I think maybe the best action is to draw up plans for a new instance, in public on here. That way, if Tom returns, the plans can be used to continue/help this instance.

That's my thinking - I posted about it somewhere else in this thread.

If we can get volunteers to admin, then Tom only has to swoop in, promote them and we'll get refederated.

If the worst happens, we have admins in place to migrate to a new instance.

It might be worth having a discord/mailing list or similar, not for the planning, but to give a location for discussions to happen if the instance vanished suddenly.

I started a feddit.uk Matrix space. It's handy to have in case the server goes down for whatever reason (lemmy.world started their Discord server because of all the DDoS attacks and now have a Matrix space).

Starting a new instance is an option, although it depends on finding willing admins and organising some logistics. I’ve had a brief look at the Lemmy docs for setting up an instance, and it doesn’t seem too complicated at first glance, at least for initial setup. I’d be more concerned in the longer term about handling (major) upgrades, given Lemmy is still a young project prone to large changes, and properly managing parts like pict-rs.

Anyone with a reasonable level of Linux admin experience should be up to the task, and I would think they would be easy enough to find in the Fediverse. I’d be potentially willing to throw my own hat in the ring, although I’d have to give it some more serious thought regarding time commitment.

There are other matters to consider besides the technical challenges, like funding, legal, and community management generally.

We should really only consider a new instance as a last resort though. I don’t know the current admin but it still seems possible for them to either return or hand over the reigns here.