As outlined in the SLRPNK Rules, all members are free to create communities, but doing so comes with responsibilities:

• Active moderation of communities you create (you can add additional moderators yourself though)

• Please add a community avatar and a basic side-bar text explaining what the community is about

• Make a short introduction post to tell us a bit about yourself and why you created this community (this is mandatory!)

Occasionally we will prune communities that do not meet these requirements. The sole moderator of !cornelwest2024, Lumpen2’s account has not posted or commented for 3 months. I’ve reached out to the account via PM, and have not received any sign that they are still involved on the platform.

While we don’t always make a !meta announcement when pruning an unmoderated community, due to the approaching monumental U.S. election, we decided it was prudent to boost our usual transparency in this case.

With each new community, SLRPNK further defines its niche in the ecosystem of the Fediverse. While the structure of the software we use creates distinct roles, new members may eventually become community moderators. Unlike corporate social media, they may even one day become admins here, or of their own instance that we would like to federate with. We like to encourage this ‘social’ mobility, and support the exploration of community creation and moderation duties. This is part of the reason we tolerate some communities even when their relationship to Solarpunk may be tenuous at best.

Solarpunk is an international ideal. While we don’t keep accurate demographics, I would be shocked if the majority of our members were from the United States. Of those from the States, statistically many are disenfranchised. It is famously a democracy of universal suffrage with exceptions, such as asylum seekers who are forced to live undocumented for years while their cases are heard, migrant farm workers who pick most of the nation’s crops, H-1B visa knowledge workers who bolster the nation’s tech corporations and universities, citizens who have committed a felony like graffiti on federal property, and citizens residing in unincorporated US territory like Puerto Rico or Guam. I’m sure there are more, those are off the top of my head. My point is that the percentage of SLRPNK members who can vote in U.S. elections combined with our small size means the audience for communities to promote presidential candidates here is pretty small.

It should also be noted that there is a significant anarchist presence here. Anarchism is a political ideology of horizontal organizing and resistance to rulers, and most anarchist tendencies are hostile or indifferent to hierarchical electoral politics. They are not the best audience to pitch political hopefuls to if their upvotes are needed to graduate beyond the local feed.

So I don’t know exactly why the !cornelwest2024 community languished and was abandoned, but the things I listed were probably contributing factors. Its fate should be a warning to others considering starting similar U.S.-focused political communities on SLRPNK. We’re probably not the most fertile ground for that kind of seed to sprout.

To those who feel passionate about campaigning for a third-party candidate or uniting behind the incumbent U.S. president, I don’t intend to advocate political apathy. Part of the beauty of federation is that you can create communities on other instances with more fertile demography, or at least a larger audience among which to find people eager to engage with your message.

I’d like to thank Lumpen2 for participating in our experiment for the short time they did, and hope they continue their political fight on other online platforms or in revolutionary or reform organizations offline.

If any SLRPNK member would like to experience Lemmy from the position of a moderator, there are a number of other communities that are undermoderated. If you enjoy a community’s existence, consider joining the XMPP chat on movim.slrpnk.net, people are eager to accept whatever help you can give.