What to do about ghost magazines that have no content? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by DarkGamer@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It seems like when the big reddit migration happened, a lot of new users claimed magazine names on kbin instances that were popular on reddit in order to have ownership of them, but they seemingly have no interest in posting content to them. This has unfortunately caused lot of otherwise useful magazines to remain dormant, vacant, and unused.

Would it make sense to have these ghost magazines expire or have a system for changing ownership of them if no one uses them? It's a shame if the good names are taken and immediately abandoned, and it's not a great user experience to look for communities only to find so many empty and abandoned magazines.

I'm curious what opinions are regarding this matter. Thanks.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] cacheson@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

then post

That's an option, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence when someone creates a magazine (or several) and then just leaves it empty. Why would people want to invest time and effort into building up a magazine that's under control of a name squatter? Even if they don't abandon their account, they're signalling that they probably won't put much care into moderating or selecting good moderators.

however, making an empty mag expire makes 0 sense, recreating it doesn't guarantee it will have content if no one posts, same as the first time

An empty magazine under control of a name squatter isn't desirable to post to, and ownership can't be transferred without admin intervention. This means there's an extra hurdle in the way of anyone who actually wants to take ownership of the magazine and put it to good use. If dead magazines are periodically culled, those names are made available again without the hassle of getting an admin (who may be very busy) to transfer them.

[-] RheingoldRiver@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Why would people want to invest time and effort into building up a magazine that's under control of a name squatter?

I think you (and OP) are rewriting history a little bit. People enthusiastically created many magazines in the first days of the migration so that they would already exist and people would post to them. I do not think many people (if anyone) created magazines because they wanted to own them. In fact, if you look at many of the descriptions they say things like "reddit mods contact me if you want to take this over."

So yes, post to them.

[-] Bufo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm a bit saddened with the default assumption by others in this thread that empty magazines were primarily created by name squatters. RheingoldRiver is right in pointing out that a fair number of magazines were most likely created by Reddit refugees looking for niche content that did not exist at all here in the Fediverse. I created one when I first came to Kbin in the hopes that others would come and start posting/create a community. So far I am the only one who has posted any content, but it is hard to just keep posting into the void by yourself.

this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023

1 points (100.0% liked)

/kbin meta

3 readers

1 users here now

Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign

founded 1 year ago