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!
I’ve followed the discussion on Reddit’s Legal Advice UK and they make some good points about the importance of experienced moderators with the right tools to do the job. Given the importance of the topic and the danger of bad advice I can see why they wouldn’t want just anyone starting a similar community here but, as (I believe) the moderation tools on Lemmy aren’t the best, it does make sense to lock the community down until you can do it right for the users.
They have currently started:
I don’t think this is A Bad Thing in those circumstances but, I fear, if they don’t do something with them sooner rather than later, someone else will start a separate one and confusion will ensue.
In general, if you don’t want to run a specific community - don’t start it or start it and ask for mods to help/take over or drop a suggestion in somewhere.
We need a lot of town/city/local area communities on here, for example. Anyone starting one and locking it down again just to bagsy the slot should have it taken off them.
https://feddit.uk/c/ukpersonalfinance is another one that is closed and being squatted upon. I understand the reasoning, but personally it really rubs me the wrong way. If you can’t moderate it, I don’t think you should squatted on it for more than a few days or a week. I think there should be an expedited way to claim squatted-upon communities.
Yeah, they joined 8 days ago, started the community (added no icon, banner or description) and have yet to post.
There may be a plan (it’s a big undertaking, they may be assembling a mod team as we speak) but, if there is, they aren’t sharing.
Feel free to drop them a (polite) message and ask if they want to chip in here. Getting more perspectives on this issue will really help.
I saw that one. Quite honestly, the biggest thing for me is working out what is, and isn’t, allowed. And any special circumstances. (For example, locking a name until a team steps forward with a solid plan).
The actual resolution of squatting isn’t too difficult, but it is a bit “nuclear option” (admin removing a user, or the sub).
So the surrounding framework/ruleset needs to happen, otherwise it could undermine confidence in people putting effort into communities.
I think that’s a good take on things.
There may be situations where there is merit to a name being out of commission until a group of users on here come to Tom with a good plan. Maybe even with a post from an admin on it like “We don’t want to offer on here until a group of users have assembled to run it properly”
Edit: The main thing that I think shouldn’t be the case, is community names being sat on without a wider discussion/explanation worked out. And this isn’t intended as an attack on people’s actions so far, since there haven’t been any big rules previously, more that the discussions need to happen going forward, and some rules/procedures worked out.
Yeah, we’re partly breaking new ground here so things are going to be a bit clunky for a bit but raising important topics like this is going to help resolve this faster and make proceedings run smoother.
And, although this is largely, currently, inspired by the problems with Reddit and we can learn from their succeses and failures, but we can also do things differently, especially on a UK specific instance. For example, I just started britishhorror@feddit.uk - as best as I can tell, this hasn’t ever been a sub on Reddit, the closest thing is British Horror Movies, which was set-up a year ago and hasn’t been particularly active since. However, I see a possibility that something on here drawing together British horror literature, films, TV, comics, etc has potential to gain traction but we’ll see.
What I did do was have a look on Reddit for British and UK subs there are which could work here and, surprise, there’s a tonne of NSFW ones. I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole and looked into any of them (honest, I’m too scared I’ll see someone I know, especially as a mate has just become a gigolo and I have no intention of stumbling across his nude but I’d imagine 90+% of the posts are people stealthily (or not) promoting their OnlyFans pages. Making a call on that, which may already have been done, could be a big help. Perhaps suggesting someone start a NSFW UK instance for all that might help head potential issues off at the pass.
I agree. If someone just wants to start, say, “Leeds” but leaves it as a locked placeholder then they’d better have a damn good reason for it (I can’t think of one but the possibility is there) or some kind of review would have to take place with the chance if it being opened up being an option on the table. I suspect most people would open it up themselves in those circumstances. If someone wants to start the “Rotherhide and District Brass Band” community and lock it for the time-being, then I suppose that’s fine but the question would be, why bother starting it at all until you’re ready? It’s not likely someone is going to barge in and bag anything that specific for malicious purposes and even if they did I am sure an appeals process would resolve it.
So I feel the presumption should be that all new communities should be open from the start unless there’s potential for harm without a strong moderating team/system in place (so legal, health, financial, mental health might be good examples) and, even then, the person doing that should post a good explanation why with the knowledge that it could be challenged and the wider community decides.
Oh and I see legaladviceuk@feddit.uk is open for business but is flagged as currently being unmoderated. They’ve also posted an explanation for their actions, which I find myself general in support of.
These are some good thoughts! I’m honestly really pleased with how grown up this community is about these things.
The big advantage we do have here, is that we’re small enough that the admin/user ratio is better.
This means that in situations, there can be an easy escalation/resolution, rather than a drawn out (and often ignored) messaging to the admins like can happen elsewhere.
For example, if a bunch of bigoted assholes registered all the lgbt subs, it wouldn’t take the community long to take action here.
And “holds” on communities may well be a good idea in certain situations. We will need guidelines for things, I think. So people can easily understand what is and is not acceptable.
Thinking about it more, I reckon if legaladviceUK do decide to go fully into the fediverse, they might just start their own instance. And in that case, the community here might be perfectly happy just federating.
I think this is key. If there are teething troubles it should be easy enough to resolve and doing that will help set precedents that will make future decisions easier. So what gets decided now will help structure things going forward.
I remember the early days of wikis when people were just messing around with them, figuring out what worked. Then it became obvious Wikipedia was going to be the big beast and the structure and systems we helped thrash out back then (I did a small part in an obscure corner but got to observe the wider work too) helped make it easier for people to create new pages and slot them into the existing way of doing things. Now people don’t even really have to worry about such things - they just need the motivation to start a new page, check it meets the requirements and use any available tools and off they go.
So the coverage here is patchy and most of us are making it up as we go along (well I am) but that’s OK, what we thrash out now will help people in the future just jump onboard without having to spare a thought for any birthing pangs we are experiencing.
So topics like this are vital, not because we are pointing at anyone specific because they’ve done something wrong but because we don’t really know what the right way to do things is and these kinds of discussions will help us figure that out. The topics may need to be gone over again in the future but coming up with some kind of fix now will really help everything run smoothly for the time-being.