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

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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.

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[-] cacheson@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Completely empty magazines could probably be automatically deleted after a month. Anything with actual posts should probably be reviewed by an actual human, and only deleted manually. Even if there's only one post, it could be a very useful post that shouldn't be deleted. Or maybe the magazine is being used as a "signpost" to direct people elsewhere, like r/traa pointing to r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns.

The process of flagging magazines for review could still be automated. Maybe each post made delays the review flag by a week, that way active magazines won't come up. Admins could also "snooze" the flag for a set amount of time, or disable it permanently for some magazines.

Magazines that are abandoned but still have useful content should be actively advertised somewhere as "available for adoption". The same goes for magazines that are reported by users as unmoderated.

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

then post 💀 the content wont spawn itself, and it's not necessarily up to the creator to provide 100% of the content, they just filled a niche. i mod a few mags and i have never left them empty, i post a lot, but it would help if other people would participate.

if the creators are abandoned accounts tho, that is an issue. 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

[-] 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.

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

Ernest is aware of this and will be working on it at some point, his comment is here.

this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023

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