While technically feasible, we’ve haven’t yet included one.
In the spirit of “can’t we all just get along,” we first really want you to try to work it out with the sub-community owner (and/or moderators) as best you can. Given a little bit of patience and a cooling-off period, sometimes the emotional drama from a particular incident recedes enough that a formal split becomes less important. Who knows? You might even arrive at a compromise that allows you to peacefully co-exist together. (No, before you go there, we’re not asking you to compromise your values. We’re just asking you to look for alternatives to fighting.)
However, if you’ve really tried to work it out and you’re at the point of utter frustration from a lack of success, we provide a forum and a process to separate the communities. The process is as follows:
- Message peace_on_earth indicating which formal rules or values the sub-community has broken. These rules must be formally stated in your community’s About sidebar for, at least, the duration of this process. It’s like the signs you sometimes see on storefront windows: “no shoes, no shirt, no service.” As you should, we want everyone to be able to formally reference what is and is not consistent with your community. Also indicate in your message the steps you have taken to work it out with the sub-community owner, as well as the overall duration you’ve been at it. Your communication to peace_on_earth must not include any personal information for either yourself or the sub-community owner.
- We will make a formal [M] post in /Disputes and alert the sub-community owner. The post will include the information you’ve provided to peace_on_earth. For one week, the sub-community owner, as well as anyone else in our overall community, will have an opportunity to comment, arbitrate, and help resolve the situation.
- We will message you after one week to see if you’ve been able to resolve your differences. If you still desire a split, you can let us know and we will perform some database magic to remove the community.
Fair enough?
We’re not entirely sure it’s appropriate to call this the Frequently Asked Questions area as, candidly, we don’t keep track of how often these questions get asked. Consider this community as a place where we post answers to what we anticipate your questions will be. But, if our crystal ball is malfunctioning, feel free to post your question in /GettingStarted/Help. If we turn your question into an FAQ, we’ll credit you back the karma to post it. It’s the least we can do. We also welcome suggestions at /GettingStarted/SuggestionBox.