Disclaimer:

This community is not meant to expose and blame users for not taking care of the communities they created, so please don’t take it personally if your name pops up in the comment section. The goal of this community is not to shame users, but to give abandoned, empty or otherwise unmoderated communities a second chance to thrive by letting interested, active users adopt them.

I am not a supporter of this site tho, so I am not personally able to give anyone mod rights. You’ll still need to send a message to the actual supporters of the instance in question, or ask for your desired community in !support@lemmy.world or the respecitve equivalent on your own home instance. This little project is only meant to “advertise” unmoderated communities that might otherwise end up being completely forgotten.

When is a community considered abandoned?

  • When the sole mod has not been online in a couple of months, especially when the account was created during the “redditgeddon”. Way too many people jumped into the Fediverse only to lose interest a couple of days later and return to reddit, leading to empty communities moderated by dead accounts.

  • When the community is a couple of months old but has still zero posts, no banner / icon or sidebar, then the creator likely only made the community to squat on the name, but didn’t plan to actually DO something with it, expecting others to fill the void in their stead. But since the community looks barren and empty, noone will post anyway … such communities usually stay in limbo until someone more active takes over.

  • If the mod(s) are still active on the site (just look at their profile) it is better to first ask them directly whether they want to give their community away. This is a little more fair towards the original creator, and it might even be faster than asking supporters to give you mod rights. Keep in mind that PMs don’t always work between instances, so the other user might not recieve your private message or might be unable to answer!

  • If YOU are the mod of a community that you plan to give away, or maybe you just want to invite additional mods to the team and don’t know where to ask, then feel free to comment as well. ;)

Possible issues:

  • Important: Always view communities, magazines etc. on their home instance at least once before submitting a post, because sometimes a seemingly “unmoderated” community does have a lot of content AND active mods on the actual instance, despite looking empty and bleak when viewed from an instance that didn’t yet federate properly.

  • Sometimes creators ARE active on the site but don’t bother cleaning up their communities (offtopic posts, spam, advertisement bots, arguments in the comment section, etc) so the community is technically unmoderated even tho a mod is present. Whether or not these communities would be better off being moderated by someone else, that’s something the supporters / admins should decide, so please ask them directly and discreetly. Openly posting these communities only leads to witch hunts and mass downvotes and arguments, and I don’t want this type of drama here TBH.

  • If you simply don’t agree with how a community is moderated but the majority of subscribers don’t seem to have a problem with the mod, that might be a “you” problem. Don’t post these here.

  • If a mod never comments or posts, but the community in question is still neat and tidy (no spam etc.) and has a sidebar, icon and banner/rules, then the mod might simply be a lurker, or the user behind the account has created it AS a mod account and is active with a different one. Those communities are NOT unmoderated and should not be “given away” without the consent and knowledge of the original creator.

 

Addendum:

This community might be temporary. If / when the site implements something similar to the community spotlight but for abandoned communities ready to be adopted, then I’ll close this “adoption agency” again and let the site supporters handle it directly via the official system. Until then, I hope that this little project encourages more interaction with the Fediverse and doesn’t cause too much extra work for the supporters and site admins.

PS: I’m also looking for additional mods for this community and/or the others I mod. It’s not much work as of now, so don’t be afraid to ask even if you have never been a mod before ;)