should locking and forced "merger" of communities be allowed?

Seems like everyone wants a bunch of arbitrary rules today. I think all this upheaval is normal for a rapidly growing decentralized network. Having a rule that no one in the fediverse can do something is going to be unenforceable.

personally I find the whole "duplicate" community thing a bit of a problem. New forums already struggle to maintain activity and this just compounds it by fragmenting them even further.

I don't think that's fair at all. Lemmy is still in it's infancy and completely autonomous from Reddit and it's mods. If they want an Android sublemmy on a different instance, then that is their right and their prerogative, but they have ZERO authority to step into an already thriving community and try to take it over or shut it down.

I'm trying to get an AskLemmy clone off the ground right now, and if an AskReddit mod stepped in and told me to close down, I'd politely tell them to stick where the sun doesn't shine.

I made a post asking about this too because it seemed a bit insanely barbaric to punish the active users who don't want to just move to another instance and solely want to use world.

" "we're keen to avoid unnecessary fragmentation for existing members and confusion for any newcomers."

ah yes because locking the entire community without anyone's knowledge and consent first isn't totally insane and like another certain platform we all left from."

Said post was also brigaded heavily so I deleted it since I got a lot of insanely nasty messages and snarky replies.

Honestly this just seems like people want another repeat of awkwardtheturtle I'm Gonna be real lmao

Nothing says that the !android@lemmy.world will be locked forever. They wrote a well thought out post, pinned it, and encouraged people to move to their new home. No one was strong armed. No one needs to go make new accounts. Everyone needs to take a breath.

Would you rather they had deleted the community and said nothing? Everyone is up and arms over something that was created DAYS ago.

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.

I feel any communities/magazines that get abandoned (e.g. let's close this one down so we can funnel all the traffic to another place) should be deleted by admins and allowed to be claimed by someone else.

I'm not a fan of domain squatting, so there needs to be I feel some admin input when it comes to contested magazines. In the gold rush that is the reddit Exodus, what's stopping people from people squatting on good names and then never posting content

This whole situation feels messy and I'm not entirely sure what would make it better for everyone

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.

Hot take: it's childish and self-centered of them. Basically: "Hey I know we got this great commy here, but we're locking it to force everything to this other commy. Cheers!" If they don't want to be mods here and want to spend their time over there, good for them. But this whole we-are-going-to-deny-you-this-commy-on-this-instance isn't kosher. Do they think it's their own personal kingdom?

This is bullshit. I am of the opinion that mods more or less own the sublemmy, but if they abandon it, either by just stopping to care or purposefully, then they should leave it to others to find and use it.

Especially of it's something general purpose like the most bloody popular OS on Earth. Where else should we show off friendly competition, debate and cooperation than when it comes to a product of one of the biggest monopolies that exist today?

And no offense to Reddit mods, but everyone here is starting from scratch and they need to prove themselves just as much as everybody else. Reddit mods don't have the best reputation as a group to begin with. This isn't Reddit 2.0.

Allowed in the tos or not, it WILL happen here just like it did on Reddit. I do believe that if you want to be the primo community for something then it’s on you to make that happen though, bullying someone out isn’t right morally but there’s little way of stopping it happening

I originally disliked this, but I was thinking about it and have changed my mind. Yea this isn't right. if you are closing a community it should be deleted to allow freedom for the next person to use the name. It wouldn't be enforceable at a federation level but, this 100% would be a good instance level rule. Don't take me wrong, I am not against temporary locks for issues internally or for staffing problems, but what was done here was essentially in the domain world what is called a "park" where the name is no longer available for anyone else, but is not being used. I don't think Parking should be allowed, it inhibits growth. This sets a precedent where it would be allowed to make ghost communities here that exist in other instances solely so the community can't exist here as well, it's very anti-user and in my opinion potentially anti-federation.

Well now we have subreddit community drama. Look at us. We're growing up so fast!

I saw the lock post and also found it surprising, but I think I have a (perhaps naively?) more charitable view of the situation.

I've thought about starting a small engine discussion community; my husband and I have a local repair business, but we also make how-to videos and offer troubleshooting help on our website, and I know he would love having another group of enthusiasts and users to interact with! I also know I'm pretty tapped for time as it is and barely understand lemmy - I still have not figured out how to go reply to a response to one of my comments without going to the post and finding it, just can't seem to make it work from the inbox - and I am so totally not up for the task of running a community. A month or two ago, I had a lot more free time, and I might have jumped on in and then gotten way over my head as Lemmy picked up steam during the Reddit Exodus, and I probably would have been deeply relieved to be contacted by another community with more experienced moderators looking to merge.

I have no idea what the experience level of the people running the local instance was, but I can totally see how the time commitment might have suddenly escalated past their expectations and made them feel like they needed help.

Is it possible to transfer control of a community? Perhaps, if you and others on this instance are very opposed to merging the communities, it would be possible for them to transfer control of the community to others who can commit the time and effort to running it. I don't think the answer is making them to keep it here, though; they don't seem to want to run it, and it seems anathema to the ethos of the Fediverse to force anyone's labor for anything.

Was the community founded under the idea of not being related to the reddit one? I feel like there's a story missing here because that doesn't really seem like it should be relevant....

When was the community created?

Also you say the reddit mods "bullied"...but how does that even work? Are any of the mods of the original community voicing anger over this?

@AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world if you're interested we could just make a new community if the old one isn't going to be opened, I'd be down to mod it.

I read the pinned post there (https://lemmy.world/post/1117612) and it said they were moving to a new instance for technical support, not because of some beef with anyone. They can do better with admins that can provide personal attention. Lemmy.world is the biggest instance right now which means admins are stretched thin.

Closing a community and opening a new one does result in fragmentation, but already I have subscriptions to communities across multiple instances that cover the same topic. It's just the way things are going to be here on the Fediverse. There's no rules about what communities can live on different instances. The solution is a feature that allows you to group your communities. That would make the issue rather moot since you could view communities with similar topics on the same page.

I think this does raise a good topic for discussion insofar as I don't think Lemmy.world has any policy nor community in place regarding community closures or putting up communities for adoption from others that would be open to moderating them.

However, this is much more of a topic to be discussed with the admins and may be better in !support@lemmy.world, especially as any community created for the purposes of handing over the reigns to new moderation would probably be best moderated by admins over some random folks. Not sure what you'd call it, but I do think it would be helpful to have, as even setting aside this specific situation, there will eventually be other situations where moderators' lives get busy or they lose interest & communities become abandoned.

Ideally this situation would have been handled with a discussion among the community members & the old moderators would put it to a vote or pick new moderators to succeed them rather than abruptly closing the community down.

Now, hold on champ. There's a couple of points here you've conveniently ignored or tweaked to suit your position.

Firstly, I'm not aware of any charter that says I'm obligated in any form to offer the community a say in the decision. Should I have? Morally, there's obviously an argument for yes. But did I have to, no. The choice was mine, and I made one. It's your bad luck that I started the community, I suppose.

Secondly, there was no bullying, soft or otherwise. What I said in the pinned post is what I meant: I want us all to come together in one community, and I'm excited by that community being on an instance that is dedicated specifically to tech communities. I'm excited by the idea of the admin of that community being focused on tech communities, and being actively engaged and available to address the needs of that tech community – rather than waiting on the busy admins of an increasingly massive instance.

As for the rest of it, you can debate it all you like. I had a very eloquent and levelheaded message from @ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world today that I'm in the process of replying to. I don't think they'll like my position, but I'm certainly thankful they came to me, politely and respectfully, rather than lobbing a misguided and factually flawed post into the community.

But hey man, cheers for playing.

They just straight up close shop and told users to go f yourselves.

While discouraging and alarming, the fediverse is still pretty fresh territory and there is the opportunity to create a new community/magazine for those un happy with the displacement.

I do find the astro turfing and manipulation to be upsetting and hope there can be safeguards in place amongst the members to keep this from happening elsewhere.

Seems to me the answer is that if you disagree with it you can start your own instance. I think the deciding factor is simply which one becomes popular. I’d imagine this would certainly give them the advantage but it wasn’t uncommon on reddit for communities to revolt and create their own subreddits to take back control from some power tripping mod.

I do think that one of the unique challenges here is that instead of one subreddit that everyone goes to,you’re naturally going to get 2 3 or 10 instances of a popular topic like news or pics. That could be good to offer lots of different places to find similar content. Or it could be bad where the community becomes fractured and there’s less content getting generated in any one instance.

I don’t know the answer but it does seem to be a unique challenge.

This is Good Actually.

Ideally in the future we'll have functionality to migrate both accounts and communities between instances, and to merge communities. When one community merges into another:

• All of their posts should get moved over (so that the "archive" doesn't get lost, as the android mod was concerned about).
• Subscribers of the moving/absorbed community would be given a message prompting whether they want to be subscribed to the new combined community, or unsubscribe entirely.
• The name of the moving/absorbed community would be freed up (possibly after some delay) to allow it to be reused for some other purpose. Maybe a message should be left up about the merger for discoverability purposes ("you may also be interested in x@y.z").

For now though, this is fine.

Should the owners of a community be allowed to close their community? Yes.

Whether you like their reasoning or not, all that happened is they chose to close their community.

This will likely happen again. There's a few posts wishing for the end of Reddit, but you may want to be careful what you wish for - if that happens, then the various "Reddit Migration" sites all regard communities set up by old Reddit mods as the "official" ones, and any community you may have spent time building up in the meantime are classed as "spin-offs" (at best).

So if you've started a new community because you didn't like the Reddit equivalent, prepare to get clobbered by a suddenly more popular version. It all seems based on an assumption that Lemmy is just a convenient alternative for a monolith, rather than something that could ever be its own thing.

What are you gonna do, ban them if they leave?

Maybe you could learn about how civilized people had a meaningful conversation and reached a decision they felt was better for the community and themselves a d stop hoping to fence the sea hoping it'll hold the water

As Moderator to !BestOf, this is my biggest fear. I've been working pretty extensively on this community in my spare time and I'm afraid that if the Moderators of r/BestOf decide to federate, we will lose. I'm not entirely nervous about fragmenting the community so much as just being r/LesserBestOf. By design, this community shouldn't really be fragmentated unless we decide to become BestOf something specific.

I wonder if one day Lemmy supports migration of communities whether this would become a problem. Do the mod own the subscriber list and can move it from one server to another without subscriber consent? Assuming the community on the original server will be deleted after migration, perhaps the migration process can include each subscriber given a (one-click) choice to move or unsubscribe. In addition there is the question whether mods are free to hand over a community to new mods if they want to.

So… what do we do? Do we tell mods that they’re required to keep their community open for a certain period of time? Do we have them sign a legally binding contract? Do we fine them if they break said contract? Do we take donations to pay for the legal team we’ll require?

Or, do we just accept the fact that sometimes people will make decisions that we don’t agree with?

Yes, I’m being a smartass, but the question remains: how would we enforce this?

Permanently Deleted

I think they should be able to close it, for, say, one or three month. When they close, they stop being moderators, and after this period (one or three month) the name is up for grabs by anyone.