this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed? (self.general)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by AlmightySnoo to c/general
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The [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.

[email protected] needs to be reopened now and the mods removed since they expressed that they no longer want to moderate a community on lemmy.world.

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[–] AlmightySnoo -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The soft-bullying was basically "we have more experience moderating" and "we have a better instance and more competent server admins and devs" and the obviously insinuated "we are therefore the rightful owners of the android community". The 2 mods, apparently intimidated, had private discussions with them after which they decided to unilaterally close the sub without consulting the 19k members and then forced everyone to move to the other community and let the current one die by not allowing anyone to post in it.

Whether the arguments are true or not is besides the point. The 2 mods have the right to leave for whatever reason they have and join the other community. They don't have the right however to suddenly without any warning close the community for 19k people and prevent those who were already happy with the community as it was from posting.

That's also community name parking as they're effectively depriving the lemmy.world instance of the c/android name.

All of this is simply wrong and disrespectful to the 19k members who didn't even ask to move.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

...How do you know that's how their chats went? Nothing in their pinned comment suggests that.

I feel like you're jumping to conclusions here and maybe the mods didn't have the same opinions on reddit that you do...and don't actually see that there would've been an issue with a merger.

A vote might've been a good idea in retrospect, but I'm not immediately convinced it wouldn't have just ended with a merger anyway. Like the mods, just like you're doing right now, probably made assumptions for the 19k people that weren't all true.

[–] AlmightySnoo 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A vote might’ve been a good idea in retrospect

Much simpler: leave the community open as long as there are volunteer moderators. Members never asked to move and were already very active.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My thought is they probably wanted to knee-jerk people into seeing the "we're moving!" who might not have noticed, or may have been on the fence as to whether or not people would move.

I think if their intent was to move, closing the community (at least temporarily) would be good to get that message out. But It does make sense what another user said about maybe not keeping it locked indefinitely so someone else can use the name.

The reason I agree more with the idea of voting is because it encourages people to actively choose which one they want, whereas I think the closing was done more to help along less active members.

I guess what i'm trying to say is: In the past i've seen forums closed when merging/moving to new sites, and It just seems like standard procedure to me first and malice second.

[–] AlmightySnoo -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

How do you know that’s how their chats went? Nothing in their pinned comment suggests that.

The argument of a "better instance" is literally the one they pushed in their other thread where another person astroturfed their community 2~3 days ago with a misleading and gaslighting title "r/Android is now on the Fediverse!" and the one they keep pushing on r/Android when users there ask them why they create a new duplicate community with a few hundred members when there's already a lemmy.world c/android community that is very active and has 19k members.

The "experience" argument is implicit when they keep insisting that they are r/Android mods, and even the 2 mods of [email protected] highlighted that on the sticky notice.

All of this obviously is cordial, but that's exactly what I mean by soft-bullying, it's advancing bogus and weak arguments in an attempt to make the 2 mods feel as though they aren't fit for the job and should instead let r/Android mods take charge and join them on their new 3 days old community.

Again, those 2 mods perfectly have the right to be convinced by these arguments and leave for that community. But they don't have the right to close [email protected] for the other 19k users who were already happy with the community as it was and were very active.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

mods got gaslit from a couple random threads hitting their site...? Plus were these users actual mods of the new community, or just random people?

[–] ElectroVagrant 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Snoo, I recognize your disagreement with the moderators of /c/Android, and I think you have raised a good topic to discuss in a roundabout way, but I also think your frustration with their decision has influenced your interpretation of events to mischaracterize the actions of the folks at Lemdro.id.

For those interested, here is the post from one of the Lemdro.id admins in response to someone else advertising an Android community on their instance in the Android community here on Lemmy World so you may evaluate their interactions for yourself. As Snoo has already taken the advice of others here (including myself) to cross-post this to the support community, I am going to lock this thread.

For those interested in continuing the discussion, you may do so there. Thanks to everyone for the civil discussion concerning a contentious topic!

Edit:
As I was writing this, one of the moderators from /c/Android posted a reply here. I am temporarily unlocking this thread should they wish to discuss this further here, but I will lock it again if the discussion devolves, and intend to lock it later for the aforementioned reasons. This is an experiment, hopefully one I won't regret.

Final Edit:
I unlocked this thread for around a couple hours, and while we did see some further perspective from one of the admins from Lemdro.id to help clarify the situation, I see no further reason to leave the thread open. Those involved have had the opportunity to say their piece, and as already noted, a cross-posted version of this thread remains open should they wish to comment on the subject further.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think you're mistaken on a few things here:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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, [email protected] exists within Lemmy.world. Nobody needs to make a new account, and nobody is leaving. That's the beauty of the Fediverse!