Hi! I’m a mod at r/solarpunk on reddit, and we’re looking for a better platform on which to host the community. I’ve been browsing slrpnk.net and I really like it.
I’d like to start encouraging early adopters to register an account here. Any migration would certainly be gradual, but before I do anything I wanted to check and see how the current admin and other users feel about this plan.
How’s the instance running? What rate do you think this instance could take on new users? How is your moderation capacity at the moment?
So the quick answer is: yes people interested in Solarpunk are very welcome here 👍
The slightly longer one is: The server this Lemmy instance runs on is currently far from overloaded. My current guestimate is that without major changes the setup can maybe take 10x as many active users. With some optimisations I have in mind for a dedicated database server probably also a few more (maybe around 10k monthly active users???), but that’s about the maximum I am willing to scale it as long as this is just a hobby project with no compensation for my time spend.
Thus if you want to further promote this instance on /r/solarpunk please try to explain that people can also make accounts on other Lemmy instances and access our communities from there. So if they are really active contributors that identify strongly with the Solarpunk movement, then by all means let them make an account here. But if they are only an occasional poster & lurker, another Lemmy instance (maybe a regional one?) works just as well and this helps spreading the server load onto more shoulders (as server to server communication is lighter on server resources).
As for moderation help: yes additional community moderators are likely needed, as not all of the current ones seem very active. Additional site admins would be also nice, but I am a bit hesitant to add people for that role that are not already longer term members of this instance and seem sufficiently trustworthy. For now, the approval of new accounts doesn’t take that much time so I can easily manage it alone.
Speaking of monetary compensation, I’ve never seen you ask but, is there a place we can donate to you?
Not yet, no. And it isn’t urgently needed.
I started writing down some expenses and funding goals here though: https://wiki.f-hub.org/books/slrpnknet/page/donations-funding-goals
My current plan it to set up a donation page via Fosspay (Stripe only) and maybe also an account on Liberapay. But it is relatively low on my priority list. If you want do donate something right now, please donate to the Lemmy developers.
Leading by example I see 😎
Sounds good, keep us updated