What can be done about people who create a community and then abandon it?
Someone created the ChronicPain community and then abandoned it. I have messaged this person with no response. They haven’t posted, commented, or anything since they made it.
It’s probably a widespread issue but ChronicPain is a support group for those who suffer from it. Is the only real option to create a second one or can someone who abandons a community be removed?
this is going to be happening a lot with the way that reddit is going right now. lots of community names are being squatted by trolls for no reason than to piss other poeple off.
what you can do tho is ask the administrators of the instance, in this case Ruud
I feel like Redditers aren't doing it on purpose. They just want all the niche communities they're accustomed to not really thinking about the work it takes to get them started and rolling or moderate
lol yeh, good point. i read in another thread that the people that are doing it are gamers (with all the negative stereotypes that go with it) and aren't exactly known for their thinking ability
Yeah, I'm sure lots of it is people starting a community with genuine intentions, but then they decide "actually, I don't wanna use this site anymore", so they abandon it and will never see your messages.
I think more of it may happen because there's likely plenty of people who came to the Fediverse sites because of the Reddit blackout and then will just go back to Reddit. IMO it's important that server admins have an easy way to reassign communities.
I think it's, like, 50-50. Even with the blackout, I've seen a bunch of morons on Reddit trying to usurp moderation by being admin bootlickers and requesting a subreddit. It's always kinda surprising what people are willing to do for fake internet points, and being "in charge" of something.
The way Lemmy works, a bit like Reddit in the end, the server administrators own each community more than the moderators, so yes, they can remove a moderator and put in a new one.
If that doesn't suit you, unlike Reddit, you can create your own server or simply switch to another one.
The more I learn about the fediverse the more advantages I see. If something goes wrong it's actually possible to move to another instance.
Can the creator of a community move their community, along with all the posts and comments, to another instance?
I don’t think those migration tools are written yet. But I would imagine they are on Lemmy’s roadmap.
Pretty sure any admins of the instance can delete communities. I imagine any community that isn't interacted with over a certain period of time can be removed after a certain period inactivity. Admins of each instance are individuals and can be directly messaged about these issues.
Admins can purge communities, freeing up the name for other uses.
However, I'm really not sure how that works with federation.
It works on the individual instance, which for all intents and purposes means it works for everyone since everyone can see the instance.
You just have to make sure you're pinging the right admin for your instance. In this case it's ruud I believe for lemmy.world
This is my understanding - federated sites push out their content, so just like a new post will propagate into any place it is subscribed, a deleted community/magazine will also propagate (and I suppose remove the subscriptions? Just as housekeeping). I know I've seen that is how removal of prohibited topics would work, so it should be the same.
I mean... I don't think we should kill them?
So whats to stop it being filled up with garbage ?
This shouldn't be done arbitrarily, sure, but there should be some rules in place for these things. Like, two weeks of unresponsiveness by the mods for example.
You can make a non-dead version of the community on another instance!
But what if it's dead on my instance, and I don't want to make an account on another instance for the sake of managing a community?
As a sort of workaround you could create the community on a new account and then add your current account as a mod
Does the community prevent you from posting? If not, just use it
That doesn't solve the issue of moderating it, or adding to the sidebar/setting.
You could create a community with a slightly different name as the abandoned one.
/m/SpainWithouttheS
Me irl
What's happening on the community that you need the moderator?
Nothing specific. I just think it’s important that there is a moderator there just in case. Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean something won’t happen
Ah, I hear ya. Just thought there was some drama or something keeping you from using the community in its current state.