I don’t disagree with your first paragraph but partly do with the second.

If it’s a unique channel-type community you started, produce most of the content for and actively moderate quickly and consistently then, for sure, you should have almost complete control… but 196 is/was none of those things.

It's like, imagine you’re renting a house with a few people and one of the people none of the housemates really like (they don’t follow the house rules everyone has agreed on) marches in and announces “We all, as a group, are moving to Florida!” And then moves out and takes the refrigerator and expects you to follow. No thanks, good riddance, we’re getting a new fridge and a better housemate.

They can do whatever they want with the space, paint it blue, burn it, close it, whatever. They shouldn't expect people to follow them.

I think this post and the reply highlight the tricky waters we are trying to navigate here in the Fediverse.

I've moderated web forums since there was a Web and usually, the final call is with whoever is paying the bills. Here that is more complicated because, although this instance is fully-funded by the users and I consider myself largely a caretaker in my Admin role (and, by extension, Mods don't "own" their communities they are looking after them for all of us), my name (and @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk') is above the door and we do have legal responsibilities based on the laws in the jurisdictions we operate in.

On the other hand we have the ethos that came over from Reddit, that Mods have some degree if ownership over the communities and some instances tend to operate with that idea, to the point it can be difficult to get new Mode appointed if others have gone AWOL, leading to people starting duplicate communities on the same instance.

Where these two ways of thinking clash you can get some degree of drama, as we are seeing here. Ada and her team take a strong line on certain things, as you'd expect from their instance but the 196 Mods didn't appreciate what they see as interference in the running if "their" community.

This would be just another day in the Fediverse and an example of why it is wise to have a word with an Admin on an instance before starting what might be a large, potentially controversial, community in order to ensure the Admins and Mods are on the same page.

As I’ve mentioned somewhere else I’d take all that in to consideration if it was a more niche sub - but it isn’t. It very much seems to be that a already existing community found its way to Blahaj where (almost) all of the contributors were happy. Then some mods arbitrarily decided that they didn’t like the instance and moved to… .world, of all places. Back towards centralisation and the possible looming spectre of interacting with meta users too.

Yeah, at the end of the day Lemmy is just a colloboration between the users, the mods, and the admins.

The admins do have the final say, but in order for users to use their instance in the first place and communities to grow there, they also have to follow the desires of the users and work with the moderators to a major extent. It's just teamwork and being able to compromise on some things but stay true to your principles on other things.

This really shouldn't have been as big a deal as it became, and I would blame that mostly on the mods, somewhat on the users, and maybe just a little bit on the admins for not discouraging the moderators from taking this action in the first place. Everyone could probably have done a little bit better, but it was mostly on the mods for making a bonehead decision without realizing the consequences. That being said, raking them over the coals in the aftermath doesn't really accomplish anything other than letting people feel self-righteous.

It's very easy to see from the outside and in retrospect, but when you're making moderator decisions every single day, you tend to lose a bit of perspective. It can be frustrating especially if admins are interfering with a community that you dedicate so much time and effort to, and I like to think if everyone had walked a mile in those shoes before, they probably wouldn't be acting so condescending right now.