Alt text: a screenshot of a microblog post with the text "you walking down an alleyway with a gram of weed in your pocket, who would you rather catch you?" Below are two pictures side by side. One of Kamala Harris and the other of Batman.
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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I've banned people for violating multiple of our community guidelines, not for disliking or criticizing my post.
Okay, I call shenanigans.
Some of those comments are still visible, and I find your claim that they violated C/ rules a stretch at best.
I would hope that you either clarify your rules so that it is much less likely to happen in the future, or that you reevaluate the decisions.
The worst of the ones still visible to me would require a great deal of hypersensitivity and a nigh maniacal definition of any of the rules as they existed when I just went to look at them. Now, removing those comments, that would make sense. Warning the people that made them, makes total sense, but it would be better to build up the listing of the rules to include some examples, or you'd end up warning more people over time doing it piecemeal like that.
But bans? I hate to break it to you, but I used to be known for being a harsh mod I'm some ways, and none of those comments merit bans with the rules as they're currently written.
But, hey, it's your C/, do what you want. If you want to exclude any and all dissent, that's your choice. Just don't be surprised when the C/ ends up as an echo chamber with little to no activity.
The community has been mostly dead for nearly a month due to a lack of moderation, but before I and the other new mod took over this /c it was very intentionally a space free of people defending electoral politics and pro-capitalist politicians. That requires very active and (in some views) harsh moderation. The new mod team have agreed to continue the tradition of the original head moderator. What you call an echo chamber, I call a safe space for nuanced discussion of leftist and post-leftist politics. There are plenty of other places on Lemmy and elsewhere that are friendly to liberals and other capitalists.
I will not tolerate people accusing leftists of being Russian bots or assets in this community, and that's what I handed out temp bans for. If the community thinks my actions were too harsh, they can be reversed.
The wording of the community guidelines was changed a bit recently by the mod in charge before us, but after the original mod stepped down several weeks ago. Cassa and I have discussed reverting back to the wording of the old rules. We haven't yet because we didn't want to be seen as too eager to make changes. We will be considering making these slight changes because I agree with you - clearly spelled out rules will certainly reduce friction on moderation. Especially when moderation needs to be heavy handed.
Well, I definitely get wanting a dedicated leftist space for sure. It's the line between dedicated and echoey that's harder to pin down. Obviously, that's a line that has to be determined to some degree on the fly. Kinda hard to predict everything, so there's always change along the way.
Me? I see that line being about banning policies. A dedicated space won't permanently ban a first offense if the rules are vague (and they are here). An echo chamber bans any infractions immediately, no matter how few rules there are, or how clear they are.
Now, I quit being a mod for anything with chances of getting popular because reddit burnt me out with their fuckery, but I get it. Back at the turn of the century, I moderated a neo-pagan/wiccan dedicated forum. The tools to deal with trolls and bad actors were almost nil, and easy to get around. You ain't seen fuckery until you deal with christians that think they're on a crusade lol. All I could do back then was ban a specific account, and had no way to block new ones (wasn't my site).
So, I definitely get the need to preserve a dedicated space.
This is unasked for advice, so no issues if/when it gets ignored. I think the first thing to do, if you're gong to consult the community about what rules need to be, and the details of policy enforcing them, is get it in front of the community fast. Draw up your plans, post it, and get the feedback before things snowball. With the rules as vague as they are, and federation making it almost certain to bring in regular visitors that are new to not only this C/, but leftist thinking in general, you'll end up whacking moles left and right. Which is the lot of a mod, but when you have clear rules and policies, the jerks can't complain when they get banned because it's right there. The user has the obligation to follow the rules, but when they're meh, it leaves interpretation room. And that's a source for drama of the kind that got the C/ boiling recently.
I knew you were a good choice for mod, I'm glad you could do what I could not. Short correction however, the rules dont reflect any changes I attempted. I simply removed some language I deemed unessesary.
Fair enough haha. You reworded the rules didn't really change the spirit of them. I'll edit my above post to reflect that.
Also, thanks!
Your welcome :3
Yeah I was apparently supporting oppressive systems for stating a prosecutor can't unilaterally change laws. Dudes on a trip
This has never been a space friendly to defending or supporting liberalism or state violence.
"She was just doing her job," or "she can't unilaterally change laws" or similar are arguments in favor of the oppressive so-called criminal justice system.
Yeah, the whole thing is out of bounds imo. Mind you, as far as I can see, you had comments deleted, which isn't the same degree of problem as bans. If it also came with an explanation at the time of removal, then it would be doable as a mod team adapts on the go. I don't have the ability to see any private messages, and none are visible in the thread itself though.
It's like I said elsewhere, there is no place in the community that I could find where any of these reasons for removal/bans are listed. Since whether or not stating what is a simple fact of the system as it exists is considered a support of that system, and it is part of a nuanced statement that is at least as much a condemnation of the existing system, that being a reason for mod action of any kind would need to be explicitly listed.
I have nothing against strict moderation at all, any dedicated C/ needs it just to stay on topic. A political C/ needs it to stay on topic even more. But the rules have to be spelled out up front, as do the intended actions for a given rule. It might make sense on a private server/forum, but on lemmy, you can't even rely on visitors being from the same instance.
Moderation ain't easy, and it ain't simple. Moderating hot button topics is even more chaotic. Seriously, something like this post is inevitably going to be bonkers behind the scenes. To me that means you make any decisions transparent, be up front, and not moderate your own posts to avoid impropriety.
My stance is that the community needs to have the rules established ASAP. If the mods want to just set the rules and enforce them, that's their choice and the users' choice to use the C/or not. If they want to communally establish them, then it needs to start NOW rather than later because the C/ is guaranteed to have topics like this posted regularly. You can't put off the building of community consensus until after something goes wrong and hope for it to not end up biting you in the ass.
You can do that in an authoritarian system, and anyone that doesn't like it can bugger off, but trying that in a leftist community would be kinda silly. Doing it in an anarchist leaning community directly goes against the principles of anarchism, imo. You can't make anarchism work if you're using authoritarian methods. It just isn't anarchism at that point. Same with other leftist systems tbh; once you centralize power, you defeat the purpose.