In re: the rules, they've evolved over time. The general trend over the last couple of years, starting even before I came on board, was towards increased accuracy. When I first came on board the rule was that you could give a "wrong" answer in-character if you flagged it as such, but so many people failed to do so that they just sort of gave up on it. Too many people were, for lack of a more diplomatic term, choosing to roleplay idiots who didn't know what was going on in their own backyards.
As far as the future, we're mostly eyeballing it. On the 10th we're going to reopen, with the intention of having a week of standard operation alongside a poll to determine the next move. If the users opt for another blackout, then blackout we shall. Otherwise, we resume operations and open the discussion to other protest actions. The discord seems to be the primary "backup" at this point. We're still sorting out how far we're looking to spread out from Reddit, and it's unclear if there will be much demand for a Lemmy instance if things go the way they're currently going.
Hi, I'm Vote_for_Knife_Party on here and over on Reddit, one of the mods of r/asksciencefiction. In terms of credentials, the main thing I have to offer is a link to our Discord (which is identical to the link currently posted on our "we're closed" screen over on Reddit) https://discord.gg/aSMMUECz. If you pop over there, you can see where this version of AS:F has come up in discussion in the "general" area, as well as message the AS:F mods collectively to verify my identity.
From a purely mechanical perspective, there's not much we can do to stop you from running your own Ask Science: Fiction over here on Lemmy; it's a space on it's own and we have no control over it. That said, if you're going to be operating under that name I'd recommend more or less copying our rules re: the watsonian/doylist split, as well as the shift away from roleplayed answers. First, being flexible on doylist answers is going to result in a LOT of trash cluttering up people's answers; 1 time out of a hundred we lose an interesting response because it's doylist, but the other 99 times it's just "bad writing, lol" and other unhelpful, dismissive answers. Roleplayed answers also present a similar problem, because it gives people a blank check to give wrong answers by roleplaying someone with a wrong answer; this is why we adjusted our interpretation of the rules to say that a roleplayed character must have knowledge comparable to a well-read fan, and not have obvious gaps in their awareness. Like with the doylist split, you lose 1 really good answer and 99 "the Emperor did nothing wrong"/"Batman can't be Bruce Wayne"/etc. one-line unhelpful joke posts. And finally, if people show up here looking for Ask Science: Fiction, the watsonian/doylist split and a commitment to accuracy could be fairly described as integral parts of the current AS:F experience, so having that framework here will lead to smoother operation.
We're still trying to figure out our next move on our end, and it's unclear what footprint (if any) we're wanting to have on Lemmy and other Reddit alternatives; as of now, the current intention is to reopen the sub for a community vote/discussion next Monday to assess future moves, which may result in a return to conventional operations on Reddit. But at a minimum, folks have been asking about Lemmy, so it's something worth having a conversation about. Discord would probably be the easiest place to have that conversation, since I'm not wanting to do anything on this front without the other mods involvement, but if you want to reach out via private message first that's fine.
-Vote_for_Knife_Party