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Request for admins: You might've seen this mentioned, but I wrote a tool to help people move their posts when they change instances. It's still in development, but I'd like to hear from instance admins if there's anything about it they're worried might affect their instances, or anything that could be made clearer in the documentation to help. The documentation is here: https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/ If you have time, it'd be great to hear your thoughts 🙏 (Boosts much appreciated!) 19 comments
 @alwynispat Thank you for the feedback — I am 100% with you on that. It would be better that way. Tasks like export and import could be set as a low-priority background job that only runs when resources are available, for example. There would be other advantages, too, like perhaps being able to preserve timestamps and/or even edit history. One of my hopes for this tool is that it nudges Mastodon to building comparable functionality into core. It would be better for everyone. @tokyo_0 when you’re performing such imports, it’s entering data directly to the DB. Any incorrect could possibly corrupt the DB. @alwynispat The tool I wrote uses the Mastodon API (created and maintained by the Mastodon developers) — it's the same mechanism used by clients like apps on people's phones. But yes, anything that touches data does have some potential to disrupt it. Circumventing the API to manipulate the database directly would definitely be a worrying idea. @tokyo_0 ah since it’s use api, then the post date will be latest instead of being backdated. Ok then, shouldn’t be much of an issue. @alwynispat Yes, that's exactly it. If Mastodon added the same functionality into the core system, they may be able to preserve the date — it would be the developers themselves coding that, and presumably they will be able to make safe changes to any code that touches the database (especially given that it wouldn't involve any changes to the database structure). But the tool I wrote only uses the standard API and reposted posts are essentially new posts, with new dates.  @maswan That would be wonderful.... will they need to move their data, though, if your instance (with all their data on it) will just go offline at the old domain name at a certain time/day, and reappear online at a new domain name a bit later? It will still have all their data, no? @maswan Ah, ok. Well, you know your set-up and plan better than I do, and if the tool helps that's great. I just wouldn't want to let you go ahead and recommend it to everyone on your instance and have them all copying data back and forth if there was an easier (and less resource intensive) approach that would work better for you. Good luck with your plans. If you need any help with the tool please do let me know. As I said, it is still in development, but quite a few people have used it now. @tokyo_0 So you mean if someone with hundreds / thousands of messages migrate, it will respam them on the local / global feed ? That would be an instant ban from me, I think, because that would be, well, spam… We're a small instance, the local feed still has meaning, this would pollute it by reposting content that is not tied to a specific date and time. @RGrunblatt It won't do that unless they specifically override the default settings and all of their messages are set to "public" visibility. By default the tool reposts users' public posts as "unlisted", to avoid the problem you describe. I'll add that to the administrators' information on the website to make it clearer — thank you for asking about it. |
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