Hey everyone, thought I'd post some stats since we're one week old now!
From Vultr (instance is hosted through them):
Total applications: 116
Denied applications: 4 (one person asked to change username, 3 others gave one word answer to the application question)
Accepted applications: 112
Could you tell what the motivation for the application process (and application question specifically) is, considering that it adds friction and delay to the registration process?
considering that it adds friction and delay to the registration process
Yeah, if I make it entirely open it would be very easy to DDOS the instance with bot accounts. Once I (and one mod for now) figure out the infrastructure, scaling, community management etc. I would certainly prefer it to be entirely open as well. It's just that things are in flux during this transition period.
Really interesting, thanks for sharing.
Would you mind sharing a bit more information on the current setup and costs? e.g. which Vultr compute product is being used, any block storage added, etc.
Something you might consider as the instance grows is Hetzner server auctions. These give you a dedicated server for a very good price and include unlimited bandwidth.
I think pricing and product transparency would encourage users of this instance to contribute to the upkeep :)
Edit: I didn't see c/Rust:Meta existed before... I see you're way ahead of me on cost transparency.
Just saw your Edit. Yeah, this was probably the first post I think. I wouldn't be here myself if things weren't as transparent as they could possibly be.
As for Hetzner, yeah I've used them in the past (they're great) but for initial setup, I felt that Vultr was probably just fine. That said, I'm definitely going to have to bump up the storage and RAM on this instance in the very near future, we're cutting it closer than I'd like, specifically:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 969 472 72 133 424 212
Swap: 2399 456 1943
I think a 2 tier bump to $24/month 2 vCPUs, 4GB RAM, 5TB egress at Vultr might serve us for a decent amount of time. And it would probably still be cheaper than the cheapest Hetzner dedicated we could find. Maybe.