**Why YSK: ** I’ve noticed a few communities which have been abandoned by the mods entirely (the ones I’ve seen, have only been a single mod). This means the community never gets the traction it deserves.

Just a FYI, you can ask Lemmy World admins for ownership of communities community and actively moderate it, to help revive them, if you believe they are no longer being moderated

Some general indicators are:

  1. No Comments / posts by the mod in years
  2. There is only 1 mod in the community, but, no posts by them whatsoever
  3. There has never been a post at all (even if you check old).

I’ve seen a few communities now with a lot of potential (like c/debian), and some of those communities even have regular contributors (who may not have even realized yet that the mods likely disappeared years ago).

Even if you don’t think you can post super regularly, posting every few weeks is better than a community with no ongoing posts.

  • auzy1@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    I understand where you’re coming from… But…

    1. There are communities where the mod has NEVER posted to the community.
    2. And, that mod hasn’t used their lemmy account in years
    3. And, they haven’t tried to even seek other mods
    4. A good example is c/fedora, c/debian and c/redhat. These aren’t obscure… There are LOTS of related news constantly. The Mod had never posted to them, and any posts were randomly by others

    If the person operating the community has never posted to it, its better to simply transfer it entirely (or add other people who are interested in doing so), and keeping it alive… And then, the previous mod (who has never contributed anything anyway), can always request to be added as a mod again

    If the mod was contributing at some point, it makes some sense to get in touch, but, in some, its been 3 years no contributions (and, even worse, in some, 0 posts total)

    Having a bunch of communities which should be popular, but are all dead also isn’t a great look. It’s less motivating to post to a community which feels abandoned and you don’t have any privileges in either, and even if you aren’t that active on a certain server, I feel you should at least have a second mod who is.

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      Or worse, sleeping AstroTurf accounts that only intend to come back if the community provides them some benefit because the term was popular on reddit, etc.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      1: isn’t mandatory to be a mod.
      2: in a visible way 3: not mandatory so long as the community is running smoothly without spam, trolls or other bad actors.
      4: those communities have been purring along without causing problems the entire time; at least debian has, I don’t frequent the others

      Look, I’m not saying that having an active mod isn’t useful; it is. I’m saying that you can’t tell when a mod is active just by their post and comment history. Admins of an instance can, but we can’t.

      Just being real here, the fediverse is mostly bush league still. We don’t get the massive spammers and trolls the way other places do. Nor is it a bad thing that communities flow organically rather than being artificially packed by a mod. Hell, there’s been communities where the owner did exactly what you’re talking about, and now people have them blocked because it gets old fast. Artificial engagement is artificial.

      I’ll also say that if you aren’t motivated to post to a community that doesn’t have a mod/owner posting from an account on that instance, as a mod/owner, that’s a you thing. The only time a community is abandoned is when the community abandons it, not the mods. What matters in terms of there being a point to posting is the other users, the other members. Now, it definitely can happen that an absentee mod can turn into a disengaged community. Absolutely can happen. But I just don’t see it very often.

      Mind you, I’ve only been a daily or near daily fediverse user since the reddit API debacle. Before that, it was pretty much an afterthought for me. But in those few years, I’ve only rarely seen where a mod being an active poster made a difference a handful of times. History memes being a prime example.

      I’m not trying to shit on you, I just don’t think it’s the kind of problem you think it is, and pointing out that mods posting or not isn’t a 1:1 correlation with them actively moderating

      • auzy1@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        11·
        1 day ago

        It is not a me thing… I was actually trying to make fedora busier, and I noticed this after… Same as redhat. I only thought about checking after. And, I started to investigate a bit more and noticed a trend.

        In the case of all 3 now, I’m trying to find secondary mods, and going to speak to people who actively contribute if they want to become mods

        In 2 of the communities I saw, the mod had 12 posts, and one was asking for info on self-promotion. That being said, it’s reasonable that Lemmy World admins will check if the person is doing work behind the scenes anyway.

        If you’re setting up 30 communities, haven’t posted to 29 of them, and have only posted 12 comments TOTAL in 3 years, one of which were in those communities, you’re cybersquatting ie, shrodingers moderator (since there is nothing to moderate, you’re technically not a mod yet anyway)