I thought this might be worth a little bit of discussion at the moment.
We’ve had a few communities started by existing subs on the other site, some making it clear that it’s staking a claim to the same name on here in case they ever decide to move, but that they have no plans to at the moment, and will not be doing any moderating.
I have to be honest, this kinda rubs me the wrong way. It feels like hedging your bets, running one community, not running the other one, but still intending to be in charge if it takes off despite that.
If you’d like to start a community here in the same style as an existing one, that’s great, go for it!
Moderate, post great content, grow!
But if you’re aiming to put your name on undeveloped land, in the hope that when you come back someone will have built a farm, I’m not sure it’s very helpful.
Discussion encouraged!
Instance owners can do whatever they like as far as I know (it’s their football, so to speak).
But obviously deus-ex-machina isn’t something you want happening day-to-day on a community without discussion beforehand, setting out when the hammer comes out.
It’s a bit sad that we have to discuss it already.
I guess the ideal answer is some sort of instance wide policy as you’ve mentioned above @jakwithoutac@feddit.uk, but it feels like that should only apply to active communities that have become unmoderated.
Someone is intentionally squatting a community name, and has stated outright that’s what they’re doing. Could be cause for swifter action?
I know ultimately the power rests with the instance owner and they have the ability to do whatever they fancy, but as things grow I worry about the escalating admin burden placed on them without any sort of automation in place to help out. I’m making some assumptions here, but right now I think instance owners either need to be hyper vigilant for this sort of stuff, or have it pointed out to them (which comes with it’s own can of worms like being flooded with messages or people reporting mods for bad reasons).
I think ideally there will be a tool one day that instance owners can set some thresholds in that alerts them to this kind of thing so that they can take action as and when needed, rather than by report or request.
Right now I guess it’s up to @tom what happens.
I suppose this kind of thing was inevitable, which is why we have domain registrars to arbitrate on the internet.