(also takeover request) should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed?
(also takeover request) should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1119656
The !android@lemmy.world 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 !android@lemmy.world 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 !android@lemmy.world because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.
!android@lemmy.world 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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That will be a decision for lemmy.world admin to decide. However, I think itโs important that mergers be considered distinct from closures/abandonment. Previously on Reddit, moderators would sometimes merge their teams to keep up with workloads. This would mean locking one subreddit. If such a community were to be requested on r/redditrequest, it would be denied because it wasnโt abandoned, but instead repurposed as a way to redirect members.
Opting to fulfill such requests would be more in line with the current Reddit admin approach of overriding existing moderators. Itโs a valid path to take, but one that I would be very hesitant to support. I think a community could be opened up if truly abandoned (i.e., the place it redirects has been retired and the moderators are no longer logging into the Fediverse).
It's definitely a complex issue - and totally agree, mergers are not the same.
It does feel disingenuous for you to dodge a yes or no question.
I'm not trying to be rude, but setting up a new instance without clear (edit - server level) policies and rules and no GDPR compliance and then expecting people to move over rather than choose to move doesn't look great.
If you want everyone over to your instance because of whatever reasons you should be very transparent why and have it set up appropriately before that move starts - and be plain that you don't want competing communities.
If you are happy to have multiple communities, it's easy just to say you support that.
Sorry if it sounded like a dodge (it's also 5 AM here so I'm half asleep). Certainly wasn't my intent. My opinion is that admin shouldn't be taking away communities from moderators unless they've truly abandoned, not merged. But I also recognize this will be something for each instance's admin to decide.
But the question of multiple communities in terms of starting a different one or supporting another alternative? That's great and an integral part of the Fediverse - each community will be a reflection of their particular rulesets and approaches to moderation.
Folks are absolutely welcome to access the community from other instances. There's no need to switch your login. One my fellow mods actually runs his own instance that he logs in through.
Some other options: https://lemmy.ml/c/android (probably the oldest on Lemmy) kbin.social/m/android squabbles.io/s/android
I shared some more insights about rationale for the instance in my earlier posts if you don't mind checking my history. I'd get you the links but I'm about to pass out! I didn't manage the Mike and Devgard's transition but I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. Just leave them here and I'll respond tomorrow.
Definitely time for a sleep!
I have seen your other comments, and I think my issue is (hopefully obviously!) not at all with you, but it is the principle - the choice of multiple communities is being taken away.
For what it is worth (not much) I think you wanting to take load off .world is great, and you patiently answer people's questions and are polite and helpful. As I said, I don't mean to be rude, but if this was happening to a community I was invested in I would be angry and rightly so I think (but to be clear I have never posted on Android, and really it is the principle).
You are doing what seems to be a good job handling a tricky situation, although I think your server needs some clear policies and goals and server-level rules, clear information about funding and GDPR compliance etc. to help build trust. My personal opinion based on seeing one post is that Mike, on the other hand, is not handing this well at all - and comes across as very rude and really condescending and I have replied to his post saying this. Responses you have made compared to his are miles apart. That's just my impression, and not meant as a personal attack. I would hope he can look at how you post and learn from it. Good luck with the moderation if recent responses are how he speaks to people!
No rudeness felt here! I really do appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. These conversations are important. A few thoughts:
- I think we were all taken aback by some of the accusatory tone and misrepresentations in the Snoo's posts and comments here and on the first submission. Mike and Devgard are quite reasonable and considerate folks, as you can see from their approach to this thread when they thought we had been trying to promote the new community in theirs.
- In terms of instances, there's no real difference when it comes to where the community is hosted. Users still login through their home instance and content is still propagated across the Fediverse (every single federated instance hosts a cached copy of that content). This is why there's no effective difference to the end-user if an instance is relocated other than the URL becoming slightly longer (from lemmy.world/c/android to lemmy.world/c/android@lemdro.id).
- Ultimately, both teams needed help (moderation is currently significantly more tedious on Lemmy than Reddit) and using a specialized instance makes a lot of sense for the Fediverse. The alternative of leaving the older one open but less moderated would be worse considering the spam and scams already appearing (including those trying to recommend random apk files that are most assuredly malicious).
- On the GDPR, I appreciate you raising this. There are some questions and challenges that remain for all of Lemmy itself considering how content is cached across instances by default. My understanding is that this hasn't quite been settled for Mastodon either. A number of us are big fans of the GDPR, even those of us to whom it doesn't directly apply (but we often still benefit when companies implement mechanisms to come into compliance). I personally intend to investigate how Lemmy handles purged content but we should have some basic language filled out soon.
- On the instance operations, a lot of work has been done and continues toward scaling. That includes vertically (e.g., server resource specifications automatically increase and decrease as needed) and horizontally (e.g., automatically spin up separate server instances to share loads). Some of this is already in place, which has kept costs very reasonable. More is underway that should bring them down even more drastically and set it up well for higher traffic. It's currently funded by Cole who has committed to us his willingness to do so - but there are many others among us willing to chip in funding and server resources. The plan is for everything about lemdro.id to be open source - including any to have any custom code and cost-saving techniques to be published on Github, as well as to have closed administrator chats be publicly visible. The aim is for long-term longevity that could outlive anyone currently involved.
Hope you managed to get a decent sleep!
On GDPR, this is a thread from today: https://lemmy.world/post/1131665 - there is a helpful post to some other discussions. Just linking it as there are a few good observations made. Totally agree, there are seemingly a lot of challenges but I am not sure there is an appreciation of how easy it is for anyone to raise non-compliance and the consequences. I'm sure some people have a really good understanding, but I suspect some do not - especially given how vastly complex it is and the lack of urgency some people seem to treat it with.
I feel like there is a lot to learn about how to manage community transitions / mergers / transfers etc as Lemmy grows.
Not much sleep, but thanks for this! I might reach out to pick your brain on a few things GDPR related at some point, if that's alright with you.
Sure thing, although I am by no means an expert at all (companies often have people who specialise in GDPR compliance).
A good reference point is https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/ and https://gdpr.eu/ including their checklist.
The full regulation text is https://gdpr-info.eu/.
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:
Iโm not aware of any charter that says Iโm obligated in any form to offer the community a say in the decision. Should I have? Morally, thereโs obviously an argument for yes. But did I have to, no. The choice was mine, and I made one. Itโs 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).
conveniently leave out that right now they donโt 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.
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.
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?
I am angry, you are right and I will stop interacting with the very person who forced this takeover and forced !android@lemmy.world 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 !android@lemmy.world 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.