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What to do about ghost magazines that have no content?
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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That's an option, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence when someone creates a magazine (or several) and then just leaves it empty. Why would people want to invest time and effort into building up a magazine that's under control of a name squatter? Even if they don't abandon their account, they're signalling that they probably won't put much care into moderating or selecting good moderators.
An empty magazine under control of a name squatter isn't desirable to post to, and ownership can't be transferred without admin intervention. This means there's an extra hurdle in the way of anyone who actually wants to take ownership of the magazine and put it to good use. If dead magazines are periodically culled, those names are made available again without the hassle of getting an admin (who may be very busy) to transfer them.
Who cares who the mod is? If you want to post than post. I never think about whether it is "desirable" to post somewhere.
Magazines for niche topics don't generally become self-sustaining through organic participation alone. A magazine needs users to add content to it, but it also needs content to attract users in the first place. Overcoming this chicken-and-egg problem usually requires at least one person to deliberately and regularly post interesting material, even if they wouldn't otherwise "want" to post.
Anybody can do that. Doesn't have to be a mod.
The person contributing the content needs to have some kind of confidence that their effort is going to be worthwhile.
On an empty magazine, not only do they have to start from scratch with no help, but there's also a nontrivial risk that the owner is going to end up being a tyrannical powermod (if they've claimed lots of names), or just abandon the magazine and let trolls and spammers have free reign. Given those risks, it makes more sense for a potential contributor to just create their own magazine under an alternate (though possibly less ideal) name, or just put their effort into some other topic entirely.
I really don't. I just post what I want without thinking about anything being "worthwhile" or needing "confidence".