should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed?
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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I think that you guys could/should gather a bunch of users of the relevant comm, that are willing to become mods. And then request the comm to the admins of the relevant instance, explaining what's going on. Because there's no problem whatsoever with having multiple overlapping comms, on the contrary (competition is good).
I do not think however that this sets any precedent for more Reddit mods to claim ownership of the local comms. They were only able to do it in this case because the current mods explicitly allowed them to do it.
Unless I'm mistaken, I believe even Reddit has/had a policy that allowed users to take over abandoned/locked/banned subs as long as the new owners took it in a productive direction.
Not only Reddit has it, but it has been using and abusing that policy, in order to shut up protesters, by pretending that they "don't want to mod".
Even then, it's that sort of policy that all instances need.
It's not the worst idea for instance admins to consider, maybe just with better execution.
Yup, it does need a better execution. However there are three things on our favour in the Fediverse:
each instance is considerably smaller than Reddit → each comm matters more → admins are more likely to intervene if a comm suddenly shuts itself down
smaller size → case-by-case analysis is more viable → it's easier to take the right decision
no corporate interests → one less thing to distract the admins from "think on the users!" → admins are more likely to intervene for the well being of their overall community
Those two mods forcibly closed the community and made it impossible to post on !android@lemmy.world, so we can't organize that there. Admins should immediately reopen it, kick the two mods out for closing the community, and then people could apply to moderate that community.
Okay, better course of action then: contact the admins in c/support and explain what's going on, from the users' PoV. In the meantime, try to gather a few potential new mods for the comm elsewhere, perhaps even in this thread.
Three things can happen:
the admins say "okay, but who's going to mod it now?" Then you give them the names of the people willing to mod it.
the admins say "no" and give you some reasoning. Then the course of action depends on what they say, really.
the admins give you crickets, Reddit style. Then you're probably better off recreating the community in another instance.
Admins are taking a test right now they didn't realize they signed up for
If there's one thing that my times as forum moderator taught me, it's that you sign up for "the test" once you step onto a position of power. All mods, all admins, all community managers, everyone with power over other users can - and should - be tested by those other users. No way to run, no way to hide.
I agree with this mindset. If they chose to leave they should delete or replace the community. it shouldn't be locked status, it's against what I've found the mindset of lemmy is.