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Policies on community hand-off? (self.moderators)

submitted 2 years ago by ElectroVagrant to c/moderators

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This thread showed up in my community today, and it brought to mind that I don't think there's a policy/guideline in place for Lemmy.World to handle community closures/abandonment.

Presumably where abandoned communities are concerned, the idea is to rely on folks contacting the admins to request them so they can take on moderation & try to build up activity. For closures, however...It gets a bit more complicated.

I'm sure it would depend on the circumstances, but what would we want any such policy/guideline to look like? E.g. should moderators have to give some advance notice or open the closure to discussion, so that if the moderators simply found themselves too busy to moderate they could find someone else to take on their responsibilities?

Personally I have an idea of how I'd handle it, but I'm sure many other mods may as well, so it seems like having some policy/guideline concerning this would be a good idea going forward.

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[–] trouser_mouse 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think another consideration is squatting - deliberately setting up a community and not allowing it to be used.

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.

Maybe there is a policy but guidelines seem quite spread out in various documents and threads and could do with consolidating!

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.

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 (edit, someone is going to be added on later).

Someone should be able to claim inactive or deliberately withheld communities.

[–] Regna 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sorry to ruin your point, was just one of the communities I'd been hoping for would pop up. 😅

[–] trouser_mouse 1 points 2 years ago

Haha you are very welcome to it! Lemmy.world