https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&modId=107790
Shouldn’t there be some sort of baseline of sanity for community moderators? This dude is straight up pushing non-stop propaganda of his flavoring and deletes anything that he doesn’t like of https://lemmy.world/c/latestagecapitalism the mod log is very transparent and if that’s not power tripping I don’t know what is.
This is both the power and curse of the fediverse: your instance is your own, but also everything you do is out in the open. There is no central authority. People can move around instances and communities (or create those themselves) if they feel unfairly treated.
The mods of that community don’t own .world do and they do have the power to remove mods that don’t follow general policy and abuse their power
Keep in mind that this community was created to replicate a community that was/is moderated basically the same way on Reddit. Mods on Reddit/Lemmy are basically dictators and they can do whatever they want. At least in this case the rules are clear–just avoid this community if you don’t find value in it.
Personally I think communities like this that ban or remove content based on genuine mainstream opinions and facts that don’t align with the dominant local narrative are of little value but that’s a broader discussion and would apply to many other communities.
“I reject your reality, and substitute my own.”
Obviously there are exceptions but the vast majority of moderators are fief lords stroking their own self worth.
It’s not really surprising when you think about the time they contribute, and the very few potential motivators. I think most people would enjoy moderating a community they’re passionate about but most people lack the motivation required to do it consistently.
I was really hoping it was a refugee community that formed from non tankies that were banned by R/LSC.
One of best features about Lemmy is that you can deal with abusive, power-tripping mods by switching to the same community in another Instance.
If enough people feel the same way you do, then THAT community will be become the “official” one (based on the number of subscribers) and the old community will wither and die.
Also, if your moderator is rejecting Wikipedia links as “propaganda” then they have no business being a moderator. Wikipedia is one of the last, best sources of information on the Internet that isn’t biased, corporate-sponsored bullsh*t. Those mods are either UP TO something or have been bonked on the head.
Since you’re never going to win an argument with a moderator with an agenda, you can save yourself a lot of drama and pain by moving to a community that is beyond their reach.
Wikipedia is incredibly non-biased. Wikipedia is also more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wikipedia is one of the last, best sources of information on the Internet that isn’t biased, corporate-sponsored bullsh*t.
Instead it’s bullshit built upon elaborate bureaucracy which has it’s own layers of issues depending on exactly what topic/field we’re talking about.
The biggest and most obvious flaw being that it’s more or less explicitly designed to fail spectacularly as regards any topic that the media doesn’t want to talk about (for example, anything that might make the media look bad) because there’s going to be an intentional lack of “reliable sources” on those topics.
The definition of a “reliable source” is another - there’s a fair bit of jockeying on that which functionally biases WP. Especially when you start looking at what disqualified a given source from being “reliable” and start to notice that the bar seems to be set very unevenly depending on the particular source and how well liked it is by certain power-editors.
It’s good enough for anything that’s not politically contentious to anyone, but I would never use it for anything other than a vague overview and starting point for other sources to dig into.
OK that’s all fair enough. But isn’t this just a situation of humans being humans? Blaming Wikipedia for it is like blaming the United Nations for the lack of world peace.
Not saying you’re wrong, exactly, but I also think you don’t have an idea, realistically, of how to make Wikipedia function better on controversial subjects. I certainly don’t. It’s easy to bash Wikipedia, like it’s easy to bash the UN. In the meantime, cynicism is corrosive and Wikipedia is all we have.
“Not biased” just means “biased in a way I agree with”. There is no neutral POV.
In the real world, reality is determined by objective facts, not by your “point of view.” You’re not Obi-wan Kenobi.
Relies on enough people figuring out or getting enough issues with one community to actively do so. How often has this actually happened?
It’s currently happening with !lotrmemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com which is splitting off from !lotrmemes@midwest.social.
A couple months ago a few communities moved off of lemmy.ml.
The trekkies did something along these lines a while back but I don’t follow that…
You see internet exodus happen, I think Lemmy makes it easier
Is there a Lemmy app that can show the same communities from multiple servers on the same feed? Like all subscribed news@‘s in one?
https://lemmyverse.net/communities
This will show if the community is duplicated across multiple instances. I don’t know if it’s specific enough for what you’re looking for.
Yeah that’s some bullshit. This post is probably better suited to for !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com though.
db0 is part of them powertrippinbastards though.
How so?
He accused me twice of calling leftist fascists (which is funny because that would include myself) by completely twisting my words about some very specific case of left leaning extremistic views, the second time temp banning me. Then later he turned the temp ban into a perma ban by accusing me of abusing people over DM, which is even greater bullshit.
excluding the two DMs I tried to send out asking to stop the mod abuse, for clarification on that matter and why he’s having it out for me. No reply so far.Ummm. Not sure of you’re aware, but the messages are censored?
showing 6 timestamps does nothing to disprove my suspicions either lol
It shows that I didn’t even have any DMs, let alone practice “DM abuse”. My messages would obviously be quite a bit fuller than that if that’d be the case, and in relevance to the ban reason also more recent.
I mean, you already edited the image tho… It’s not hard to just add more color matched blue at that point…
I want to believe because I want to know what would be the best instance to switch to, but the evidence you gave makes you less trustworthy than no evidence at all 😅
Other than db0, my other picks are solar punk and sh.it.just.works
Well, yes. I’m not gonna dox the people in my DMs without permission without a good reason to do so. If he can give me specifics about who I allegedly abused through DMs then I can lay that specific convo open.
Then why post the screenshot at the point is my point?
I’m only asking because most people have said db0 has way less issues with mods (since they promote piracy), so I wanted to switch from .world to them, but then you say it’s bad but gave no evidence, just a completely censored screenshot that, well, is as useful as not posting a screenshot.
Because it refutes the ban reason given in the modlog.
Removed Comment I think that’s just because the same mod being one of the only few people posting there. My best guess is that his pendulum just swings a bit too far to the other side to the point where he’s sympathetic to those terrorist groups, like a lot of other leftists. by DarkThoughts@fedia.io reason: Leftists = terrorist sympathisers?
YDI from what i can see, sorry homie
Oh yeah? I can even prove the statement of this deleted comment in this very thread we’re in: https://fedia.io/m/asklemmy@lemmy.world/t/1616032/How-are-mods-like-this-still-allowed-to-moderate-and/comment/8793062#entry-comment-8793062
Moderates? you mean centrists? Leftists shouldn’t be moderate. A moderate leftist is a neo liberal and a neo liberal is a right leaning centrist pretending to be a leftist.
Also hamas inst a terrorist group its a liberstion resistance group. Israel was literally born of terrorism and nothing resembling radical islamic terrorism existed till the 1960’s before then from 1899 till 1948 we had the irgun hagannah palmach and lehi waging a campaign of terror responsible for dozens of violent attacks and murfering between 6 and 8 thousand Palestinian jews, Christians and muslims as well as british military personnel and other international citizens caught in the crossfire. Zionists are the true terrorists in this conflict. If you dont agree youre not on the left you’re a right leaning centrist making excuses for a settler colonial state guilty of war crimes.
And that’s just one of probably hundreds of comments like these, or worse, that I’ve seen over the past months on here that justify murder & genocide. Many more directly calling for it themselves.
Do you even know the context of that comment of mine? It was about said mod removing a post about people glorifying Sinwar.
https://fedia.io/m/insanepeoplefacebook@lemmy.world/t/1324305/Reddit-On-the-death-of-The-Butcher-of-Khan-Younis
So again, tell me how it is deserved? I certainly did not equate leftists with terrorist simps.
I don’t need to tell you when your defense makes it quite clear itself lol
Removed by mod
Shouldn’t there be some sort of baseline of sanity for community moderators?
There should, but isn’t. I recently got into a mutually uncivil argument on the .ml world news community. A tankie kept abusively pestering me long after I told them to leave me alone and I made the mistake of voicing my irritation in stead of ignoring them.
While the tankie received no mod action, I was banned not only from that community, but also from the USA news community, the technology community and the fucking MEME community, in spite of none of them being relevant to the topic at hand (Chinese government ethnically cleansing Tibetans).
And it was Dessalines (creator of Lemmy and ml admin) taking time out of his no doubt busy schedule to make sure that some guy who commented on a post about China’s atrocities couldn’t upvote memes for a month. Seemingly too busy to respond to my appeal, though, because of COURSE 🤦
So nah, when probably the closest thing to a “leader” Lemmy has is himself an unhinged tankie, there’s really no sanity required…
Unfortunately db0 is one of them powertrippinbastards and a dirty dirty liar on top of that.
cite specifics when doing accusations or get downvoted
https://fedia.io/m/asklemmy@lemmy.world/t/1616032/How-are-mods-like-this-still-allowed-to-moderate-and/comment/8793226#entry-comment-8793226
I saw db0 justify daddy is always right related to another power tripping but you got some links?
My QoL has improved on Lemmy after leaving all the tankie instances and instance blocking
deleted by creator
The block button is your friend
Simply blocking is not the solution to this set of problems though lol
I recently got into a mutually uncivil argument
This is probably the test I see moderators fail the most. I’ve seen so many instances of users getting into flame wars and then a mod comes in only to remove/ban one side.
If one user says “I love Trump! Fuck everyone who doesn’t!” and then someone responds “Fuck you! You’re a fucking idiot if you love Trump!” and only the first comment gets removed for being uncivil, I think less of the mod. The mod didn’t apply the rules fairly. They just removed the comment they didn’t agree with.
I use that example because, if the mod removed the second comment but left the first, then people would be posting the modlog to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com as an example of terrible moderation. I think even users can be biased towards moderator actions they agree with even if they’re not fair.
And it was Dessalines (creator of Lemmy and ml admin) taking time out of their no doubt busy schedule to make sure that some guy who commented on a post about China’s atrocities couldn’t upvote memes.
With how they’ll suddenly mass-ban people I’m half convinced the mod tools many people ask for exist, but only on their installation, out of spite and enjoyment that only they have the power
The man is coding the preferred fedi reddit stack. It deserves that respect but yeah the rest is just an oponion!
Woah, I think you just said the quiet part out loud.
If you want to see how bad it can get, check out the .ml modlog. The overwhelming majority of their “rule 1” violations don’t violate shit. It’s just the admin throwing a temper tantrum because they don’t like people that disagree with them- at all!
Best thing you can do if this shit aggravates you is to just filter their bullshit from your feed. I never do, because I think they’re hilarious!
Very early on .ml devs actually added the ability for admin actions to show up as regular mod actions specifically because Dessalines was spending so much time getting butthurt it started to get embarrassing.
That is hilarious.
Yes 🐸
I’ve blocked the instance but for some reason Lemmy still pretends I haven’t… I just want to have political discussions without someone kissing a genocidal dictator’s ass and then accusing me of being a capitalist imperialist pig when I dare to tell them that killing minorities isn’t a good thing.
I find this kinda similar to moderation on Reddit and 4chan for example, maybe a bit less bad. Here you have transparency with mandatory reasons for every action, and there you can get banned for anything including moderator’s bad mood, but the big difference is: they don’t even have to explain their decisions and 4chan even has a rule like “you are not allowed to discuss moderators and moderation”. But the real deal breaker here is that you can simply avoid instances with that kind of thing going on: register on another instance and prioritize communities from other instances - and you’re mostly out of reach of those mods and any of their moderation actions. I escaped from
lemmy.worldin the first two weeks. Still subscribed to some communities there, but mostly in a passive way and prefer to participate in alternatives.That’s how freedom works!
How are mods like this still allowed
Isn’t it the whole purpose of the fediverse to ‘allow’ anyone to do what the funk they fancy doing? ’ (within legal limitations, obviously I’m not apologizing breaking any law here)
I don’t know that community and have not much interest in knowing it more myself, but if someone was ‘abusing’ their moderating power in some community I was part of I see only two reasonable options, both starting by raising the issue within the community, discussing it with other members and then:
- If what I consider ‘abuse’ was pissing off enough other members, the obvious solution would be to deprive that person from their power… not by throwing them away or punishing them (how? In what name?) but by not using their community anymore. It’s Lemmy, it’s easy to start a new community with the exact same interest… but with a very different moderation policy (and a different moderator). There would be nothing that dude could do to prevent anyone from doing that or to prevent members from switching to that new community… leaving the dude alone.
- If not enough members in that community were pissed off by the way it’s moderated, or if I was the only one seriously annoyed by it, well, maybe that just means most members are fine with the moderation as it is and see no abuse in it. Then, the only question remaining to me would be to decide if I still want to contribute anything to that community?
I’m not saying that’s what you should do. I mean, I don’t even know if you just picked some random community to illustrate your point, or even if you’re a member of said community. I’m just saying how I would consider the situation.
Freedom goes both way: I can do whatever I fancy and do it how I fancy. But so can other people, even when I disagree with their ways ;)
The problem with the “freedom to do whatever you want” argument you’re making here is that one person (the moderator in question) has significant power and sway over what others trying to speak with similarly-minded people in that community are allowed to say - making for a serious imbalance of power. You need to use that community if there’s no other similar ones with an established & active user base which covers the topics that community is centered around.
As such, it should be incumbent upon the moderators to strive to be as close to the ideal of “impartial” as humanly possible. It is perfectly reasonable for users to call out bad faith moderation when it happens, otherwise Lemmy will be no better than a more disjointed Reddit.
The problem with the “freedom to do whatever you want” argument you’re making here is that one person (the moderator in question) has significant power and sway over what others trying to speak with similarly-minded people in that community are allowed to say. You need to use that community if there’s no other similar ones with an established & active user base which covers the topics that community is centered around.
Like i said, anyone is allowed to create a new community, that’s the whole idea. But one needs to be willing to do it ;)
Edit: that existing community one is looking to replace with a new one did not magically appear with all its members already subscribed. The mod had to make it so people were willing to participate and subscribe. So, should the creator of the new community. Like I said: one needs to be willing to do it… and put the extra work.
As such, it should be incumbent upon the moderators to strive to be as close to the ideal of “impartial” as humanly possible
That’s personal values. Values I may myself relate too but personal values nonetheless. And certainly not some indisputable truth that should be imposed upon everybody. At least, not in my mind.
It is perfectly reasonable for users to call out bad faith moderation when it happens
Indeed, exactly like I wrote earlier: if someone was ‘abusing’ their moderating power in some community I was part of I see only two reasonable options, both starting by raising the issue within the community, discussing it with other members
Then, actions can be taken. I just see no valid reason to appeal to some extra (new layer of) authority when all the power is already in the hands of the users.
Pilling up on authorities will never compensate for the lack of personal investment.
all the power is already in the hands of the users.
but the users are being manipulated. The vast majority will never look at the mod log and never realise that the comments they’re seeing have been editorialised.
Any user can easily see that comments have been removed, it says removed by mod, and you can also see that they weren’t downvoted heavily before removal. There’s no shadowbanning or anything like that on Lemmy, it’s right there for everyone to see.
but the users are being manipulated. The vast majority will never look at the mod log and never realise that the comments they’re seeing have been editorialised.
Hence, what I mentioned two times: the need to inform them by opening the discussion first.
Users don’t need to be gifted/attributed a new leader/mod. They need to decide by themselves if they need a new one, or not.Also, if there is no clue that a comment has been removed/censored (isn’t there some default text displayed?), then that should be something to discuss with Lemmy’s devs as I don’t think deleting comments should be invisible.
How do you raise your voice in a community if you get silenced there?
How do you raise your voice in a community if you get silenced there?
You don’t raise your voice (making more noise rarely helps, imho). You raise everyone else awareness that something odd could be happening in regard to some people/you being silenced?
I have never considered the question (I try not to participate in communities where people abuse their power, or to discuss with people that consider a personal aggression any disagreement or diverging opinion) but the first things that come to my mind is that if you get silenced (that can’t be know for sure before trying to publicly post your question in the community), you can still post in other communities that you know members of the first community do read (or in communities created to raise awareness on power abuse, and ask for suggestions). And you can message other users directly to ask them to raise the question publicly for you since you’ve been silenced. And then you can create your own community and start posting: the public timeline is, well, public, anyone will have a chance to read your post. But, really, those are just the first few ideas I would consider if my choice would not be to avoid being in a situation like that to begin with.
I think instances that host certain communities have the responsibilty of setting a certain baseline for mods. In reality if a community on a certain topic gets big enough most people will join the biggest instance of their community of interest.
I think instances should be allowed to set their own direction but genocide denial is something I really can’t have. Most lurkers and regular commentors (even on something like a meme community) will never see the bias and modlog of the mods. In an ideal world your approach would work but I doubt it does in reality as some communities become too big to fail and become the default. The mod would have to do a lot wrong to mess it up after that
I think instances that host certain communities have the responsibilty of setting a certain baseline for mods.
Once again, that’s something I could vouch for personally but me supporting that ideal would not make it a universal rule.
I think instances should be allowed to set their own direction but genocide denial is something I really can’t have.
That’s the reason why no one is forced to participate in any instance. I carefully select the communities I’m subscribed to and read, and then my home page only shows what’s new from those I’m subscribed to. Good luck finding any deniers content in that (or whatever else outrageous content), of they tried they would not last long… thx to the mods in those communities not being assholes and doing a good job.
And we’re back at what I was saying first, someone needs to do the work of cleaning the room. And it can be a lot of work, so not many people may be willing to do it.
In an ideal world your approach would work
I don’t think it’s idealistic, in fact I’d say it’s rather pragmatical: I say don’t try to police the whole Internet to get rid of those extreme assholes (that will never happen, no matter how outraged one may feel about their very existence). Instead, let assholes be assholes together, in their stinky corner of the web, just lets make we don’t have to read their shit content, or to breath in the same room as they do.
I may be wrong, but that’s how I consider the question.
“Why do they allow these people to gate communities on this website that allows just anyone to create and moderate communities??!?”
Don’t comment in spaces where you don’t respect the mods. You’re just wasting your time. It’s not like you have an inalienable right to an audience.
Defending genocides isn’t an LSC interest. The reddit LSC had this problem too. Tankies got into the mod team and started banning people who pointed out that China and Russia are also problems in Late Stage Capitalism. Effectively turning the sub into an anti Western community despite it’s rules. Not because of its rules.
LateStageCapitalism was already a Tankie disinformation cesspool on Reddit. Not sure why it is on .world instead of .ml or lemmygrad though.
But generally, Lemmy mods are just users. So just like on Reddit, you’ll get all the flaws of this system with tons of mod abuse. If you have opinions that other’s don’t like, they’ll punish you for it and make up a bunch of bullshit to justify themselves.
Because too many people block ml and Lemmygrad.
As part of the Community Team here on LW, I do have the power to review mods and warn/remove them if needed. However, I don’t use that lightly, and given the holdover from Reddit, that heavy moderation might be in line with what people expect.
I’ll keep an eye out, but it’s gotta be pretty damn egregious. I’m also less inclined to use admin powers on something I personally disagree with. I tend to slightly overcorrect for my own bias, which I understand is a bias in itself.
LW has many different mods, and doesn’t have mods that collect all the major communities like pokemon. Personally, I think that’s already better than Reddit. Unfortunately, people seem to just pick their least favorite community and least favorite mod and ascribe that to the entire instance. Many instances are heavily run by their admins. .World is not.
Removed Wikipedia articles cited as misinformation looks pretty egregious to me
Do you want to make a statement on what policies the admins should enforce here?
What’s the argument for/against dealing with it and what should we do?
If it’s a good argument, I can promise it’ll be seen.
Removal of misinformation should require a mod discussion/panel review. Sources can be deemed to be misinformation by a mod majority vote and the list they maintain should be public.
How many mods are there over there, one? Also that’s mod policy. I’m talking about admins. What kind of policy do you want the admins to enforce on the mods?
Ah, gotcha.
Well, if mod actions are reported to admins, they already do a review on the mod, I imagine. So in this case, this post should lead to a mod review, right? Not sure if OP had already gone through official channels. I personally haven’t had to look into this topic before.
So I guess, if admins see that a mod is removing factual information to fit their agenda, that should be grounds for removal. Wikipedia has robust moderation and certainly couldn’t be considered misinformation.
There are no standards for comm mods. Hell, I hear they even let that PugJesus cretin run a few!
More seriously, .world admins probably don’t want to get into fighting over whether people can mod their own comms how they like. .world isn’t intensely ideological, unlike some other instances, so the bar for sufficiently ideologically disgusting moderation to be removed is much higher than on, say, Solarpunk.
Doesn’t that guy run some history thing where they inform people interesting history facts daily in meme form? That son of a bitch
It’s disgusting what people will get up to on the internet.
They also likely wouldn’t get involved without a tremendous amount of uproar, because the instance is way too large and their work load for, well, admin stuff is likely off the charts.
!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com. Expose their ass there
Seriously! Name and shame, please.
Frankly, i can’t essentially distinguish tankies from nazi minded. They are just different flavor of far right.
Non-sarcastic reply:
Horseshoe theory isn’t so much about “the far-left is the same as the far-right” as it is about “all authoritarians derive power from the same human instincts” and the further left or right you go, the more authoritarian you have to be in order to achieve the social narrative you’re aiming for.
Edit: misplaced word
Horseshoe theory is widely panned. Its just a centrist insult masquerading as a politcai theory.
That stethoscope meme isn’t a whole lot better, but it is a little bit more demonstrative.
Fascism is when the government does things
This is just wishy washy vibes though. Historically fascism has risen from the interests of the Capitalist class and Communism has risen from the interests of the working class. Moreover, Communists have historically supported liberatory anti-colonialist movements, such as in Algeria and Palestine, Cuba and South Africa, while fascists have historically supported ever-more agressive colonialism. I suggest you read Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti, it’s a witty read with intense historical rigor.
I think you’re actually missing the point. Horseshoe theory doesn’t say left and right want the same things or have the same motivations, it’s more like saying all armies need boots and weapons no matter what they’re fighting for.
That interpretation of horseshoe theory seems very grounded in common sense. Every system needs some measure of authority in the form of tangible strength and physical force to defend itself against people who want it to tear it down - which somebody will always want to do, even if the system is so good we’re all sitting around in togas sipping tea and discussing philosophy. Meme-level mentality dismisses horseshoe theory because acknowledging any similarity between left and right translates to “identical and equally bad”.
to me , left vs right is about wanting to do good
tofor other people and helping them be themselves vs controlling them by force if necessary. This whole political ideology mess is just stupid and confusing. It doesnt do good to my worldview though.Historically, the Left is made up of the progressive class interests, while the right is made up of the regressive, or “reactionary” class interests. Wanting to progress beyond our current Mode of Production to a more collective one is Leftist, while pining for “the good old days” and seeking to turn the clock back, so to speak, is right wing.
Politics really would be easier to understand if we used words like progressive and conservative instead of left and right.
Is it really good if you have to do it “to” someone?
Children need to be educated.
And there’s a lot of big kids running around.
Um… no, I don’t think so.
The problem authoritarians have is that they’re just not that popular, so to be relevant at all, they must cloak their ideas in the language of the progressive. They must pretend to be something they’re not.
I mean, I’m not saying being very strongly opinionated doesn’t lead to some authoritative rule-whipping, but I wouldn’t call that Authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is more like narcissist behavior.
Eh, far right isn’t really the right word here, I’d say authoritarian.
They are just different flavor of far right.
BANNED: Horseshoe theory
/s
Communism and Fascism are entirely different, both historically and ideologically, and to conflate the two is a massive error. I suggest you read Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti, it’s a very enjoyable read due to Parenti’s characteristic wit while being packed with exacting historical rigor.
They didn’t write communism, they wrote tankies. And while I won’t equate tankies to nazis, they do share a lot of ideology, such as their love of strongmen.
The distinction between Communists and “tankies” doesn’t really matter at this point because the label of “tankie” is applied to every Communist these days, even Anarchists and progressive liberals. It’s generally a term without meaning. Either way, though, Communists don’t “love strongmen,” that’s more of a post-hoc explanation liberals come up with to denounce Communist movements, ie “Che Guevara is a strongman, that’s why Communists support Cuba” etc. etc.
You should read the book too.
I mostly see the word tankie used by left-leaning individuals. Many of them communist. Right-wingers just call any non-fascist a commie.
I see the word “tankie” more often than not used by Anarchists against Marxists, and by liberals towards anyone to their left.
I’m a marxist.
As am I. I am explaining my own experiences.
Horeshoe Theory again.
The political spectrum is bent. Historically, the extreme far left and the extreme far right are just different avenues of arriving at the same destination, which is totalitarianism. Absolute power corrupts, etc.
The correct way to vote against bad moderators and community rules is to RUN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY. Make it a better place, moderate it better.
So bad moderators are ALLOWED to persist because nobody has stepped up and made a better place yet.
And if the response to that is ‘woah, woah, I don’t want to do all that work’ then… clearly the moderation isn’t that bad
Moderation certainly takes significant time and effort, which is why there will only ever be a rather small subset of the wide variety of personalities found in humans actually doing the work for free. It’s tailor-made for those without much else to do in life & who are desperately seeking to have more control over something in their lives. Not saying that’s true of all mods by a long shot, but it’s definitely a major draw for those of that persuasion. They’re always going to be an issue unless there’s some way to counterbalance their power without having to abandon the community and start all over again building another - one which still is just as vulnerable to falling prey to the whims of a person who shouldn’t be moderating.
I mod one of the larger communities. I’m just the janitor. Y’all are the real mods as far as I’m concerned. It really isn’t very much time as far as mod stuff here. I don’t read every post or comment. If y’all see something, say something. It doesn’t mean I will take the action from the flag. It only means I will read into it, give the benefit of the doubt in every way possible and mod very conservatively in line with community voting too. I also will tell you if I am commenting or questioning as a mod, and differ to another mod if I am ever involved in an issue personally.
Being a mod does not need to be a chore or a power trip. Just treat it like a job as a janitor and trust in the community as a whole while completely setting yourself aside. It is really not that hard.
And who do you propose has the job of moderating the moderators? Whoever that group is, same problem… instance admins, and if you don’t like the instance admins… build your own instance, with better rules, etc. Turtles all the way down.
You vote with your time and attention, if your participating in a community you endorse it. If you want to change the community you can, as above. Wishing, or externalizing, your desires onto other people’s behavior (the lifeless moderators your negging in the above comment) will not be effective in realizing the change you want to see.
And if the response to that is ‘woah, woah, I don’t want to do all that work’ then… clearly the moderation isn’t that bad
if the only people who can moderate, as you posit, don’t have a life - implying you can’t moderate because you do have a life… then the moderation isn’t bad enough to motivate you to take on responsibility… so its good enough.
Sorry, I meant to reply to you with [this comment] (https://lemmings.world/comment/12766392), but - further proving what I said in it first - I inadvertently sent the reply to the wrong person (I’m only noticing it this quickly because I was woken up by the call of nature).
(You’re linked post doesn’t address any of my points, and just repeat yourself, but okay fine)
Okay, if I understand that post correctly, you want direct democracy to determine moderation in a community.
How do you prevent brigading? What about a community talking about sensitive topics, like diet and exercise? Or vegan versus carnivore? One side’s going to have more people than the other, and they can moderate the other into silence?
I think it’s an interesting experiment, just like craigslist used to do, or slashdot with metamoderation.
If you build it, I’ll give it a shot
Brigading actually occurred to me while writing that comment, which is part of the reason I said it wasn’t the best written (but was too tired to try to do it right). It definitely would be a fine line to walk, which is why I said the users should have the power to override the mods at least to a certain extent. It’s not a fully fleshed out idea because it only occurred to me just before I wrote it.
To address the question you just posed, my first thought (also just now) is that it might be addressed by allowing either side to appeal to “a jury of their peers” - some sort of randomly chosen group (in an effort to reduce the possibility of stacking the deck) equally made up of moderators and users across various instances that have all opted in to be a part of the pool of potential jurors (this system would obviously need some time to build up the pool before it could be implemented). Exactly how many people would be required for a proper jury and pool of potential jurors would need to be hashed out.
This is just spitballing off the top of my head, however. Setting up such a system would be a significant undertaking. But I think it’s at least a start down the road of coming up with a way to solve this thorny issue.
(I’m going to try to get a little more sleep before I have to get up & get going so I’m unlikely to respond for a good while, just to let you know.)
Moderation certainly takes significant time and effort,
No, for the vast majority of communities it doesn’t. Outside of World News, News and Politics, most take < 10 minutes a month on top of your normal browsing.
You can of course choose to be more involved, but that generally takes the form of finding content more than it does moderating other users.
Hmm… Catholic clergy phenomenon?
