I did this with !triathlon@lemmy.world. The community has been around for 3+ years, and it appeared the old mod hadn’t signed in for just as long.
If any aspiring triathletes want to drop a post in there to say hi, I’d love to get some real content going that’s not just me.
I did this somewhat recently. I took over !sims2@lemmy.world still working on getting a bit more traction bit it's niche so, I'm not surprised.
It's free real estate.
Pretty much. And a landlord attitude where you sit back and do nothing
This means the community never gets the traction it deserves.
Honestly, I think that the larger problem with communities not getting traction is a lack of users posting, not a lack of moderation.
Yeah, in theory, uncontrolled spam can drive users away, leave the place dead except for spam. But I can't think of a single community I've personally seen on the Threadiverse where that's the case. As of 2026, the problem of communities not getting traction is, I think, almost always a lack of content being posted.
Traction is another issue entirely agreed.. And is more important.
i think the problem is people just scattered too much to other non-lemmy platforms after ee went down.
That is part of it.. And thats part of the problem with the communities which have been added with no real maintainers I think. They add lots of extra padding to the list.
Of course, this is just my opinion (and there are 50 different ways of looking at it).
Speaking only for lemmy.world… I think I'm probably the main one looking at these requests right now, but I think we genereally look for:
Not so concerned about the acticity of the community per se or some of the other listed points. And if you think a community is not moderated but aren't sure, you can ask - worst I can say is "sorry, no". :)
If I transfer a community and the idle mod(s) come back (which hasn't happened yet except one who replied to me and said "Oh yeah, I was gone for a long time, and it's okay, I don't want the community back), there's always a chance that if they appear to truly be back to Lemmy, I might see if the requestor and they can share modship or something.
And I do look at the requestor. And not just if you have modlog entries, but the type of entries. You can run afoul of community rules and still appear to be a pretty decent person. But I have seen requests from folks who participated in many personal attacks / incivility as well as bigotry of various kinds, and… no thanks.
If you do want to take over moderating, the most important thing to us, I think I can safely say, is try to moderate fairly. It's often subjective, but try. And definitely do not ignore open reports. You should process them - either to remove the reported content or close the report if the content is okay - ideally at least daily, but at a BARE minimum if your community has open reports older than a week, we may look to replcae you with someone who can process reports. (Disclaimer: We have some old open reports on the server and we're working on trying to make those get processed sooner, so I'm aware this might sound ironic. We are all volunteers, and we try to give patience as well as hoping for your patience)
Feel free to ask/discuss here, but in general one of the best ways of asking us (for lemmy.world communities) is to make a thread at !c/support and ask there.
Also, if any of the folks who have asked sees this - I have a backlog a few days old - frankly, some of them I wanted to check with some of my fellow admins who have been a bit busy of late, so some things are running a little slow, but we haven't fogotten about you. Unless we have. But I have several open requests, a couple of which I plan to work through tomorrow. :)
I'm also trying to be around more visibly here. I don't know all of our policies or have access to all of our tools, but I can do a few things. :)
Also, I'll give one example that still makes me happy: !c/coffee was the first request I filled as an admin, and the new mod really kicked off posting, and the community is also so active. I love seeing them pop up in the feed, and knowing that I helped in a tiny way to make that happen. So if you want to help grow a community - you can post in it and not have to moderate it - but if you want to also put in the time to work on the reported posts and comments, by all means, put in the request!
If you looked at my request a month or so ago, thank you! Still trying to get traction but, at least there's posts now and an occasional comment. But, I know a game released in 2007 is a bit niche these days lol.
YSalsoK that you don't need to "take over" an abandoned community, and you can simply remake it on a new instance. The usefulness of this will vary from community to community, but some communities may be better fits for a more niche or interest-specific instance. Spreading out communities across instances helps diversify the Fediverse, and helps to ensure that large swaths of communities don't all go dark if Lemmy World is having server issues; this happens from time to time, and when it does it seems like 90+% of the threadiverse becomes unusable.
Lemmy World is probably still a good fit for most "general interest" type communities, but it's also important that you don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I've seen a few communities, even like c/debian and c/fedora where the admin hasn't posted in years. Or even c/proton
I'm not a debian user (but I am a fedora user). So, there are some fairly common communities which deserve to be actively moderated
Oh, and a note on those two communites - someone (I don't remember the username, so might even be you, but I think it's someone else) has a pending request that is on my to-do list. I think it's those two specifically. I just don't have it handy in front of me - but if it is specifically those communities, probably working that tomorrow. :)
edit: lol, I got curious. It is you. Probably transfer those tomorrow :)
edit2: Actually, I see your activity in the first community I transferred which is plenty of assurance for me - went ahead and transferred. Thank you for volunteering! I'll reply to the ticket now as well :)
Just realize that it isn't proof that someone isn't moderating.
I have accounts on multiple instances that "own" communities. I moderate with them, but they otherwise look inactive. Moderating on the fediverse is a pain in the ass. Trying to do it from an instance that you don't have an account on makes it worse, but flipping between accounts makes using the fediverse an even bigger pain in the ass. So the thing a lot of people do is stay subscribed to their communities and only flip over when something needs attention. Even on big communities, it works.
Yeah I have 2 accounts I use for scrolling (news allowed and no news allowed lol) so one of my accounts I flip back to just for modding. But, I do try to occasionally post things in that community from that account as well.
I understand where you're coming from.. But...
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.
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
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.
You can't see if someone is logging in and purely viewing things. Only someone's home instance admin can. However, you can see voting activity on somewhere like lemvotes.org. If someone hasn't voted on anything in two years, say, I'd give pretty decent odds that the account probably isn't active.
That's not an absolute guarantee that a user is gone. Maybe someone uses an alternate account for all their activity, and one account just for modding. Or maybe they are just a really hardcore lurker, who doesn't ever post, comment, or vote.
But I'd generally operate on the assumption that for most users, if they aren't posting, commenting, or voting for extended periods of time, that their account is probably inactive.
EDIT: It might be interesting for Threadiverse instances to expose this publicly. Like, if an account hasn't been logged into for over a year, publicly flag it "inactive". Maybe randomize the time delay a bit so that bots can't scrape it to figure out exactly when someone last logged in. Not sure if there's any way that that that could be exploited, but it might leak a little information, and I don't think that for the purposes of determining whether someone is still around, an exact time of last login is required.
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)
Speaking only for communities on lemmy.world, since I'm an admin here and more recently am working a lot of these requests - any community that I do give to a new mod comes with the disclaimer that I contact the old mod(s) and if I've missed their activity, or they otherwise show up again - not much is permanent, including this. So at least here on lemmy.world, if I were to give away someone's community and they popped up to protest, it's all but certain I'd give it right back - although I might see if they'd be willing to bring on that other person as a mod to work with them, but as of yet this hasn't happened, so we'll cross that bridge when and if it does. :)
Also, to you and everyone else who moderates: Thank you. You are indeed the first line of defense against spam and bigotry, and often are integral to making your communities grow. I've been a moderator (and am so) as well as an administrator here, reddit, and other places - and each has its own joys and difficulties, but mods are absolutely in the trenches. :)
They told me I'm a bad person.
its OK, you are 🙂
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