You have to abide to the rules of the instance in which the community/magazine is. Any extra rules in the community are up to you. And yes most communities are are ghost towns especially if they are about something more niche or with a smaller audience. Usually the way to grow them is to create content to attract new users, nobody wants to join an empty community after all. You could also try to advertise it on !newcommunities or something similar to gather some attention. I hope my answer was helpful, that’s just my experience, I’d be interesting to hear others’.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
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MODERATORS
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !newcommunities@lemmy.world
I am moderating the !cocktails@lemmy.world and it's certainly nothing like trying to help moderate on Reddit, a much smaller base of users, no reports yet, everyone pretty civil and on topic.
Mostly I make posts if it's quiet for awhile, check comments. There aren't many rules yet as there haven't been problems yet. If it gets busier will try to get more mods.
I do really like it here.
I [created and] moderate !technicaldeathmetal@lemmy.world, and since it’s a niche interest on a fairly small platform, it’s mostly a ghost town, with me posting music I like. This works for me in that I never wanted to mod anything, just wanted to join a community I ended up having to create myself. Though it does feel a bit like shouting into the void.
As far as rules, yeah instance rules are the baseline, then you can stack whatever you want on top of that. Idk how to grow, I’m making everything up as I go along. I’ve been posting regularly myself to put the community on metalheads’ radar, maximizing the variety to try to throw a wide net, cross-posting very occasionally (ok I guess once lol) to related comms, and starting themes (“Secret Killers” for hidden-gem bands, “Left Field” for established bands that haven’t made it big somehow, and “Mods Are Drunk Friday” for posting zany stuff that otherwise might not fit).
!pics@lemmy.world has been good. I was sweating when lemmyshitpost was hit with CSAM, I really thought we would be next. Being the most active mod, I have to check right when I wake up due to time zones, and throughout the day. Most common issues are very mild, things like digital art being posted instead of a photo, or cosplay NSFW earlier in the growing process. The trump arrest pictures caused a stir, and the community ended up voting to prohibit political pictures. We rotate our banner image every Friday and pin the most upvoted original content picture for the next week from the previous week’s posts.
Mod logs are public, go to a large community and view their mod log. You will be able to see how often and what actions have been taken. That should give you an idea of how much action a type of community requires.
I started and moderate !autism@lemmy.world and was invited to moderate !audhd@lemmy.world. It can be a lot of work. The main tasks are (1) figuring out and implementing ways to grow the community, (2) finding other moderators that will be a good fit, (3) addressing suggestions and complaints made by users, (4) creating rules that discourage toxicity while trying not to limit freedom, and (5) deciding on mod interventions.
Luckily, these communities have been great. The users are just awesome people, and my fellow mods are amazing. Still, of those, 5 is the most taxing for me. I try to be as considerate and fair as possible, so it takes a lot of energy to make those decisions. Also, I've been dreading it even though it hasn't happened, but from what I've heard, having to deal with troubling posts such as child sexual assault material, gore, etc.
Tips:
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Make sure to recruit a good mod team. It helps to have others to discuss mod actions with. Also, some days, I just don't have the energy to mod.
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Treat your users with respect and compassion. I've seen lots of subs and communities where the mods are on some power trip or treat their users as subordinates. It reminds me of jaded cops. This creates an antagonism between you and your community.
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Be kind to yourself. You're doing your best, and no one is perfect, even if the users insist on perfection.
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Frequently take time off from moderating to recover.
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Network with other relevant communities for growth and insight opportunities.