Would it not be better to simply delete those communities and/or direct people to bigger/established communities instead? It would avoid making people join multiple communities in fear of missing some content out. I feel the fragmentation is holding lemmy back in some ways because there is no way that I know of to easily merge communities into a single one on the client side
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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In these specific instances I agree with you. The few I looked at were just single or no post communities. I think the mods just want to give these a chance in case anyone actually does want to take them over and breathe some life into them.
In general though, I think it's healthy for the fediverse to have options, even with similar topics. I'm sure you might recall situations on Reddit where people didn't like how a sub was moderated, so some people would set up r/TRUEwhatever.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'd expect plenty of these to be deleted, but if a few of them have some life breathed into them that's even better.
Why delete them at all? Someone could still find them. And even if not what's the harm?
It's a good question and the answer isn't set in stone.
There's certainly no rush in deleting them or anything, which is not the plan if there's content in it.
The main thing here is we'd rather have at least one mod for every community.
I said delete, which was more hypothetical than anything... but there are different Lemmy terms with different meanings:
- Community Deletetion is done by its creator and technically prevents anyone from recreating a community with the same name in the future.
- Community Removal is done by an admin and is akin to banning, but for a community. This also prevents anyone from recreating a community with the same name later on.
- Purging a community is also done by an admin, but resets things like it never existed, technically allowing someone to recreate it in the future with the same name.
Honestly, what happens to abandoned, empty communities would likely be a case by case thing.
If there's literally nothing in it, purging could make the most sense.
If there's old content and subscribers, but otherwise just stale, it would likely stay untouched.
Why touch these at all then?
It's mostly white noise in the way of people searching for communities with content to subscribe to.
Makes sense to me. Thanks for the transparency.
Anytime
The main thing here is we’d rather have at least one mod for every community.
To expand on that: kbin's recent struggle with spam provides an example of what can happen when there are too few moderators. Many kbin communities have no moderators aside from the site admin, who already has too much other stuff to do. Spreading the work among many people means that objectionable content is addressed more quickly. In my opinion, that's the big reason to either find mods or remove un-moderated communities.
As an aside, I hear that Ernest is actively working on addressing kbin's immediate issues, which is wonderful news.
Note that this list only includes communities that currently have no mods at all.
Communities that have mods who have been inactive is another story, but something we plan to address too.