Announcement: Reddit Alternative and Next Steps

Now that the protest is over and Secret Project 3 has been released, we're turning our attention to the burning question left over from the protest: where can those members of our community go who are unable (or unwilling) to use Reddit, as a group, to build an additional community somewhere else?

The subreddits are not going anywhere for those who wish to remain, but we want to spin up a sister community for those who want to leave.

After much research and deliberation, we have settled on Lemmy as the best alternative, and we are actively working with some other similarly situated communities to build out an instance of Lemmy which we think will be a reliable home for those of us who want to relocate, and which also will allow us the freedom to extend the space it provides to meet our specific needs as a community.

The new instance will of course have growing pains. There are certainly gaps when it comes to the features we’re used to. But, if we can weather the growing pains in the short term, we believe the platform will allow us to build an experience far more robust than what we’re used to on Reddit.

What’s the plan?

We’ve been working over the last couple of weeks to analyze your feedback and our options. We are also working with a team of developers under the auspices of the r/sffa (Science Fiction Fantasy Alliance) a cross-fandom alliance formed during the incredibly fun 2022 r/place game) to prioritize and develop features that are missing.

So far we have COMPLETED the following:

• Analyze recent survey feedback

• Investigate available platforms and make a selection

• Decided on initial community naming and discussion scope(s)

• Created rules for the communities based on platform capabilities and completed dev work

We are CURRENTLY working on:

• Analyzing feature gaps between Reddit and Lemmy, with plans to address them.

• Initial development work on key moderation features

We still need to:

• Create instructions to help you migrate as seamlessly as possible

• Test, a whole lot!

We had hoped to have more of this work finished by today, but this has taken longer than we expected. Please expect updates in the next week or so.

How do I join as a member?

We still have a bit more work to do before we have our "grand opening", but if you would like to help us test things out the Lemmy instance is at https://sffa.community. You are free to register an account if you do not already have a Lemmy account. If you do register, please check your junk/spam folder for the verification email. If you want more information on how Lemmy works you can check out https://sffa.community/comment/27661 and https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html. Otherwise, please stay tuned for our own migration guide coming within the next week or so.

The registration/login page has some issues, if the submit button stays as a spinning icon you have most likely gotten something wrong. (mismatching/wrong password, bad captcha, unverified email address, etc.)

Please be aware that Lemmy is alpha software and under active development. It is not fully feature compatible with Reddit and a lot of things work in only extremely basic form. Additionally, the mods (and the community members) are also learning a new platform. Please take care to read the rules in the sidebar for both communities, as there are *some* changes.

We ask for patience with us and with each other as we all collectively learn the ropes and get used to our new second home.

If you already have a Lemmy (or Kbin) account, you can subscribe, comment, post, etc. to this instance as we are federated.

How do I help?

We're actively looking for developers to help with feature work. There's a lot to be done to get a system that meets our needs and the needs of our neighboring communities, and everyone is stretched a little thin. If you're interested in joining the development effort, please reach out via modmail and we'll get you set up. Familiarity, or the willingness to get familiar, with Rust and/or TypeScript is a bonus.

What does this mean for the existing communities on Reddit?

Nothing will change for the subreddits. We intend to continue here with those who wish to stay. With the changes to mobile apps we won’t be as fast as we used to be in responding and addressing things, but we are doing what we can to continue to serve the community and its needs.

Our intention and goal here is to have two communities, one on Reddit, one on Lemmy, that work together to provide an internet home for Brandon Sanderson fandom to share in our love of his works, and to share our excitement and discuss our theories and speculation. Part of the community will be on Reddit, part of the community will be Lemmy, but as much as possible we will try to remain *one* community, two united outposts of the broader community of Sanderson fandom, and we invite everyone to consider both places home.

We expect to have more detailed information on how to join, and a migration guide, in about a week. In the meantime, please keep checking here — or if you've moved off of Reddit entirely, follow our blog at: https://cosmeresubs.blogspot.com/

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please comment in the version of this post that appears on r/brandonsanderson, or reach out to us via modmail.