I thought this might be worth a little bit of discussion at the moment.
We’ve had a few communities started by existing subs on the other site, some making it clear that it’s staking a claim to the same name on here in case they ever decide to move, but that they have no plans to at the moment, and will not be doing any moderating.
I have to be honest, this kinda rubs me the wrong way. It feels like hedging your bets, running one community, not running the other one, but still intending to be in charge if it takes off despite that.
If you’d like to start a community here in the same style as an existing one, that’s great, go for it!
Moderate, post great content, grow!
But if you’re aiming to put your name on undeveloped land, in the hope that when you come back someone will have built a farm, I’m not sure it’s very helpful.
Discussion encouraged!
Hard agree on this. Especially if it leaves a community unmoderated, and unmoderatable due to the only mod being absent.
If you’re creating a community, you should at least be attempting to run it. Not just making a land/power grab or putting your flag in the ground for the sake of it.
I’m glad you’ve raised this here, I was wondering whether to do something similar due to https://feddit.uk/post/114858
I thought it might be a good place to start the discussion. And I think it’s good to have the discussion now, instead of in 6 months time.
Realistically…It’s not an unsolvable problem if there are unmoderated subs down the line. But the solution is not particularly pleasant (admin overrides), so it needs to have proper community discussion. And (hopefully!) avoid the situations in the first place.
This never even occurred to me as a thing to be worried about. What a lame thing to be doing.
Maybe when Lemmy is more developed as a platform there will be a way for instance owners to remove mods that haven’t been active in X days? Perhaps when that threshold has been reached there could be some mechanism that opens up and allows people to send a de-mod request to an instance owner.
Or do we just need an internal investigations department for community owners?
Instance owners can do whatever they like as far as I know (it’s their football, so to speak).
But obviously deus-ex-machina isn’t something you want happening day-to-day on a community without discussion beforehand, setting out when the hammer comes out.It’s a bit sad that we have to discuss it already.
I guess the ideal answer is some sort of instance wide policy as you’ve mentioned above @jakwithoutac@feddit.uk, but it feels like that should only apply to active communities that have become unmoderated.
Someone is intentionally squatting a community name, and has stated outright that’s what they’re doing. Could be cause for swifter action?
I know ultimately the power rests with the instance owner and they have the ability to do whatever they fancy, but as things grow I worry about the escalating admin burden placed on them without any sort of automation in place to help out. I’m making some assumptions here, but right now I think instance owners either need to be hyper vigilant for this sort of stuff, or have it pointed out to them (which comes with it’s own can of worms like being flooded with messages or people reporting mods for bad reasons).
I think ideally there will be a tool one day that instance owners can set some thresholds in that alerts them to this kind of thing so that they can take action as and when needed, rather than by report or request.
Right now I guess it’s up to @tom what happens.
I suppose this kind of thing was inevitable, which is why we have domain registrars to arbitrate on the internet.
Agree. What use is it to make a community and then leave with no intention of moderating it and leaving open to who knows what. Potentially creating a lot of strife for Tom if something goes wrong. You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and all that. It’s 100% the mindset of “I don’t actually care about this community that I’ve chosen to make but I didn’t want anybody else to make it. If you’re lucky I’ll come back one day”. Eye roll.
This is an interesting point to bring up. I think in reality this squatting on a name is not an issue until the community is being actively used and moderation is required. And at that point if the moderators of the community fail to step up, we do have a path of escalation to the admin. Until that point, in reality, I don’t see it as something causing trouble.
I think though if you were to have one person start land grabbing many unrelated communities with no actual intent in moderating them, that would be a different situation and more immediate action ought to be taken.
Hi all, I am guilty of this, and I think this post is about me mostly!
I do understand the points you’ve raised. The subreddit that I (along with a few IRL friends I met through r/London) started back in 2010 was focussed on meet-ups in London. It’s called LondonSocialClub.
It has a specific ideology - radically inclusive for anyone over 18. There’s a mod team that has developed trust and a community of people who know each other - (now scattered across Whatsapp groups that sprung from events posted on the subreddit.)
We’re not a normal mod team dealing with usual Reddit stuff. For example, we’ve had small groups deciding to ban people from events who have been accused of sexual harassment. And other IRL stuff needed our involvement.
The community isn’t big enough to split, I think it would break up if it tried.
I’m not a super active mod anymore, but I would be gutted if Reddit went to shit and someone else started a community using the name and brand, but running it counter to my values and what I think are the values of others in the community.
I’d be totally pro someone starting a separate London meetup community on here, just don’t want the name poached.
Your argument boils down to ‘my towel is on the deck chair so tough’. The opinion of other people in this thread is largely that it would be really nice to live in a world where we don’t have to have pool attendants that go around taking towels off deck chairs when they’ve been left unattended for 30 minutes.
To be fair to you - you did get there first and claim the name and so have a lot of the say on the community’s future. What I’d say in response is that if you really want to keep the community here on this instance you’d be best off making it active and healthy as opposed to dormant. Either the community will be removed so someone else can claim the name, or someone that really wants a community with the same name will just create one on a different instance and then you’re back to square one with the name poach fears anyway.
TL;DR: Shit or get off the pot, bro :)
FWIW, I agree that poaching generic names like c/London, c/UnitedKingdom, or c/CasualUK is a dick move if you don’t plan to do anything with them. But I think our subreddit name is unique enough, that the only reason anyone would use it would be to associate themselves with the community that was already developed.
Also, we have like 70 mods - we decided a long time ago that anyone who organised a couple of meetups can be a mod if they want. So it’s not a closed shop. Knowing people IRL allows for that trust. So it’s as true a representation of our community as could be.
I appreciate you engaging with the community over this, and I can absolutely understand with the level of active moderation performed on the sub. There are a couple of other subs that have done similar in the last few days (and several very empty “good-name” communities), so it’s not completely targeted at you, I promise!
It’s definitely something that will need to be discussed with the site before leaving an unmoderated community.
If active users on here are interested in creating a london meetup community, I’m sure they’d be happy to chat with yours, and probably make it clear that it’s not affiliated in the sidebar.
And if the existing community moderation was interested in actively joining the community on here to home a new version of the sub, that would probably work too.I can’t see leaving a sub unmoderated just to grab the name being a good idea. If there is a very good case for the name not being used, perhaps it should be brought up with the admins here, who might arrange for it to be blocked.
You’ll have to forgive me for saying, but it currently reads like “Hey, post lots of stuff on here, I take no responsibility, and you’re not part of us, but I might be back one day to be in charge”
It wasn’t intended to read that way. If I could lock it, I would have done, but it wasn’t obvious to me how to do that (at least on mobile). I’ll take a look tonight.
Otherwise I plan to let it sit there, at least for the moment. If Tom feels that’s not okay, he can take action obviously and de-mod me or delete the community.
In the meantime, I don’t plan to leave this wider community personally.
I don’t know how to do it, but there is a way to lock your community to ‘mod-only’. This stops posts being created which is probably for the best if you don’t intend to be here at all to oversee anything. As I understand it, Lemmy is currently at huge risk of an influx of bot accounts / it’s already happening. Tom has added email verification to register with our instance but anyone on the whole Fediverse can still come here and post / comment whatever they want. If things start getting posted to your community and you aren’t here to deal with it, is Tom supposed to do it for you? Definitely best to lock it imo :)
Hopefully your community decides to make it home here, as they sound like they would be very welcome here if they did.
While I appreciate why you’ve done it, for your friendship group, and that it comes from a good place, I have to disagree with some of the stuff you’ve said.
I get that it’s derived from r/London, but I actually do think LondonSocialClub is quite a generic name. London is a big place, and I’m sure there are 1000’s of Social Club based there, and many that would want to use that name for their online community.
You said you don’t want the name to be poached, but that’s exactly what you’ve done here; poached the name. You don’t have any special right or entitlement to it here. I don’t think it’s fair to name squat.
Again, I appreciate why you’ve done it now you’ve explained it, and maybe yours is a different case compare to some of the other empty communities, but I still don’t agree that a community should be allowed to go unmoderated.
Everyone is being super nice to you, so I’ll be honest and say that you’re a self-absorbed asshole. It’s an unimaginative name, you have no “brand” and you have a vastly overestimated level of your own importance. You’re selfishly staking a flag in the ground and declaring it yours because you got there first. I hope that the community is deleted so someone else, anyone else, can recreate it, with the intention of actually running it.
Dumb question: I’m a reddit mod for the sub of the city where I live.
Reddit annoyed me. Can I make a community here for my city? If so, how? Do I need an account on the UK instance?
You can absolutely make a community here. Just try to be an active mod, and make it so we can post to it.
I think you can use your external account to make communities. I’ve never tried myself.
If not, you could always make an account here ;)
I’ve followed the discussion on Reddit’s Legal Advice UK and they make some good points about the importance of experienced moderators with the right tools to do the job. Given the importance of the topic and the danger of bad advice I can see why they wouldn’t want just anyone starting a similar community here but, as (I believe) the moderation tools on Lemmy aren’t the best, it does make sense to lock the community down until you can do it right for the users.
They have currently started:
- legaladvice@feddit.uk
- legaladviceuk@feddit.uk
- I think there’s another one automatic linking isn’t picking up elsewhere on a big, general instance
I don’t think this is A Bad Thing in those circumstances but, I fear, if they don’t do something with them sooner rather than later, someone else will start a separate one and confusion will ensue.
In general, if you don’t want to run a specific community - don’t start it or start it and ask for mods to help/take over or drop a suggestion in somewhere.
We need a lot of town/city/local area communities on here, for example. Anyone starting one and locking it down again just to bagsy the slot should have it taken off them.
https://feddit.uk/c/ukpersonalfinance is another one that is closed and being squatted upon. I understand the reasoning, but personally it really rubs me the wrong way. If you can’t moderate it, I don’t think you should squatted on it for more than a few days or a week. I think there should be an expedited way to claim squatted-upon communities.
I saw that one. Quite honestly, the biggest thing for me is working out what is, and isn’t, allowed. And any special circumstances. (For example, locking a name until a team steps forward with a solid plan).
The actual resolution of squatting isn’t too difficult, but it is a bit “nuclear option” (admin removing a user, or the sub).
So the surrounding framework/ruleset needs to happen, otherwise it could undermine confidence in people putting effort into communities.Yeah, they joined 8 days ago, started the community (added no icon, banner or description) and have yet to post.
There may be a plan (it’s a big undertaking, they may be assembling a mod team as we speak) but, if there is, they aren’t sharing.
Feel free to drop them a (polite) message and ask if they want to chip in here. Getting more perspectives on this issue will really help.
I think that’s a good take on things.
There may be situations where there is merit to a name being out of commission until a group of users on here come to Tom with a good plan. Maybe even with a post from an admin on it like “We don’t want to offer on here until a group of users have assembled to run it properly”Edit: The main thing that I think shouldn’t be the case, is community names being sat on without a wider discussion/explanation worked out. And this isn’t intended as an attack on people’s actions so far, since there haven’t been any big rules previously, more that the discussions need to happen going forward, and some rules/procedures worked out.
Yeah, we’re partly breaking new ground here so things are going to be a bit clunky for a bit but raising important topics like this is going to help resolve this faster and make proceedings run smoother.
And, although this is largely, currently, inspired by the problems with Reddit and we can learn from their succeses and failures, but we can also do things differently, especially on a UK specific instance. For example, I just started britishhorror@feddit.uk - as best as I can tell, this hasn’t ever been a sub on Reddit, the closest thing is British Horror Movies, which was set-up a year ago and hasn’t been particularly active since. However, I see a possibility that something on here drawing together British horror literature, films, TV, comics, etc has potential to gain traction but we’ll see.
What I did do was have a look on Reddit for British and UK subs there are which could work here and, surprise, there’s a tonne of NSFW ones. I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole and looked into any of them (honest, I’m too scared I’ll see someone I know, especially as a mate has just become a gigolo and I have no intention of stumbling across his nude but I’d imagine 90+% of the posts are people stealthily (or not) promoting their OnlyFans pages. Making a call on that, which may already have been done, could be a big help. Perhaps suggesting someone start a NSFW UK instance for all that might help head potential issues off at the pass.
The main thing that I think shouldn’t be the case, is community names being sat on without a wider discussion/explanation worked out.
I agree. If someone just wants to start, say, “Leeds” but leaves it as a locked placeholder then they’d better have a damn good reason for it (I can’t think of one but the possibility is there) or some kind of review would have to take place with the chance if it being opened up being an option on the table. I suspect most people would open it up themselves in those circumstances. If someone wants to start the “Rotherhide and District Brass Band” community and lock it for the time-being, then I suppose that’s fine but the question would be, why bother starting it at all until you’re ready? It’s not likely someone is going to barge in and bag anything that specific for malicious purposes and even if they did I am sure an appeals process would resolve it.
So I feel the presumption should be that all new communities should be open from the start unless there’s potential for harm without a strong moderating team/system in place (so legal, health, financial, mental health might be good examples) and, even then, the person doing that should post a good explanation why with the knowledge that it could be challenged and the wider community decides.
Oh and I see legaladviceuk@feddit.uk is open for business but is flagged as currently being unmoderated. They’ve also posted an explanation for their actions, which I find myself general in support of.
These are some good thoughts! I’m honestly really pleased with how grown up this community is about these things.
The big advantage we do have here, is that we’re small enough that the admin/user ratio is better.
This means that in situations, there can be an easy escalation/resolution, rather than a drawn out (and often ignored) messaging to the admins like can happen elsewhere.For example, if a bunch of bigoted assholes registered all the lgbt subs, it wouldn’t take the community long to take action here.
And “holds” on communities may well be a good idea in certain situations. We will need guidelines for things, I think. So people can easily understand what is and is not acceptable.
Thinking about it more, I reckon if legaladviceUK do decide to go fully into the fediverse, they might just start their own instance. And in that case, the community here might be perfectly happy just federating.
The big advantage we do have here, is that we’re small enough that the admin/user ratio is better.
This means that in situations, there can be an easy escalation/resolution, rather than a drawn out (and often ignored) messaging to the admins like can happen elsewhere.
I think this is key. If there are teething troubles it should be easy enough to resolve and doing that will help set precedents that will make future decisions easier. So what gets decided now will help structure things going forward.
I remember the early days of wikis when people were just messing around with them, figuring out what worked. Then it became obvious Wikipedia was going to be the big beast and the structure and systems we helped thrash out back then (I did a small part in an obscure corner but got to observe the wider work too) helped make it easier for people to create new pages and slot them into the existing way of doing things. Now people don’t even really have to worry about such things - they just need the motivation to start a new page, check it meets the requirements and use any available tools and off they go.
So the coverage here is patchy and most of us are making it up as we go along (well I am) but that’s OK, what we thrash out now will help people in the future just jump onboard without having to spare a thought for any birthing pangs we are experiencing.
So topics like this are vital, not because we are pointing at anyone specific because they’ve done something wrong but because we don’t really know what the right way to do things is and these kinds of discussions will help us figure that out. The topics may need to be gone over again in the future but coming up with some kind of fix now will really help everything run smoothly for the time-being.
