81
Lemmy should implement the ability to clone a community from one instance to another
(sh.itjust.works)
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
81 points (96.6% liked)
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I think it's more or less as you describe. I think what OP is suggesting would be more like a way to migrate a community. Export everything from [email protected] and import everything to [email protected]
I think something like this exists for Mastodon users, but I've never played with it. You could use this to migrate communities from an instance that was going down or otherwise no longer suitable. Even if all old conversations are "frozen" or locked, it would still be useful upon occasion.
But that creates a problem with potential duplicate name, but there is even bigger problem. By export I assume You mean taking ownership so adopting this community into the new server, who decides that? First come first served does not look good in my eyes as a good solution. Since that community is stored as a copy in other instances it should maybe just go into read only mode for eternity
I'd see it as an admin only tool. You already have a name-uniqueness problem and solution. You can already make a new community with the same babe on a different instance. I.e. there is nothing stopping you making [email protected] when I already am running [email protected]. The proposed tool would allow the admin of the [email protected] to export since stuff from that instance, and presumably the admin of the new community on the new instance could import some of that stuff.
Since follows are driven by the end user, the only practical export data would be old posts. Still, would be useful for community migration.
I believe Mastodon allows you to transfer your followers list, but not any content you generated, such as messages or likes. You can export both followers and content, but at the moment there's no way of importing content to new instances, only your followers.
Could probably be doable with database fuckery. Make a second community locally with an identical name, then in the backend swap some IDs around and make it think the posts were actually in the new one all along.
Granted, I haven't looked at the DB structure, so I don't know how plausible it is. If someone tries it, don't blame me if the instance breaks, do at your own risk.