I’m skeptical too.

Lots of software is designed so the delete button just flags an entry so it doesn’t show to low privilege users on the front end, while the data persists in the database where database admins and the like can still access it.

Online it’s wise to assume every website acts like this if you don’t actually run the site yourself with full admin access to the underlying web server and database . Once what you write gets on a site it is permanently out of your control in most cases.

Thumbs up for the World Tree.

Your account has 4 posts over a few months and one comment. Maybe you have actually been using Lemmy for longer on another account, but we can’t see that.

I’m an Elder Millennial, used to admin/mod a fandom forum around 1999-2002ish. A small percentage of active users essentially carrying the content of small niche communities on their back until ignition happens has ALWAYS been how communities work. It’s like that in real life, and it’s like that online. It was like that when niche message boards and forums reigned in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was like that on usenet, in IRC, on email groups. It was like that on World of Warcraft, when you tried to get a guild off the ground for raiding or something. It’s like that here on Lemmy, because Lemmy is a social platform too.

The only real solution to grow a community is to jump in and create content yourself, to help communities along until one or two ignite and take off. You have to participate yourself to change the culture, not just bitch in a post that it’s “changed” and that you’re going to stomp off if it doesn’t “change back”. (Although, that type of post is, admittedly, also a tradition as old as time.)

Anyway. Communities starting small and needing people to grow is just…a thing. This is how volunteer organizations work in real life–why do you think they’re constantly pleading for other people to get involved? Because you need people who actually pull on their adult pants and get in and do the work of organizing things, doing things, instead of sitting about like a lump consuming it.

You can move back to reddit of course, if you want. That’s similar to moving from a small town to a big city for the night life, which people do. Maybe you don’t have the time or energy to essentially “volunteer” your time on a small community to help it grow.

But the thing you’re complaining about is…just part of how communities work. Communities have always revolved around a few people contributing most of the content until the community takes off (or doesn’t).

So, rationally, what’s the next step? Stepping up your own contributions, or going off somewhere else?

Only you can decide because only you know your IRL time commitments. But one action is going to be more useful to helping niche subs get off the ground than the other.

(Here’s something interesting: The Frugal sub has a shit-load of people subscribed who eagerly jump in feet-first if you start a relevant topic. Why doesn’t someone here with an interest in that sub go over there and start a post?)

That’s how I framed it to a fandom friend.

I said… imagine back to when there were the two main fourms for our favorite author? Now imagine if you could sign up as a user for one… but the forums can talk to one another so you can post on the other too, but your username will reflect the domain of the one you made your username on.

And defederation is when the two factions of fandom get into some fandom drama and decide not to let members of the other board talk to them anymore, lol.

It’s like one part forum, one part irc with distinct chat rooms around a topic, and one part signing up for a new email address, where the place you do it becomes part of your email address.

I’m glad it was helpful–I know sometimes people go TL;DR and get annoyed at long posts, lol.

And yeah, re: Minecraft–been there, done that with the genuinely clueless user who just constantly doesn’t get it. I ran into it with WoW guilds. It’s hard to deal with, esp. when their behavior looks genuinely not-with-it instead of malicious. Like, if you have a player that is a kid (or who hasn’t matured mentally) who is always begging for help or gold or items. Esp. if they’re being nice or saying sorry or being cute about it–verbal veneers that try to manipulate you into being soft on them (even if they are not consciously trying to be manipulative). It’s hard being the one putting your foot down.

Anyway. I honestly don’t see a television broadcasting sub with tech nerds inviting too much trouble. (Or anything along those lines…I know you weren’t fully specific about niche.) I would guess the most likely routes of bullshit would be straight-up spam bots, or people inappropriately advertising some sort of object or service and clogging up the page with drivel nobody cares about. I guess “low effort posts” might be a thing, too.

You MIGHT see some drama if like…it comes out some CEO or manager or something who is known in the industry is being a dickwad. Or like if an industry professional is let go, fairly or unfairly…lots of hot drama and speculation can come up. Might be worth it to look at existing forums for your niche and see if you can find the past drama, and see what shape it took previously. Might help you prepare a way to deal with it, put rules in place beforehand.

Edit: Had a thought. Are discussions about “censorship” common in this niche? Censorship as it pertains to broadcast television. If so, you might get drama around that, and might need to plan for it sometimes raising its head.

I haven’t moderated in a very long time, but the one thing that sticks out for me from my phpbb forum days is the paradox of tolerance.

Basically–you generally don’t want to be a jerk. You do want to be fair and tolerant to the best of your ability.

However, if you let THAT GUY run around doing shitty things, your community will end up polluted and toxic and it will drive away the people who would/could’ve made your community a nice place.

So be kind–but not so kind it allows losers to rampage unchecked.

It can really feel shitty to use the banhammer, but sometimes it’s important to pull the trigger for the sake of the community. If you don’t, the good people will leave, and the fuckwads will stay and fuck around.

The best-moderated community I’ve seen in recent memory is actually the Raised by Narcissists sub on Reddit. Probably because the mods there are all trauma survivors and have hawk-eyes for ALL the weasly shit verbally-manipulative people can get up to. So they lay out the rules plainly and fairly–but they also don’t fuck around when things need to be shut down. Most of the time the troll/drama posts don’t even get out of New.

I don’t know what sort of sub you’re moderating here, it’s possible it won’t attract the same BS that THAT sub attracts by its very nature, but as a mod (if you want to be a good/fair one) you’ll start to develop a second sense for when someone is using outwardly-reasonable words to try to defend what they’re doing, while continuing to shit-stir below the surface. You’ll get an eye for overall patterns.

Trust your gut–if you feel something’s wrong but can’t put a finger on why because everyone’s using polite words, ponder it for a while and see if you can figure out what’s up. Often where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

But yeah. Don’t be a dick, explain your rules clearly, but when someone’s fucking around on your sub? Let 'em find out.

Oh…and if you have been modding for a while, but find yourself getting stressed as fuck or angry and snappish in real life? It’s totally cool to step back from a modding job. I don’t mod anymore even though I know “how” to because I have C-PTSD and sub drama puts me into legit raging flashbacks. It’s terrible for my health, and not fun for others if my temper slips, so I don’t do it anymore.