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founded 1 year ago

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

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

138 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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

merged

Bro, not to be rude, but that's literally abandoning the current one. You can sugarcoat it and use all the fancy words however you want, the fact remains that you closed the community for 19k people and the decision was made only by 2 mods after you've shamelessly asked them to do that over private chat. 19k users didn't even have a choice and one of your new mods even made it openly clear that he doesn't give a shit what 19k users think and that it's bad luck for those who don't like the forced closure:

I’m not aware of any charter that says I’m obligated in any form to offer the community a say in the decision. Should I have? Morally, there’s obviously an argument for yes. But did I have to, no. The choice was mine, and I made one. It’s your bad luck that I started the community, I suppose.

This one-man decision can never be called a "merger", just stop deceiving yourselves. Again, it's a forced closure by 2 current mods and new Reddit mods who couldn't imagine a world where they don't own the community. I repeat, you robbed 19k users of their choice to stay here, it is a forced closure. There is no "merger" just because you agreed with how Reddit was running things in the past (and conveniently leave out that right now they don't allow for locked communities either).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

conveniently leave out that right now they don’t allow for locked communities either

I think it goes without saying that we don't want to import today's Reddit into the Fediverse. With that said, even Reddit today does not go as far as to force merge-locked subreddits open (although their bot has been known to mass message some normally locked subreddits).

Mike may have been a bit blunt in his response to you, likely in reaction to the accusatory tone of your post and comments here. I completely understand that you dislike Reddit moderators and that's fine. But it's worth keeping in mind that many folks have moved to the Fediverse over recent weeks because we disagree with the very ideas you're currently espousing - namely how Reddit has been trying to subvert moderator discretion over their communities by threatening/actioning replacements when decisions don't go their way.

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

trying to subvert moderator discretion

It's insane how you don't see how you're trying to usurp a community of 19k users and make it seem as if it was a collective decision when it was not. It's insane that you Reddit mods are still not ashamed to have pulled this off.

How hard is it to understand?

YOU. ARE. NOT. THE. 19K. MEMBERS. OF. THE. COMMUNITY.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DECIDE THAT WE AS A COMMUNITY ARE MOVING. IT WAS NEVER YOURS AND YOU HAVE NO CLAIM ON IT.

NO ONE EVER ASKED TO MOVE. However, YOU are free to leave and have fun with your new instance.

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to close the community and prevent its 19k members from using it.

IT IS OUR COMMUNITY, NOT YOURS, AND WE WANT IT BACK.

You should be deeply ashamed of how you're still defending this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is what I meant by being too angry. For Christ's sake, it's been a few days and all that happened is a community was redirected to a different one.

I used to be this angry about Reddit, years ago, and looking back it was something I should not have invested so much hatred toward. Are you expecting to actually reach reconciliation with the involved parties or are you expecting for instance admins to side with you and override the opposition?

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

I am angry, you are right and I will stop interacting with the very person who forced this takeover and forced [email protected] to shamelessly become a redirection page, because usually nothing good comes out of interacting with people acting in bad faith since the start.

Whatever the parties involved advance, they acted in bad faith and reconciliation is not possible when they want this instance's community to die first and siphon off its users, and they still defend that they have the right to force this over the 19K subscribers who had no say in this. They call this "moderator discretion" and us simply being "out of luck". This is why a reconciliation is not possible.

The right course of action is to officially treat [email protected] as being abandoned by its mods, remove the "current" mods (who have no claim to the community anymore, since they themselves abandoned it and cannot act in its interest since they made it clear that their goal is to have only one main community over at the Reddit mods' instance) and then appoint new moderators. I even volunteer to do so, select new ones from that same community and maintain its activity.

The only way to solve this is for the community to be reopened again under new moderators. And the old mods and the Reddit mods can obviously pursue their own plans on their new instances.