There have been a lot of requests for new comms lately and not even a discussion of actually implementing any of them that I've seen. That isn't really fun or welcoming to new people. It makes the site feel static and unevolving.

Yes, we already have a fair number of comms and a pretty small userbase, but the default setting is to browse All, so splitting up posting across more comms shouldn't reduce the pool of posts, and having more specific communities if anything should inspire more posting. Anything that has repeat issues with self-moderating can be locked or deleted, but I don't really see the issue with letting people go wild on this. The freedom to create your own little space, niche specialty community, or novelty gag community inspires a lot of creative posting in my experience and could bring in new users as well. We may not want to lifeboat any big subreddits, but letting people set up their own little spaces can't hurt too much, right?

Let new comms live and die by people's actual usage of them, rather than not letting any exist in the first place. If we have posts on this comm getting 15+ upbears, that is enough posters to get a small community going, no? let alone other posts getting 30-50 upbears, often with well known community members volunteering to moderate and still no response. And those are just the people posting and upbearing despite most of us knowing full well new comms basically never get approved. The current system just isn't working, IMO.

Admins, if there is something I'm missing here that makes this an intractable problem I'm open to hearing it. If that is the case, can we set objective criteria for creating a comm rather than defaulting to "admins ignored your post: denied"?

Everyone else: do you have any thoughts on this? I think it could work. Obviously if comms cause issues they can just be nuked. I'm fine with aggressive moderation, but as it stands now I think creativity is being stifled.

  • GaveUp [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I requested to open a comm and mod it but it didn't work out because I needed a Matrix account

    I couldn't figure out how to DM the person I needed to DM because I don't use Matrix and it's not exactly a UX friendly software for non tech enthusiasts

    Modding feels unnecessarily complicated, why do I need an account on an unrelated app to mod something here?

    • Cadende [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I think that was so they could ask vetting questions. Honestly the questions shouldn't be that sensitive that they can't be held over DMs, unless you've doxed yourself on a prior account or something. If you understand the risks (DMs aren't encrypted), you could probably bug the admins to do it on here. But it is good to have another channel of communication if there are site issues... idk

      Agreed that the whole process is overcomplex for a simple comm mod position