[info]happier_bunny in [info]07refugees

mood: annoyed
Dear LiveJournal user ______,

We have noticed that you are a member in good standing in the community _____. We have been made aware that the community's maintainer is inactive on the service and has left the community without active maintainership. Since the community is in need of a new maintainer, we have chosen you for this position and the community has been transferred to you.

If you do not wish to keep maintainership of the community, (...)

If you decide to keep maintainership of the community, (...)

If you have any questions regarding this transfer, please feel free to contact us at any time.

Regards,

LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team


So, I maintained several communities on LJ that I closed but didn't delete and moved them all here to IJ a year and a half ago. Now, I'm sort of worried after learning of this letter and seeing that LJ is following through on abandoned communities.

Does anyone know if this is a common practice? Or if LJ contacts the original maintainers first?

I guess I'll have to update with something every month over there or decide to delete them.

Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 at 08:03 pm | | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Comments


[info]aristoboule

BZUH? That is... crazy! I've never heard of that before.
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 07:08 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]happier_bunny

I know. I'd read about it long ago in the TOS but to hear that it's actually happening (this just happened within the last week or so) is freaking me out.
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 07:11 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]elfwreck

I would hope that "maintainer is inactive on the service" means "does not answer emails, or email sent to the address we have bounces." Or possibly the maintainer deleted their account.

Before making any changes in comm ownership, I'd expect them to try to contact the owner. For a very long time, they were unwilling to transfer ownership even when the orig owner had a deleted account... I suspect that the reason they're doing this, is that the spambots have figured out how to sign up for communities, and those that have no moderators have no way to get rid of them.
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 07:12 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]happier_bunny

I hope you're right.

I guess I have to decide if I'm willing to test the theory.

Actually, from what I've been told, someone from the community contacted LJ requesting the community as their was no active maintainer. That person didn't get the community - they randomly picked someone else. It doesn't seem like it had anything to do with spambots. sighs
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 09:29 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]stewardess

WHAT THE HELL?
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 08:28 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]happier_bunny

I know.
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 09:29 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]xie_xie_xie

This really just utterly freaks me the hell out...

Just because I've stopped using a comm as a comm doesn't mean I don't want it and it SURE as hell doesn't mean I want some random member to have it!

And to just pick someone and HAND IT OVER TO THEM, and they have to opt out? WTF?
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 09:15 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]happier_bunny

Well yeah, what you said. ;P
Posted on Jan. 25th, 2009 09:30 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]stellar_dust

I got community maintainership that way once .. when the original comm owner *died*!

So, uh. Hopefully they would have some good reason and/or good faith attempt at communication with original mod, in normal, non-death circumstances ...
Posted on Jan. 26th, 2009 09:41 pm (UTC) | | Reply