I rather disagree. I think we should be kinder. There are mods on Reddit who have poured years into building their community on Reddit, who took their communities dark and have only now decided it is time to move.

I’m not saying that they have some kind of “right” to have a magazine or community, or should be entitled or be able demand the name.

But there has been a bit of a land grab in some cases - certainly on kbin - there are entirely empty magazines with zero activity named identically to popular subreddits.

I mod a magazine on kbin that is a direct replacement for a niche subreddit. I started it to hold some of the content I’m interested in. But the mods of that sub did a grand job - and they weren’t power mods or anything. I have an explicitly message in the sidebar that if they are interested in setting up shop at kbin.social they should message me.

There are going to be mods that are literally mourning the loss of what they had. There are enough arseholes in the world - let’s not make things a bit worse.

You're not wrong, but I think people are hoping that their favorite subs will designate a community on kbin/lemmy as their official successor and encourage everyone to migrate over. Some already have. It seems reasonable to want to accommodate the mod teams of those subreddits, rather than taking a stance of "I got here first, so I'm in charge".

Definitely. Plus, there can be more than one community for niches and that's alright, for people who don't want to use Reddit there's a community for them and for people who don't care then they can keep using the one over there. These new communities shouldn't feel like they "owe" something to the equivalent community on Reddit, the new ones are just as legit as them.

Some "official" subreddits for specific media have the actual backing and blessing of the artists and companies they're about. Making a distinction in that case is reasonable. I'm considering making a magazine for a niche game I'm into, but the "official" subreddit is recognized by the dev and publisher, so I would be careful to separate myself as "unofficial" - while also approaching the dev to see if there's interest in changing that.

Making a distinction for general-interest subs like "music" (no specific artist(s)) is less useful.

The other top comments here are correct, and I think there is a great opportunity here to "rescue" some subs from horrible mods.

Agreed! I think just because Reddit has been the go to for so long, it is hard to get into the new mindset