Long time user of that sub here. I’ve been chatting with them lately and they seem quite reasonable but very burned out.
I don’t think you should interpret this as negativity so much as being all out of spoons and needing people to step up so the burden is not so heavy.
Please we need people to step up. Start communities here and find instances that are welcoming.
One of the biggest points worth considering is the sheer volume of hate from certain segments of the internet that sub gets. Mods on whatever instance need to be willing to tackle that.
For my part I’m currently working full capacity taking the lead on another initiative (also involving Lemmy and the trans community) and I am new to Lemmy so I cannot take the lead on making communities here but am happy to facilitate however I can.
The old chicken-and-egg problem… (not to be confused with another egg.)
What if someone created and maintained a Lemmy community about the topic, and then contacted that Reddit mod for help? Mostly stuff like:
- hey, would it be fine if we copied the contents of your wiki?
- could you link our community in yours?
- etc.
This would increase the visibility of the information, and provide a backup for both the info and discussion space, without burdening HiddenStill even further. They didn’t just say “I’m burned out” - they also sound burned out.
That “someone” needs to be a trans person who has an active interest on the topic.
(Just my two cents. I’m cis. I can wear someone else’s shirt but not their skin.)
I’m cis too, but if it will help, I’ll be glad to do some of the copy/paste/format work. I’m slow as molasses, but it’ll get done.
Glad to help set stuff up, like text w/markdown for stickied posts, etc too. I’ll read and link in articles, whatever.
That sub is way too important to let reddit screw it up and not have at least a partial backup going.
I’ve been in talks with them and I believe you are right. They are not being negative they are in need of people to step up. That whole sub has been a one person crew for years. One person. Years. On that topic.
I would do more but I’m already working full capacity taking the lead on a similar initiative and am new to Lemmy so not familiar with admins or different instance cultures. HiddenStill had really good advice to help me on what I’ve been working on and quite supportive to the extent they can be.
I think we need people to really consider which instances are best to help out with this and how to work to make them hospitable. We also need people preparing for the influx of hate that this mod has been dealing with via Reddit tools and brute force.
As a long time user of the sub I can’t express to you how much this person has done for our community and how thankless it’s been. They’ve changed the lives of so many of us and it’s beyond reasonable they are burnt out.
You might be new here but you’re already doing some amazing work - because you’re a member of that community, talking with them about this, plus leading a similar initiative.
I think that the problem can be split into the following parts:
- Choosing where to host the community.
- Creating the community, setting up rules, banner, icon… mostly busy work. (I can help with some of those tasks if you want!)
- Recruiting mods.
- Setting up the initial content of the community. Just so people have something to read; articles are a great first step IMO.
- Advertising the community.
- Setting up a wiki, and copying the content from the Reddit wiki.
I think that a lot of those get simplified if the community is set up in Blåhaj, so perhaps it’s worth waiting until Ada is back from vacations. (Plus the instance is in Australia, so you’ll get less problems than in USA instances.)
Either way odds are that the community owners will need to self-host the wiki.
As a long time user of the sub I can’t express to you how much this person has done for our community and how thankless it’s been. They’ve changed the lives of so many of us and it’s beyond reasonable they are burnt out.
Tell them. Seriously.
Being an e-janny is awful; I’ve been one since old style forums were a thing. You get screeched at, you get to see some disgusting stuff, and people kind of take you for granted, even if without you the community becomes less fun for everyone.
Odds are that this won’t make them feel less burned out, but it’s always heart-warming to know “I did something that had a positive impact on the others’ lives”.
Thank you for this! It’s helpful to have a rough guide of how things move over.
First off, I’ve definitely been telling them! And I’d suspect they’ll also read it here. I definitely agree that moderating is a really thankless job. It’s also not something I have the temperament for.
Long story short I think we need a landing place for point 1. Whatever server hosts us to start might not need to be the one that hosts us forever.
I’m in the background working on a project relating to point 1 but don’t want to speak too publicly about it given the unsavoury parts of the Internet that stalk trans communities.
If blahaj or some other instance could host us that would be great but also I can think of several reasons they might not want to & I don’t know them so it’s hard to say it’s the right spot long term. If my project works out and brings more helpers to the community maybe that’s not an issue.
Recruiting mods I don’t know. I could do it for a bit but it’s not my strength. Past a certain point in growth it’d need others to take over.
I have quite a bit of knowledge and am happy to seed discussions. There are really no articles to post on this topic. It’s people sharing experiences and asking questions. I think a bot to cross post new threads and then some active users posting their replies on Lemmy then letting OP know “I answered on Lemmy” is a better approach.
For the wiki I really don’t know what’s going on with it. I was seeing people say they were scraping it for backups. A lot of the wiki links to Reddit. I’m personally like in favour of letting other people handle it for now. The loss of community to my mind would be worse than the loss of the wiki (though both are bad).
Of course there is a whole other issue here in terms of how prepared Blahaj would be to handle the incoming heat from certain parts of the Internet that watch our subreddit.
Thanks, done.
…and what are we, not people? Fuckers lol
I just have to say, HiddenStill is a legend in our community for having made that subreddit what it is today. Changed tens of thousands of peoples lives while receiving virtually no thanks for it.
It’s been a thankless job, full of hate from unsavoury parts of the Internet, and largely handled by one person who has been ridiculously active for the past 8 years.
I have no idea how they haven’t burnt out yet. And I can fully understand that it must feel overwhelming to then have people look to you and expect to do more while having no idea who to trust on this entirely new platform.
Other people have to step up here and earn some respect before pointing fingers. I’m working on it the best I can but I’m at full capacity myself and new to lemmy.
…and what are we, not people?
A negligible amount of.
It is true, but not the full picture - relying solely on Reddit won’t be sustainable in the long run for that community.
Some of us are trying to work on it but in the mean time it would be great if people more familiar with Lemmy could help us out by taking initiative.
We’re all running on very little here it’s a trans surgery support sub that’s had one mod doing everything for years & almost none of us from the user base no anything about where to migrate which admins are open to helping etc
I posted a thread in lemmy.blahaj.zone the other day and the consensus was “ask the admin” but also it sounds like she’s on vacation. Some other instances seem to have had discussions with no conclusion
she’s on vacation.
I just asked on the instance chat when she’s back. But thinking about it, we could probably already start, I would be really surprised if she didn’t allow the community on her instance
