The !android@lemmy.world community on this instance thrived for a while and reached almost 19k subscribers very rapidly and it was very active.
Recently the Reddit mods of r/Android created another community with a few hundred members on another different instance where they are mods and that one was then astroturfed on c/android by a person seemingly unrelated to that community’s mods.
Apparently some discussions then took place between owners of both communities and the mods of !android@lemmy.world community then unilaterally closed the community, thus, according to their own sticky notice, succumbing to the flawed reasoning that the Reddit mods are “more experienced” and therefore the rightful representatives of an Android community.
I find this behavior sad and it just shouldn’t be allowed here for two reasons:
- this sets the precedent for more Reddit mods to just come and claim “ownership” of communities by bullying existing ones into closing;
- does not respect the almost 19k subscribers who didn’t even have a say in this, and especially those who had already expressed that they joined !android@lemmy.world because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.
!android@lemmy.world needs to be reopened now and the mods removed since they expressed that they no longer want to moderate a community on lemmy.world.
…How do you know that’s how their chats went? Nothing in their pinned comment suggests that.
I feel like you’re jumping to conclusions here and maybe the mods didn’t have the same opinions on reddit that you do…and don’t actually see that there would’ve been an issue with a merger.
A vote might’ve been a good idea in retrospect, but I’m not immediately convinced it wouldn’t have just ended with a merger anyway. Like the mods, just like you’re doing right now, probably made assumptions for the 19k people that weren’t all true.
Much simpler: leave the community open as long as there are volunteer moderators. Members never asked to move and were already very active.
My thought is they probably wanted to knee-jerk people into seeing the “we’re moving!” who might not have noticed, or may have been on the fence as to whether or not people would move.
I think if their intent was to move, closing the community (at least temporarily) would be good to get that message out. But It does make sense what another user said about maybe not keeping it locked indefinitely so someone else can use the name.
The reason I agree more with the idea of voting is because it encourages people to actively choose which one they want, whereas I think the closing was done more to help along less active members.
I guess what i’m trying to say is: In the past i’ve seen forums closed when merging/moving to new sites, and It just seems like standard procedure to me first and malice second.
The argument of a “better instance” is literally the one they pushed in their other thread where another person astroturfed their community 2~3 days ago with a misleading and gaslighting title “r/Android is now on the Fediverse!” and the one they keep pushing on r/Android when users there ask them why they create a new duplicate community with a few hundred members when there’s already a lemmy.world c/android community that is very active and has 19k members.
The “experience” argument is implicit when they keep insisting that they are r/Android mods, and even the 2 mods of !android@lemmy.world highlighted that on the sticky notice.
All of this obviously is cordial, but that’s exactly what I mean by soft-bullying, it’s advancing bogus and weak arguments in an attempt to make the 2 mods feel as though they aren’t fit for the job and should instead let r/Android mods take charge and join them on their new 3 days old community.
Again, those 2 mods perfectly have the right to be convinced by these arguments and leave for that community. But they don’t have the right to close !android@lemmy.world for the other 19k users who were already happy with the community as it was and were very active.
mods got gaslit from a couple random threads hitting their site…? Plus were these users actual mods of the new community, or just random people?