cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1119656
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.
I am angry, you are right and I will stop interacting with the very person who forced this takeover and forced !android@lemmy.world to shamelessly become a redirection page, because usually nothing good comes out of interacting with people acting in bad faith since the start.
Whatever the parties involved advance, they acted in bad faith and reconciliation is not possible when they want this instance’s community to die first and siphon off its users, and they still defend that they have the right to force this over the 19K subscribers who had no say in this. They call this “moderator discretion” and us simply being “out of luck”. This is why a reconciliation is not possible.
The right course of action is to officially treat !android@lemmy.world as being abandoned by its mods, remove the “current” mods (who have no claim to the community anymore, since they themselves abandoned it and cannot act in its interest since they made it clear that their goal is to have only one main community over at the Reddit mods’ instance) and then appoint new moderators. I even volunteer to do so, select new ones from that same community and maintain its activity.
The only way to solve this is for the community to be reopened again under new moderators. And the old mods and the Reddit mods can obviously pursue their own plans on their new instances.