I don’t think this was posted here already, but this instance has been up and running for a bit. Apologies if this isn’t the best for it, feel free to remove if need be! The instance has been running for a few weeks now and has a few users already, but if there’s people invested in that specific niche interest that wants to spread the load across instances it exists. It has some extra lemmy front end UIs available, and I am building up the local communities as I have time to.
Some policy stuff as to how it operates, for sake of transparency.
Although I am currently the “only admin” I do have a “break glass” admin account and will be giving it to a trusted point person just in case (life happens sometimes…) as well as scaling up the team as need be.
If the instance ever has to go down, at the very least a 30 day notice will be given in advance as well as an outlined explanation as to why and a good faith effort will be made to keep it up as well.
The de-federation policy might be slightly controversial, and I completely understand. It is currently temporarily defederated from lemmys pornographic instances, mainly because of just how much it spams c/all. I will refederate in time when there more granular federation options, but I just can’t reasonably moderate that right now. I also do defederate from the “worst of the worst” fediverse instances (ie, known CP hosts, far right, nazis, etc) as a precaution despite how janky cross federation is for lemmy right now, hence why the instance blocklist is long.
The instance currently uses object storage, and I post monthly financial statements as to what the cost of the resources for it are.
I also use a community seeder bot that runs every 12 hours to diversify content in all. The local communities focus are mainly book related, but it federates with most other instances.
I also am currently taking manual secure database backups at least weekly and storing them remotely, but I will be automating that process as soon as I can. I value security greatly.
Do you have a place to post when we find significant discounts on ebooks?
Not presently, but that community can be made! It might be a good idea to consolidate it into c/deals for the time being though, for all kinds of deals then splitting off eventually if needed. Whatever you decide though. I can either make it for you, or you can. I can also mod on this account for you. You don’t have to join the instance to participate or mod. :)
The extent of my moderation experience has been a few old phpbb forums and a few admittedly large Facebook groups. Let me think it over and I’ll get back to you shortly.
I also wonder if it might benefit from ebooks being separate because authors could post updates about them as theoretically as well as it’d be easier to manage spam.
It’s all good. I think it might be a good idea keep it separate when you put it that way :)