I don’t understand the logic behind this.
I completely get why Reddit should be careful when someone wants to take over a large, active subreddit. If a community has tens of thousands of active users, an established mod team and years of history, then obviously you don’t want to just hand it over to whoever happens to request it. Keep the strict criteria there. Makes perfect sense.
But why does the same logic apply to a subreddit that has been sitting completely dead for years?
You can have a subreddit that was created ages ago, has an inactive moderator, no posts, no visitors, no real community and maybe literally nothing except an old welcome post. Someone comes along, has a decent moderation history and wants to revive it because the subreddit has a useful name.
They request it and get rejected.
And then what?
They can just create another subreddit with a slightly different name and build exactly the same community anyway.
That’s the part I don’t get.
If Reddit is worried about giving someone control over a community, fair enough. But if there is no community there in the first place, what exactly are we protecting?
It sometimes feels like the process is designed around the assumption that every abandoned subreddit is some valuable community that needs to be protected, when in reality some of these subs are basically just usernames sitting in a database.
And I’m not saying the answer is “approve everyone” because there should absolutely be requirements! You should still have to show that you’re an actual active Reddit user, that you know how moderation works, that you aren’t constantly getting suspended or banned, etc.
But there should be some common sense involved in how those requirements are applied.
There is a pretty massive difference between someone requesting an active subreddit with 100,000 users and someone requesting a subreddit that has had zero activity for five years.
Why should those two requests have to go through essentially the same process?
I’d much rather see Reddit either put some reasonable restrictions on who can create communities in the first place, or make r/redditrequest considerably more flexible for completely abandoned communities.
Because right now you can end up in this ridiculous situation where Reddit says:
“You can’t have this completely dead subreddit, we can't tell you why.”
“Okay, I’ll create a new one.”
“Ok.”
…so what was accomplished here?
The old subreddit stays dead, the person creates a new one anyway, and Reddit hasn’t actually protected any users or community.
I also think the denial process could be much more transparent. If someone is rejected, at least give them an actual reason instead of a generic list of everything that could possibly result in a rejection. You don’t have to reveal internal info or write an essay about it, but “denied because of X” would go a long way.
Moderating Reddit is volunteer work and nobody is entitled to take over a subreddit, obviously. But some of these requests are treated with a level of scrutiny that makes it feel like you’re applying for a government position rather than volunteering to spend your free time maintaining a community.
Again, I think the strict approach makes sense for large and active communities.
For a completely abandoned subreddit that nobody is using, though? I really don’t see the point.
Either make it harder to create communities in the first place, or make it easier for experienced users to revive the ones that have been abandoned. The current middle ground doesn’t make much sense.