@comcreator@lemmy.world has created 80+ communities here, most of which are empty save for a “Looking for moderators” post. Some have 0-3 posts which are nearly all from the creator and a couple have some regular user activity.
I recognize that this may not be against the rules as long as it’s not simply for the purpose of squatting on a name but is worth observing for future developments. It does not appear that this user intends to actively moderate since they’re looking to hand those communities off as soon as they’re created.
There a reason limiting the number of communities one can create and moderate is a good thing.
For communities, that’s 15 to 30, and especially for popular ones (ranging from >50,000 subscribers, depending on the instance), 5
For moderating other communities that OP did not create, preferably 5 to 15.
That also means: no more powermods.
Pretty dumb. Don’t understand why people do this.
My guess is that it’s just an ego trip thing. Farming the good feelings that come from making something if the communities become successful without having to invest the time and effort to be a real part of that success.
If I’m being more cynical, it could be an effort to create a bunch of “ghost town” communities so new users search them out, find nothing, become discouraged and move back to Reddit or wherever. Possibly also burying product promotion posts (e.g. their posts and comments linking to gold/silver/crypto sites) or doing this to maintain mod control over communities in case they become successful later on. The !expatsineurope@lemmy.world, !americanrevolution@lemmy.world, !coldwar@lemmy.world, !encryption@lemmy.world, !odysee@lemmy.world, !dgimt@lemmy.world, !lbry@lemmy.world, !internetarchiving@lemmy.world, !privacycoins@lemmy.world and !goldback@lemmy.world communities lead me to suspect that it’s more likely to be the latter case as they’ve added mods while maintaining their own mod status there.
It is not against the rules or anything, but we will definitely keep an eye on it. Thanks for reporting it to us!
This is a good way to acquire “legit” power mod status.
Step 1: make an alt account which squats on community names
Step 2: have the alt account post open moderator requests on the communities
Step 3: have your alt appoint your normal account as a moderator. Since your normal account doesn’t have a direct connection to the community creation, it’s just seen as a helpful custodian of the fediverse
Step 4: ???
Step 5: profit
