@Ernest has pushed an update which allows users to request ownership/moderation of abandoned magazines. Ghost/abandoned magazines were fairly prevalent after the initial wave of hype due to users either squatting magazine names or becoming inactive for other reasons. Now is your chance to get involved, if you were waiting to do so.
To request ownership/moderator privileges, scroll down to where it says “MODERATORS” in the sidebar. There will be an icon of a hand pointing upwards that you can click on, then make the request. Cheers, and thank you for your hard work Ernest, as well as future mods.
Yep, another way is to choose abandoned from the list of magazines, soon it will be more sensibly sorted ;)
This is great. I dont want to request moderation on too many so I just picked a few that I think I could handle and communities I’d like to see developed. (Specifically the manga and bitwig magazine.)
Another option I would like to see is the outright deletion of some of the very specific and abandoned mags.
Looking at abandoned list link supplied by @ernest (cheers for that and for all the work you have put in) there are ~4,000 abandoned mags.
While many are in need of new mods, there are a lot that just need to be deleted. They can be recreated in the future if they need is there but I doubt a lot will be claimed.
Maybe in a couple of months that could be looked into.
If you find an abandoned magazine that you feel needs to be deleted, you have an option to request ownership and subsequently delete it. I requested ownership of one such magazine and I’m considering deleting it, myself. I may also consider doing this for some other magazines eventually as well to contribute how I can.
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that option.
It may be worthwhile auto-deleting any with zero historical activity (no threads or microblogs) after a few months, too.
As a stop gap and when I have a few spare hours. I plan to request ownership for mags that have zero activity, and the current mod has been MIA for a few months.
Ernest, please act on assigning mods to any of the magazines where you are the sole mod. The spam on those is significant and there are people willing to help. E.g. m/internet
Make sure to actually mention him if you want this to be seen. @ernest
As an added note to the development team @ernest and others:
This has worked pretty well and I’m now trying to clean up the areas I have ownership of now. However, I have a few notes:
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I would like it if, in the case of a community ownership transfer happens, that the original “founder” account was noted on the right hand side with the panel details. It would be nice to know this as a moderator or owner of a magazine as, if the user ever comes back, they could reapply for moderation access and I could approve knowing that the person was actually the original founder. Right now, it would be hard to verify that the person submitting a mod request is actually the person who originally founded the community for example.
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It would be nice if moderators had the ability to add badges to existing posts to help clean up communities that might have had a lot of content but not much in terms of badge management.
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When ownership transfers, it would be nice to get a notification. When transfer of /m/manga and /m/bitwig came to me, for example, I didn’t notice until a few days after since I didn’t receive a notification.
Should these types of issues be posted as a “bug”? Or is it better to just leave feedback here?
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Ahhh, I’m so disappointed, I’ve been working on @conservative for months, and really hoping to take it on,
and it looks like I missed out.Back when I started they actually held a poll about whether my kind of nature content would be OK and it was voted yes, so I hope the new owner is pro-conserving things and doesn’t purge it and turn it into just another US politics sub!
Perhaps it’s worth a shot to reach out to Ernest about that. It’s very apparent that you’re one of, if not the most consistent contributors to that magazine. Based off of a cursory glance, the person who took the ownership hasn’t made any contributions. Best of luck.
Thank you for the idea. I’m not sure how to contact Ernest?
He replied earlier in this thread–you could try a DM to start. Alternatively, pinging him here may also be an option. I’m not sure which would be best. Apologies.
Great news, he has sorted it out for me! Thank you for suggesting it!
@conservative is saved!
That’s fantastic news! I’m glad your hard work was recognized. :)
Thanks! It’s so nice knowing it won’t all be deleted!
Oh! You got moderator from me! I’m glad you got it. I liked what you did, and didn’t get rid of any of your posts while I had moderator there. There were some old posts that didn’t fit with the conservation/nature/culture theme… I’m glad it’s in the hands of someone with a vision for the magazine. ;-)
Hi! I didn’t realise.
If you want to be involved there too, I can add you!
Nah, you’re doing a great job! I’ll continue to enjoy it as a normal user.
Congrats, you deserve it.
I only posted there a few times, to bump down some posts from that annoying person.I remember you!!! Yeah that person was a bit hard to understand. Sometimes I couldn’t see their posts.
I really appreciated you standing up for me about conserving traditions! :-) ♡
How does it work when you ask to moderate a federated magazine?
If you didn’t get an answer elsewhere yet: You click the button and it sits pending until approved (whether its Ernest approving manually or an automated batchjob I don’t know). Seems to be once a day or so, so could be either but that’s just anecdotal. That’s it tho. Click the button and wait, no other steps lol.
Either way, once approved the magazine will just appear in your moderated list on your profile (no notification or anything from what I’ve seen) and from there it’s yours to do with as you want. I’ve claimed a dozen or so over the last day or so to delete (unused ones people sat on).
Sorry, I couldn’t tell you. I’m just trying to spread some awareness. Your best shot is asking Ernest.
No worries, thanks anyway!
Any tips & tricks for a fresh new mod/magazine owner that has never done this stuff before?
(I’m scared!)
I think it’s great that you’re interested in this! It may be scary, but it can also be pretty exciting. I would say to start small. There might be a lot of things to consider: establishing rules, the overall vibe of the #magazine, your audience, the type of content you want to see, etc. Pick on one, focus on that for a day or so. If you plan on making new magazine, you’ll be free to take your time with this. Growing niche magazines tends to be on the slow side. IMO, that’s better for those who are new to this, so they can have time to acclimate to the tools and considerations you’ll be presented with. It may also allow you to really reflect on the direction you’d like to take your magazine.
As #niche #communities tend to start slow, people will be hesitant to post content. Unfortunately, when content is rare, people are less inclined to post. This is a problem that reinforces itself, as others are unlikely to post when there is no content. You’ll probably need to be “the first on the dance floor”, so to speak, if your goal is to grow your magazine. This will likely test your patience, as you will probably be one of, if not the only active posters in your magazine. Picking a magazine name that might see usage in the #fediverse and #mastodon might prove useful for #federating content via the #microblog section. However, if you wish to pick a more unique name, more power to you. Something to consider, is that you may wish to create a sibling magazine that can accept a tag that would federate posts with regularity.
For example, I run @learnjapanese. However, most people will be unlikely to write #learnjapanese on Mastodon. However, I also run @japanese, which federates the #japanese tag from Mastodon instances. You can add additional tags in the magazine settings menu, which allows the federation of posts that contain other hashtags. I’ve pinned a microblog in both magazines’ #microblogging sections to point to each other to increase #discoverability and awareness of related resources. Speaking of discoverability, Ernest recently implemented a #crossposting feature to /kbin that further increases discoverability and accessibility. Posting the same link/image to related magazines will allow users to see other magazines this content is posted to. This appears in the comments section of the thread, directly below the content of the post itself. Ideally, this would generate additional traffic and increase visibility for the smaller, but related magazines. This has been an extremely welcome addition, as someone who is moderating smaller magazines and trying to bring awareness without spamming advertisements.
If you have any further questions, please let me know. I have also subscribed to your magazine. Good luck. :)
I created a new magazine today 🙂
Yeah I am aware of slow growth.
My magazine takes lots of its material from a YouTube channel so at least for now their activity would go more or less hand in hand with mine/ours.
I’d be happy to receive even readers! Posting there isn’t a necessity for me, for now at least.The name of the magazine is the same than the YouTube channel’s.
I added some tags to the magazine’s description and into its settings.
Looking at/testing crossposting at some point.Thanks for the help!
@Ernest is the process for approving an ownership request done manually by you? I requested ownership of a magazine a few weeks ago and it hasn’t gone through. I know you’ve been busy with running/improving the site so it might be worth making the process either automatic or give permission to someone you trust to approve/deny. Hope you are having a good one!
Has anyone actually been accepted as a moderator? I requested to help moderate /science a while ago - just because it was full of spam - and I’ve heard nothing - not even a rejection. Still happy to kill spam.
Since @ernest is the owner for that magazine, I think moderator requests have to go through him. Unfortunately, he was dealing with a slight fever awhile ago, and has been dealing with financial planning and project formalities awhile back as well. Hopefully things haven’t gotten worse. For what it’s worth, I think it’s great you’re eager to contribute. There have definitely been some spam issues recently. I hope a solution can be found soon. Maybe even something like posts which have a <10% upvote-to-downvote ratio over a day/week can be temporarily quarantined until an admin approves of it. Anyways, best of luck with modship.
Uh, how do I do this? The m/men community has been abandoned by its owner; I wanted to apply as owner, but it only had the mod option listed.
Unfortunately, you’ll need to either wait until the owner has not logged in for a month, or ask if Ernest will allow you to claim ownership early.
Thanks for the info, @daredevil.
Huh, guess it’s worth a shot. Hi @ernest, any chance you could waive the month-long not-logged-in requirement for the men magazine? It would appear the owner has lost all patience with Kbin in general and made it clear he isn’t coming coming back. I would like to resurrect this community as a progressive non-toxic space for men to engage in healthy discussion without resorting to punching down and insulting others, similar in nature to the old menslib subreddit. With your admin-powered blessing, of course.
No problem. Something to consider though, is that simply moderating the magazine until it’s “abandoned” by the owner may end up being the solution. I understand that may not be ideal. While I empathize with your situation, the rules that Ernest establish also exist for a reason. However, I also do not intend to speak on his behalf. I hope things work out for you either way.
I’d be cool with modding it in the meantime, but it doesn’t look like anyone (either me or @BaldProphet) has been appointed mod yet to step into that stopgap role.
a-man-from-earth’s last post was a week ago, and I don’t wanna keep bugging ernest about this, so I guess I’ll sit tight and run out the clock. This is not an emergency by any means, it’s just one of the many abandoned communities that need help. Thx for the info and words of encouragement, @daredevil. And good luck with all the cleanup!
I’ve also applied for moderator. I didn’t even realize that community was abandoned, so now I’m wondering how many other communities I’m subscribed to have been abandoned.
An “abandoned” magazine is one where the owner has not logged in for 30 days. You’ll probably know when a magazine/community you’re subscribed to is “abandoned” when applying for ownership of a magazine is enabled.
deleted by creator
Hello, does anyone know if it’s possible to moderate a magazine hosted on kbin with a lemmy account? I’ve been taking care of a magazine hosted here for months and the owner is MIA as far as I can tell (I tried messaging them to no avail), but the adoption feature mentioned here doesn’t appear for me from the lemmy side. Given how lemmy and kbin are compatible-yet-different, I’d understand if the moderation features can’t cross over, but for now I just don’t know so here I am =) Thanks for reading!
@LeGaosaure I don’t think that we have cross-platform moderation yet but I’m pretty sure I saw @ernest say it will come.
In the meantime, you could always create a backup account over here and request ownership that way.
Thank you for your answer! I suppose I’ll do that, then. So far the magazine has honestly not really needed moderation, but it’s always better to have someone ready before problems happen =')
@LeGaosaure definitely, and that way you can create guidelines for posting. My tiny community worldwithoutus has barely needed any moderation so far!
In this specific case the community owner posted good guidelines before disappearing so we have that at least, but I’d appreciate being able to change the pinned message for example (current one is outdated), and the other community I adopted got a totally random troll post once so I now consider that these can pop absolutely anywhere at any time =')
@LeGaosaure good luck with it. Is it LimbusCompany? I don’t actually know what that is, but I’ve subscribed so I can upvote you.
It is! Thank you very much 🧡 (Limbus Company is a turned-based strategy game with a heavy emphasis on story, and the less gacha-esque gacha to ever exist x’) )
oo wow, neat
Glad to hear this was added! Probably the feature I’ve been waiting on the most, ghost magazine issue finally has a resolution.
I assume ownership requests need to be manually approved by ernest, right? I’ve tried applying to some (not ernest-managed ones) weeks ago because of spam on them and nothing happened yet.
