Want to get yall’s feedback on community squatting.

There are a good amount of communities with zero posts, comments, etc, as well as some users who have created communities but aren’t trying to grow them or even post to them in any way.

I’d rather have the creators of communities be someone who’s at least contributing to them.

Some options are, occasionally deleting communities with little to no activity, or limiting modship to a small number of communities.

  • @AgreeableLandscape
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    154 years ago

    Reddit has /r/redditrequest which grants change of ownership of subreddits with either no mods or mods that have been inactive on the entire site for a period of time. People can request a subreddit, and if the conditions are met, ownership is transferred to them. This model can be automated with server-side code (I’m pretty sure Reddit does this) and modified with additional (or fewer) requirements.

    I don’t think it’s a good idea to unconditionally autodelete communities with low participation, because some communities are naturally niche and are expected to not gain a lot of subscribers (for example a community dedicated to a small content creator).

    • DessalinesOPMA
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      54 years ago

      Ya I don’t wanna remove communities for low participation, that’s certainly not to be blamed on the creators. This is mainly for communities with ~0 zero posts.

      • @AgreeableLandscape
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        4 years ago

        Then what’s to stop community squatters from flying under the radar of an automated system by making a post and commenting something random in it every few days if they really want to deprive others of the community?

        A solution for this might be to have a report button for communities, which will alert admins of behavior like squatting and perhaps more importantly, communities dedicated to content like hate speech and trolling.

        • DessalinesOPMA
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          54 years ago

          If they’re contributing to the community, then they probably shouldn’t be removed :) . I imagine bigger moderation problems should get escalated to the instance admins, the final say is really with them.

          I might consider some kind of report button, but also you can just be able to ping instance admins from anywhere and get their feedback.

  • @jaex5Fox
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    4 years ago

    deleted by creator

    • @andycuccaro
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      24 years ago

      Yeah, I think this is a good way to deal with it.

  • @Rumblestiltskin
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    74 years ago

    I think if they have zero posts and have been empty for a while it is OK to delete. Someone will recreate if they need it and this will allow a more involved mod to run the community.

  • Matt
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    64 years ago

    Given this is the single instance of Lemmy, and federation is not yet implemented, I would treat this as demonstration and leave them for the time being.

    Once you’re federated and there are other instances, then you could look at removing the low activity communities?

  • @k_o_t
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    4 years ago

    I don’t think this is necessarily done out of ill intent, but rather people who have never been mods before becoming one. For example some people might necessarily realize how much effort it exactly it to moderate or maybe that they don’t have as much interest in the subject as they thought they had, or maybe they simply don’t have time at the moment.

    For example I when signed up created /c/firefox, /c/matrix and /c/linuxmasterrace, /c/archlinux. I had some interesting content at the time and some free time, but now that I’m preparing for the finals I have very little time to spend on it. And I would be happy to pass those communities to other people.

    My point being that maybe a solution could be mod voting? For example a person realizes that he does a poor job at managing a community and/or populating it with content, so from that moment users could propose themselves to become mods, other users will look through their posting history and will eventually decide. This can of course be done through a simple post, but automating it would be nice. I think this has been discussed here before, can’t find it unfortunately.

    • DessalinesOPMA
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      74 years ago

      The mod voting thing we’ll postpone for a longer discussion, because there isn’t too clear a way to do that without it leaving subs open to hijacking (we have a github issue for it somewhere).

      But ya community squatting is something all instance runners will have to deal with. I do like the lemmyrequest idea /u/AgreeableLandscape mentioned where idle / modless communities could be requested by whoever, then that gives a chance to ping the mods there and see if they’re inactive.

  • @oriond
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    54 years ago

    0 posts + Certain time of inactivity --> Auto Delete them
    Some posts + Certain time of inactivity --> Keep them but flag them as “Inactive”

    • And just use a check mark on searches to either include or not “inactive” communities.
    • I can see some legit uses of communities with very little activity.
  • @Certified_Awful_Post
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    4 years ago

    I have one I made a year ago that I would gladly hand over if I knew the password. Perhaps I may suggest a use it or lose it policy. If you don’t log in for a year (more than enough time), your account is forfeit.

    As a moderator I’ve noticed many teams attempt to jury rig ways to purge active users on their respective platforms. Many big titans who have operated for years with millions of users occasionally do inactive user purges to free up old usernames.

    Edit: I think a reasonable option would be messaging and removing the moderation team if no manual moderator actions take place within a medium timeframe. Three months sounds good to take into account the more sporadic communities.

  • @rucrefugee
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    44 years ago

    Using the level of activity in a community as a guage for someone’s fitness to moderate seems like a bad idea. There’s no connection there.

    Squatting is a good thing - it counters bias

    It’s a much bigger problem to find non-biased moderators (squatting or not). If PepsiCo creates and moderates c/pepsi, it invites corruption because obviously PepsiCo will censor posts critical of Pepsi. Squatters create several forums, and thus tend not to be biased. E.g. say a squatter creates c/pepsi, c/coke, c/drpepper, and c/microsoft. They are likely not affiliated with those companies, and can serve as a less biased moderator than the representatives of those companies who would like to control the narrative to favor their profit-driven bias.

    • @PatagoniaKid
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      24 years ago

      I read the op’s post as more a complain about community name parking rather than squatting.

  • Serge Tarkovski
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    4 years ago
    • the rules for automatic suspension/deletion etc. should be adjustable for an instance by its admin
    • I think it’s a good idea to suspend or archive a community by renaming it after a certain rule is matched (i.e. a period of inactivity)
    • by renaming I mean adding an underscore before the name, or the ~ symbol, or any other symbol suitable for this purpose
    • by archiving I also mean adding a special flag to the community to be able to show/hide such communities in the UI
    • this frees up the squatted name back for anyone interested in growing a certain topic, but keeps the original community in case its owner would ever want to resume their activity
  • @gravity
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    34 years ago

    Implement a request feature to request a subs name being forwarded to someone else, if someone can deny or approve then that’s their choice, but if it goes weeks or months without being denied or accepted, the change is granted… DEPENDING on the number of active users on that sub. If it’s only 1-5-10 people, then it should pass, but if it’s hundreds+ of active people then it shouldn’t pass. Also if a community actively has over 50 users I think they shouldn’t even get the option for people to request the name.

    Besides this, I would not touch inactive communities. Please limit the amount of moderation that happens, ideally one person should NOT have control over all instances. It should be user led. This is a major issue with other social media. Developers should intervene maybe at a LAST RESORT (illegal stuff, etc) but besides that it should be left 99% of the time up to moderators for that sub imo.

  • @lps
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    34 years ago

    how about simply removing after say 15 days of no activity. Is it possible to archive and mark as inactive so it can be resurrected later?

    • DessalinesOPMA
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      4 years ago

      Sounds like a good idea. Admins can transfer and remove communities, but they can’t “delete” them through the UI rn.

    • Serge Tarkovski
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      14 years ago

      I keep saying I believe those rules should be as adjustable as possible for an instance.

  • @trymeout
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    34 years ago

    If an account has not been logged into for over a year, the account gets deleted and the username becomes available.

    • @Praefringo
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      44 years ago

      I think thats unfair. Some of us create accounts so that we can pop in every now then to see the progress of this project/ how its doing.

  • @liam
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    34 years ago

    Maybe I’m misunderstanding the tech, but isn’t this irrelevant with federation? If lemmy.ml/c/privacy is squatted, then people will subscribe to (hypothetically) lemmy.privacytools.io/c/privacy.

    Or are you asking with respect to just this instance and not the Lemmy defaults, since you’re administrating this one? In that case, this is a great example of the power of federation. You can pick what you think will keep the instance healthy; I don’t have an opinion.

    • DessalinesOPMA
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      44 years ago

      You’re correct, but ya this is just w/ respect to this instance. Lots of name squatting going on.

      • @AgreeableLandscape
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        4 years ago

        If it’s on an instance by instance basis then it makes sense, but I wouldn’t recommend implementing active community requirements in the web engine itself. For example a dedicated instance for a software project like Blender (they have their own peertube instance so them getting Lemmy isn’t out of the question) might want to reserve admin-only communities for official updates.

  • @diorama
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    4 years ago

    I made a community to expressly park a name against predatory attitudes of “ethical publishers” (see this) in my native language/piece of land.
    I suggest to prevent brandjacking in this discussion. Please participate. :hugging face:

    • @dirtfindr
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      4 years ago

      Please give a different link.

      archive.is is a Tor-hostile CloudFlare site, and it cannot be circumvented by using Tor Browser or by using archive.org (which gives: “This page is not available on the web because of server error”).

      BTW to be clear, brandjacking benefits the human users of Lemmy. To oppose brandjacking is to put the interests of corporations above the interest of human beings. Non-biased control cannot be achived if the brand owner is in control of the community.

      • @diorama
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        14 years ago

        Yes you are right.
        Also: the archiving default way of Lemmy is via archive.is. Would you mind to fork a post on /c/asklemmy ? <3

    • @diorama
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      24 years ago

      Also: please please please enable [Link](http://a.com) in community titles e.g. for meta-community reference. :hugging face:

        • @diorama
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          24 years ago

          thanks for the kindness and prompt reply! shall I remove my comment? what is th lemmyquette?

          • DessalinesOPMA
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            24 years ago

            Haha you’re good, no need to remove comments :smiling face with sunglasses:

              • DessalinesOPMA
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                14 years ago

                I don’t understand. That link works, its to the /c/italia community.

                • @diorama
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                  14 years ago

                  I clarify: it is the title of #italia referring to #italy or #italiano, e.g. see the first line in card-body:

                  1. it is:
                    1.1. Italia - go to #italy or #italiano
                  2. I expect:
                    2.1. Italia - go to #italy or #italiano
  • @daraul
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    24 years ago

    Just here to say I’m not name squatting :s