope my questions weren’t too much! I’m hoping to be a constructive member of a growing community. I was much less active on r/permaculture r/Solarpunk and r/NoLawns though I’d advocate for them a lot - I wasn’t really as available for it then and tbh, I was a bit intimidated to step up and be more of a contributor. But alas here we are and I’m actually pretty excited to see where this goes, hoping to help.