I’ve made a new “Perl on Twitter” community because we’re trying to pass admin responsibilities and having no luck with that.

What you need to know

• Move to the new “Perl on Twitter” community if you like
• Remove yourself from the previous community. Mark needs to remove all members to leave himself.
• At Mark’s convenience, the community he set up will eject all members and be shut down to the extent he can do that.

And, I have these settings:

• Only members can post.
• I’ve restricted membership, but members can invite people.

Why is this so hard?

Awhile ago, in the pre-takeover days, Mark Gardner set up a “Perl” community on Twitter. A bunch of people joined.

Then there was the corporate drama about Twitter and some people, including Mark, decided they wanted to go their own way. No problem—you do what you think you need to do. No judgment here.

I volunteered to take Mark’s place, but we couldn’t figure out how to transfer admin. We couldn’t figure it out like all the other people who’ve asked this question since the start of Twitter Communities. Not only that, Mark can’t leave the community because he’s the only admin. And, he can’t right out delete the community because it has members.

This really looks like a half feature to Twitter even prior to the Turmoil. Just like all the other poorly-designed social network things that were designed in a half-hour meeting and never given another thought.

For what it’s worth, I met some the Google Circle people at one of its launch parties and asked them about various failure patterns. It took them millions of dollars and years of effort to figure out what I casually told them. But hey, that’s software engineering, amirite?

As such, I figured it’s best to start over with a new community that I set up.