@asklemmy What is up with people creating Communities and then not even posting a single post in them?

Like wouldn’t you want to be able to grow a community by doing a post here and there, even just a welcome post to say why you created the community would make sense wouldn’t it?

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    73
    ·
    3 months ago

    It’s called squatting and is generally frowned upon. Sometimes people just love being in charge of lots of communities even if there is no actual community.

    On the other hand, sometimes it is aspirational, in the sense that the creator hopes that having a place for people to post will lead to discoverability. One day someone may come across it and decide to post just because it is there.

    I guess the two paragraphs are not mutually exclusive.

    • SamXavia@southampton.socialOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      3 months ago

      That’s fair enough, I find when a community is empty I am less likely to even consider posting in it, compared to one that maybe has a single post from 6+ months ago.

      Even if you are squatting on a community I think it makes sense to try and make it look active by posting yourself.

      • Plastic_Ramses@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        it makes sense to try and make it look active by posting yourself.

        Wouldn’t be called squatting if that was the case.

    • ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      On the other hand, sometimes it is aspirational, in the sense that the creator hopes that having a place for people to post will lead to discoverability. One day someone may come across it and decide to post just because it is there.

      If you build it, they will come

      Searching for communities when I came across with no content or a post or two from a year ago, I ignore them. Why should I post/comment in a place that there is nobody?

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      Likely, but I feel like the people who are doing this believe that Lemmy is going to act like Reddit and honor the claim. In reality, admins here aren’t bound by Reddit’s reasons to honor the mod order.

      If there ever is a pissing match between the head mod of a community against everyone else, I would expect the admins to side against the head mod unless the head mod is an admin.

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        This is true and I’ve seen it happen. Lemmy is fundamentally controlled by server-admins, but it belongs to the community. It’s also pretty easy to become a server admin (although difficult to be a good one).

        • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 months ago

          but it belongs to the community.

          That I would argue against. While the admins are willing to override mods, they are also willing to run their servers against the community’s wishes.

          • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 months ago

            By that I mean that communities can and do migrate away from bad admins. They also can and do start their own instances. The structure of the fediverse means that whoever runs the server holds the ultimate power on their own server, but they can’t really weild much leverage over the users.