2y ago

(also takeover request) should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1119656

The !android@lemmy.world community on this instance thrived for a while and reached almost 19k subscribers very rapidly and it was very active.
Recently the Reddit mods of r/Android created another community with a few hundred members on another different instance where they are mods and that one was then astroturfed on c/android by a person seemingly unrelated to that community's mods.
Apparently some discussions then took place between owners of both communities and the mods of !android@lemmy.world community then unilaterally closed the community, thus, according to their own sticky notice, succumbing to the flawed reasoning that the Reddit mods are "more experienced" and therefore the rightful representatives of an Android community.
I find this behavior sad and it just shouldn't be allowed here for two reasons:
this sets the precedent for more Reddit mods to just come and claim "ownership" of communities by bullying existing ones into closing;
does not respect the almost 19k subscribers who didn't even have a say in this, and especially those who had already expressed that they joined !android@lemmy.world because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.
!android@lemmy.world needs to be reopened now and the mods removed since they expressed that they no longer want to moderate a community on lemmy.world.

130 comments

Having had more time to read over the arguments in the other thread, I do think that the community c/android here on lemmy.world should be reclaimed. Maybe after a little while, so the redirect has the intended effect - it was their community, and I think it's fair to give them a little time to try and get people to consolidate to where they wish, but after that let someone else have the name.
What I do not agree with is your framing of the situation. You have instantly escalated things by insisting this was bullying when that has been confirmed to not be the case, and are trying to pin the mods who decided to do this as intentional bad / rogue actors without actually giving them a chance to resolve the situation in a manner you find acceptable. Did you even message these mods first?
Why do we need to carry over this intense hatred and assuming the worst of others from Reddit? Can't we leave this bad habit behind and try to actually solve problems reasonably before resorting to inflammatory posts?
- bullying
  We can disagree on the term but it was, and I still insist, essentially soft-bullying when they push bogus arguments like their instance "being better because of custom patches" and highlight that they are r/Android mods. It doesn't have to be openly malicious, in fact they were doing it while being cordial. That's still intimidation.
  
  Crossposting my comment here, as I just noticed the conversation has moved to this thread.
  I think you're mistaken on a few things here:
  The offer was not made behind closed doors, nor was there intimidation. You can see the offer here. Ultimately, moderating depends on a lot of effort by many volunteers. Lemmy moderation tools aren't quite there yet and we need each others' help to keep these communities safe and informative.
  It's a good thing to share the burden. Ruud and team are making outstanding efforts to keep lemmy.world operational, but this is very costly and arduous work. It's a good thing to distribute that load across multiple servers.
  We're working to encourage more communities transition from Reddit to Lemmy. For those of us around for the Digg to Reddit migrations (both the 2007 and 2010 waves), we're hopeful about helping solidify Lemmy's place going forward while challenging the current Reddit administrator's overbearing approach to communities for the sake of business interests. We have nothing to gain from volunteering. We just like to help foster the types of communities we ourselves like to be part of.
  Lemmy works differently from Reddit. This is perhaps the most important point that I think some folks migrating from Reddit might misunderstand. You do not need to be on the same instance as the community you're accessing! In fact, !android@lemdro.id exists within Lemmy.world. Nobody needs to make a new account, and nobody is leaving. That's the beauty of the Fediverse!
- and I think it’s fair to give them a little time to try and get people to consolidate to where they wish
  I disagree because it's also the 19k users' community as well and many never asked for any of this and are being interrupted from participating in it because of the whims of one single person. It should be reopened immediately and the former (because I don't recognize he has any claim anymore as he officially abandoned it) mod can promote his new community elsewhere just like everyone else does. No one owes them a "redirection pause" and that's inappropriate vis-a-vis the 19k members who are still being coerced to move elsewhere.
  
  Unless there is some kind of federation issue any user could just follow the redirect and subscribe / participate in the other community with practically no hassle. I was able to subscribe to the communities on the new instance just fine. Any interruption of browsing would be solely due to stubbornness of not moving off principle. And maybe that principle is justified - maybe the new space will be moderated differently, in a way you find worse - but it does not change the fact that ultimately this is a small issue and you are blowing it out of proportion, on purpose, for no good reason.
- bad / rogue actors
  I didn't even say this, but now that you ask me, closing the community without asking for the approval of the members, and then tell me that he still believes he doesn't think he is "obligated in any form to offer the community a say in the decision" (his exact words) is something I'd attribute indeed to a bad actor.
- when that has been confirmed to not be the case
  Quick epistemological clarification - nothing has been "confirmed" to be or not be the case.
  It has been asserted by one of the actors that the action taken was not malicious or underhanded or whatever. In the simplest terms, in response to the accusation that they acted in a malicious way, one of the actors said the equivalent of "Did not!"
  That might well be true. It might even be argued that it's likely true (though I would say that the combination of the backroom dealing with which it was done, the capricious way in which the decision was just presented to the community literally at the last second as a fait accompli, the opaque nature of the new instance and the arrogance and disdain displayed in the linked response all serve to undermine that likelihood). But the simple fact of the matter is that it's just an assertion, and the truth value of that assertion cannot be known for a certainty by anyone else, so it does not and cannot rise to the level necessary to serve as "confirmation" of anything.
Fragmentation has long been an issue for Android
- Nice.
- Ha!
Yea like are you fucking kidding. Why should a community of 18k people shut down on the whim of 2 people and move to a place with a fraction of the members and far less history. If they are just planning to park the community name then the admins should step in and either remove it so a new community could be made or allow someone willing to take over. Lets not skip over the fact the lemdro.id is a newer instance with no real track record either.
What they did is and should be allowed, simply because nobody has or should have the authority to prohibit them from doing it.
But it should also be the case that by abandoning the original community, they lost all claim to it, so anyone else who wants to should be free to claim it. I wouldn't be surprised if that's already the case, and if not, it should be.
- But it should also be the case that by abandoning the original community, they lost all claim to it, so anyone else who wants to should be free to claim it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s already the case, and if not, it should be.
  That's the whole point, the mod in question and the other Reddit mod who's behind this move to forcibly extinguish !android@lemmy.world are preventing that, the community is still to this hour forcibly closed and forced to serve as a shameless redirection page.
  (the "moderators" (which they aren't anymore since they lost any claim to this community) being 2 people out of almost 19k subscribers)
  They have the audacity to argue for the legitimacy of them alone deciding to deprive 19k subscribers of the community and force !android@lemmy.world to remain a redirection page to the Reddit mods' instance to siphon off its 19k users by leaving them no choice but to move to the Reddit mods' new 3 days old community and that if we don't let them do this then it is "subverting moderator discretion" and being "like Reddit".
I think if the mods don’t want to have a community open they can decide to close it, fine. But parking the name so no one else can use it isn’t great. It should just be deleted and if someone wants to start one on that instance again they can. But giving people the ability to make ghost communities on any other instance to reduce competition is probably not good overall
- This sounds like it could potentially turn into something like Meta getting the upper hand over some community, by making sure a link to their instance's version of the community is posted on many of these kind of parked communites. And they realistically have the time, money, influence and people to make it happen, which worries me even more. They really could just bribe people if need be.
  As long as we stay open about these kinds of approaches from large tech companies, we should be okay. But it will definitely come down to the strength of each individual community mod team.
Part of the beauty of Lemmy is that you can just start a new community on a new instance. I don't like people referring to things as c/Something, because that community often exists on multiple instances. Sometimes very active on both/all. You can create a new community on another instance, with whatever rules you deem appropriate, and convince people to join you - which is what happened with !android@lemdro.id
Their logic seems pretty solid, though. The old Reddit mods didn't just claim ownership - they reached out to the !android@lemmy.world mods and made their case. The mods at !android@lemmy.world were completely free to tell them to piss off, or welcome them in, or whatever else. They chose this path, and laid out their reasons (although they weren't required to). You may not like it, or agree, but that's generally how mods are handled.
In fact, I see giving you the mod permissions as a hostile takeover by you. You were not a mod, they made their decision, and now you want to takeover all of their work.
- Personally speaking, I don't agree with hostile takeovers. but honestly I feel something should be done about it. it sets a potential precedent where communities in other instances can make ghost communities and just park the name. In a perfect world, the new mods should be someone who was active in the community and not some random person who requested it but, honestly that is a lot of work, and if the moderation team didn't bother to want to do that work, I wouldn't see it unfit to have the admin team make the decision, be it nuke the community, or reassign another mod or something. Honestly though it's their instance, if they see it fit they could just choose to do nothing but, I feel it would be best for the instance to not have parked communities, especially big name communities such as Android that people would want to have as a community, it hinders growth of the instance (not that this instance is in dire need of more growth but long term)
  I would be all for an addition of some sort of "Dead Community" policy(if there isn't one already, but I have not seen it). It could be as simple as communities that are intending to park have so many days before the community gets purged, or it could have a similar system that Facebook, Discord, Reddit(although they abused this policy) and other sites have where it's handled on a case by case basis upon a request being brought up.
  
  I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on this. I'd just like to clarify there was no hostile takeover! I posted a comment above with some more context, as I feel this is being somewhat misrepresented. Of course, Id welcome any reactions you have to it.
  It's also worth noting that subreddit mergers weren't uncommon on reddit. Oftentimes two similar subreddits would merge as a way of combining moderation efforts (it's a lot easier to keep things in check with a larger team to cover more time zones). Despite all our gripes with how Reddit admin have been behaving as of late, even they didn't intervene on subreddit mergers by forcing one back open through redditrequest.
- Their work and the work of 18k other people that now have no say in the matter.
  
  A valid point, but non-mods don't usually have a lot of say unless the mods choose to solicit input. It's a sign of bad mods to be sure, but one that happens all of the time. And of course, some mods will ask but just not listen.
- they made their decision
  2 out of 19k people made the unilateral decision for those 19k to close the community in total disrespect of those users who were very active and kept the community alive. They also do NOT have the right to deprive this instance from the c/android community name, that is the SAME as community parking. They have the right to leave but they do NOT have the right to close it for everybody else.
  
  So why not create your own? Or migrate to !android@lemmy.ml (already with 6k subs and very active), or !android@programming.dev (empty and dead). Why does it have to be the existing one?
  Reddit was full of clone subs because of disagreeable mods. They had similar names (or at least recognizable names), but were run completely separate. You could also do that here, or start any name on (nearly) any instance you want.
  
  Let me ask a different question - let's say they had made a slightly different decision. Instead of moving to lemdr.id, let's say the mods of !android@lemmy.world decided to bring on board all of the former r/Android mods. Instead of an announcement that it was being moved to a different location, it was announcing (and welcoming) all of their new mods.
  Is there anything really different about that scenario?
I have submitted a support ticket asking about the policy for squatting or if there is no policy noted it is best practice to introduce one. Also queried time frame to take over or set up a new community with the name. Ticket#692599.
Completely respect people who have set up a community deciding to move away from it, but then to not allow others to take it over or set up a new one is questionable I think, and has a bunch of potential issues.
Edit - to illustrate a point, I made Thrifty as it is a large Reddit community, and locked it. Someone has already contacted me to ask about it, within hours. It would not be fair or right of me to squat on it - I have obviously offered it to whoever wants it and linked to another similar sub in the meantime.
Someone should be able to claim inactive or deliberately withheld communities.
I really don’t see a problem with this. The mods of the new community decided they would be better off working with another instance to create a larger, central community.
Nobody was forcing the mods of the Lemmy.world group to close, nobody is forcing them to yield to Reddit mods. Communities are at the whim of the creator, not users. It’s always been the same on Reddit or any forum really.
- Ok, with your logic we should also roll over for Meta when Threads takes off since they have a larger community.
  
  I see meta/threads as a completely separate platform.
  And I expect that that’s going to happen no matter what
I volunteer to take over to reopen c/android and find other volunteers from that community to moderate it.
- Me too, fuck it not like I'm doing anything else tbh lol
  
  @AlmightySnoo @Vamp thank you for your willingness to mod. Also, both of you should contact @ruud, I believe he's the admin here.
- It's a great offer - there should be no issue with re-opening the existing community here under new mods, then people are free to go to whichever Android community they feel is a better home.
Yes. Mods should be able to troll. Admins too. Everything is permitted. This is not a corporation or a government. It is all dictatorships. These little autocracies are what make lemmy great. 😌
- Yes God

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