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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171 comments
I'm not sure if your read of the situation is correct.
I think it's more that the mods involved do not want to fracture the Android community on purpose - even though this is explicitly allowed and encouraged by the structure of Lemmy and the Fediverse in general, it's not great when trying to get a community off the ground.
If the mods on lemmy.world were strongarmed or pressured into doing this, that is wrong and I think the situation should be resolved as you say. If they weren't bullied but just talked it out and came to this conclusion, I think it's fine.
Well, one problem is that I can't access the new server from kbin, because for whatever reason they are not federated with kbin.
Then you should reach out to the mods both here and on that instance pointing this out.
Did anyone even try asking the c/android mods on this instance about this, or was an inflammatory post immediately resorted to first?
This instance is closed and that instance is inaccessible. The only way for me to reach is to make new account, which I do not want to do for various reasons.
Directly message one of the mods of the community on this instance, is what I'm saying.
"i think it's more that the mods involved do not want to fracture the Android community on purpose - "
them splitting off into another community totally isn't going to fracture the community and cause others to make a bunch of other communities. That's a poor argument.
Strictly speaking it would be more fracturing to have two communities actively existing than to have a redirect.
On reflection of the whole situation, I think it would be fine for the android community here to be taken over by someone else if someone really wants to. The thing I actually take issue with is OP's framing of the situation as inherently hostile. It reminds me of the parts of Reddit I'd rather be left behind, the instant escalation of every problem to an extreme no matter how slight.
Not sure why they couldn’t have just asked the userbase their thoughts, or just had the ex Reddit mods join the significantly larger community entrenched community as part of the mod team. It may well be the original android mods just didn’t feel like holding up the responsibility anymore, it certainly doesn’t need to be some hostile takeover conspiracy, but there are also some way better ways to go about it for sure
I don't know either. But I am not going to immediately jump to the extreme conclusion of bullying or blackmail. If that turns out to be true, I'll gladly eat my words, but can we not start from a more reasonable position and just message the guys involved first?