@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do so.
To request ownership/moderator privileges, scroll down to where it says “MODERATORS” in the sidebar. There will be an icon of a hand pointing upwards that you can click on, then make the request. Cheers, and thank you for your hard work Ernest, as well as future mods.
Another option I would like to see is the outright deletion of some of the very specific and abandoned mags.
Looking at abandoned list link supplied by @ernest (cheers for that and for all the work you have put in) there are ~4,000 abandoned mags.
While many are in need of new mods, there are a lot that just need to be deleted. They can be recreated in the future if they need is there but I doubt a lot will be claimed.
Maybe in a couple of months that could be looked into.
If you find an abandoned magazine that you feel needs to be deleted, you have an option to request ownership and subsequently delete it. I requested ownership of one such magazine and I’m considering deleting it, myself. I may also consider doing this for some other magazines eventually as well to contribute how I can.
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that option.
It may be worthwhile auto-deleting any with zero historical activity (no threads or microblogs) after a few months, too.
As a stop gap and when I have a few spare hours. I plan to request ownership for mags that have zero activity, and the current mod has been MIA for a few months.