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.
It sets a dangerous precedent. What’s to stop someone from creating a community, then go to every other instance they can find and register on, create a community with the same name, lock it, and direct everyone to the instance they want?
Any community that sees no activity (comments, votes, post, etc) over a reasonable time period (90 days?) should be automatically deleted or all the mods are removed allowing for others to come in and take over the name space.
But that’s not what happened. This wasn’t a community made with the intention of directing people to a bigger one. It was an already existing one that wanted to merge with people it did not disagree with.
You’re adding an additional bit (making communities that don’t yet exist to redirect) to make it sound worse than it is. Merges have happened in communities long before this…
I have no issues with the 90 days in general. I just think this one instance is getting blown out of proportion. The post that was written made sense as to why they wanted to relocate. It didn’t seem like a powertrip or of malicious intent. And honestly, it would be a far worse experience to delete the community with essentially no explanation.
Now if they decide to hoarde it forever, sure, thats a different story. And trying to redirect every possible community to a single is another issue entirely.
But I think in this case what the mods did makes perfect sense and in general a principle of ‘if no activity from mods in X time then Y’ also makes sense. Everyone is just a bit jumpy right now.