Is there a way to do something like r/RedditRequest?
As in, take over communities from inactive moderators? c/football's sole moderator has not posted or commented in days, and several communities from Reddit are completely blank and owned by a certain "@AutoModerator" account which has never posted or commented. I was wondering, is that a possibility on Lemmy?
I'm against it.
Not everything that Reddit does needs to be copied here. I don't see how a user who isn't a top contributor in that community should have any claim on it just because its mods went inactive.
If anything, what should be done instead is automatically turning those communities to mod-only (ie only mods can post) so that no one can post until the mods come back. If the subscribers aren't happy they can start another community.
undefined> they can start another community.
That's the beauty of Lemmy: Don't like a community? Make it again somewhere else. DO like a community? Make it again somewhere else anyway! Sub to duplicates of the communities you like: You'll be reading comments by the same people across different instances, and a single mod issue or instance server crash can't take you down!
How is it less toxic and opportunistic for someone (such as that AutoModerator account) to claim and abandon all of the ideal community names while someone who wishes to actually run the community is unable to take it from them?
You don't realize that your own wording is simply toxic. r/Steam on Reddit is now about steam engines. Even if you are Valve, who are you to ask Reddit to give you that sub because "it ought to be about the Steam software" instead? The first ones getting the "better name choices" is how the internet works, that has always been the case with domain names.
I don't know also if you realize that you are not really concerned about communities being "abandoned" but instead are more worried about community names being "taken from you". That's an immature take IMO. If you wanted to create a technology sub but you find that Technology is already taken, instead of sneakily waiting for the first sign of inactivity to go cowardly claim their sub as your own (which is right now happening on r/RedditRequest with the blackouts), you could simply launch it with another name like TechnologyNews or Tech, or even TechNews.
Unlike domains, parking communities is free, so there is no consequence for creating a community and abandoning it. If I ran a bot that automatically claimed the names of the largest Reddit subs on your instance and then abandoned them, should your instance shut down those communities for good? Taking communities from moderators can be opportunistic, but that's not a reason to close a community permanently because someone wanted to park the name or lost interest in running the community. Your problem with sniping would be solved if admins manually review the existing moderator and requester's contribution history to the community before handing it over instead of relying on a hard time limit like "6 months of inactivity". If the requester has no previous relationship to the community and seems to be a name sniper, their request is rejected.
Yes. on lemmy.ml they have https://lemmy.ml/c/community_requests which you can access through lemmy.world by going to https://lemmy.world/c/community_requests@lemmy.ml
That is only for communities on the lemmy.ml instance. Their moderators have no control over the communities on lemmy.world.
I suspect this would have to be done by the instance admins.
If the sole moderator hasn't posted or commented, you can still post and comment, can't you?
Yeah, but I'm worried about future moderation. For now it's fine, just wondering if that's even a feature or if that would possibly need to be newly coded into Lemmy.
If I was the instance admin, I would only consider putting you as a moderator after you had been active for long enough to show that you're already doing more work than the sleeper mod.
As for removing them, I probably wouldn't unless they had done something to show they weren't trustworthy.
But as it stands, we still need our communities to be built up and that will take effort from active participants.
Over the next few weeks Reddit users will be filtering in and out like a party and will be scanning the room, we need activity to already be here and that will have to come from us participating more than we normally would have on Reddit.
Earn a mod spot before you ask for it.
I think co-opting a "default" kind of name like football, and then doing nothing to build that community, would pretty well qualify as untrustworthy imo
They didn't ask for one, ramrod, slow your roll.
I'm not asking for it right now, I'm simply asking whether such a possibility even exists, which it sounds like there is. Your comment has nothing to do with this.
I think it's an admin thing. They'd have to remove the inactive mods and instate you.