I understand saying you’re done maintaining a space— for any reason really.
But from a technical and social standpoint: how difficult is it to hand off the reigns for an instance to someone who is willing to step in?
Because “I’m done *and* I’m shutting it down,” seems extreme in this context.
But there may be under-the-hood factors I am not taking into account.
None of the above is rhetorical. I’d like some feedback from those who have experience being a #mastodonadmin
@glitchontwitch there are a few instances that have changed hands — eg I think .art did a several years back? and wandering.shop is currently in the process of shifting mod teams
generally this has to be done very slowly and with lots of warning not necessarily for technical reasons (though there are some of those too) but because the communities involved need time to find out about the transfer, potentially raise concerns with the old admin team, decide whether or not they trust the new team, and then possibly move instances if they don’t. And even then there are unresolved ethical questions about how to handle inactive accounts, who aren’t around consent to the transfer of their data
@Satsuma thank you! This was informative and interesting
Like the question of inactive accounts didn’t even cross my mind until you mentioned it, but that does present an issue.