Comment on Seeking new moderators for abandoned communities

• can@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why delete them at all? Someone could still find them. And if no what’s the harm?

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  • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

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    • can@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Makes sense to me. Thanks for the transparency.

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      • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Anytime

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    • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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