this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
130 points (97.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43936 readers
593 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I really like your explanation! Thank you very much. Would you mind helping me make some kind of community with the idea of bringing some anti bullying standards to lemmy?
I have moderation experience both on reddit and on lemmy and I‘m pretty surprised at the passivity of mods here. It’s not that surprising considering that reddit is a single (sueable) entity.
I mean, those in Ireland can already sue for cyberbullying and the rest of the eu hopefully soon follows.
We might find more of our kind and actually get good content on this place as not every sane person leaves after being shit on 3 times a day.
I moderate a couple of light hearted communities pretty strictly. Name calling is not allowed, neither is arguing. Discussion is fine, but the second I see it become unpleasant, I shut it down.
That said, I’m the main contributor to the majority of my communities and I’ve dramatically decreased the amount of posts I make over the last couple of weeks. There’s a lot more criticism and negativity lately, and some of the abusive messages I receive after asking someone to abide by the rules are straight up unhinged. I have to moderate closely to keep it enjoyable and honestly, I don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with the nastiness at the moment. The crappy mod tools don’t help, and neither does me living in the UK when the majority of commenters are in the USA.
But anyway, check out the community rules and the stickied mod post in !dontyouknowwhoiam@lemmy.world They might give you a starting point to create a nicer community.
The others I moderate - !confidently_incorrect@lemmy.world !clevercomebacks@feddit.uk !murderedbywords@feddit.uk and !badrealestate@feddit.uk - all have similar rules, with varying degrees of success. !badrealestate is definitely the “nicest” community I moderate - it’s pretty hard to get worked up over estate agent photos.
ETA: SomeoneElseMod@feddit.uk is my mod account, I forgot to switch.
Fixed links.
Hi! Just meant to check out some of your links, and they are not working for me. Perhaps some formatting issue?
I’m useless at links 🤦🏼♀️ try these:
!badrealestate@feddit.uk !confidently_incorrect@lemmy.world !murderedbywords@feddit.uk !clevercomebacks@feddit.uk !dontyouknowwhoiam@lemmy.world
I'm no better at them- thanks for fixing them, they work now!
No problem - thanks for letting me know!
Wow! Thanks for this awesome explanation! It seems like there are a lot less people on lemmy than it seems. :)
I think there would also be people who benefit if stuff here got a lot more vile. That’s something we shouldn’t forget. Reddit and Twitter for example have ample motive to spread hate here.
There are bad actors for sure, but I think my naivety is partly to blame. I really enjoy discussing all sorts of topics and hearing all sorts of views - it’s an essential part of learning and growing imo. So I haven’t shied away from posting screenshots in my communities that touch on “controversial” subjects. Lemmy seemed so much nicer than Reddit at first, I truly thought I could help develop communities that discussed any topic in a calm, informative, respectful manner - particularly because these are light hearted communities. But it’s not to be. I wasn’t expecting an online utopia, but things have definitely shifted from “I disagree with you because XYZ” to “go fuck yourself you wanker” and it’s really disheartening.
I haven’t been a mod before and I really dislike the automatic mod = power hungry narcissist stereotype. I’m so careful to be polite, transparent and understanding when I act in a moderator capacity because I’ve had to deal with the less scrupulous Reddit mods in the past too. But honestly, the majority of people I have to remind to follow the rules are just so horrible that I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s like they’re stuck in the Reddit mindset of “everyone’s a dick, so you might as well be one too” or “it doesn’t matter what I say because this is anonymous”.
Shout out to the person who called me a “sycophantic child molester” after I gave them a warning for insulting 4 separate people. And the one who said I had “a personal moral failing” when I wouldn’t ban another user who hadn’t broken the rules. You suck.
Jeez! You're kind of the person I would like to associate with. I really feel you and it means a lot that you put yourself out there like this.
I'm a little different in parts but also the same in a lot of ways. Most notably, I'm autistic and I know it. Also, in my specific case, I tend to be brutally honest whereas honest is bold and brutally is the part I try to keep low because I really don't want to hurt someone. The interesting part is that I don't abide by social rules, mostly because I don't understand them or don't even see them.
This leads to very interesting situations. My strong sense for right and wrong (pretty binary, as well) leads me to look for the person who started to insult the other one because had they (for example) stayed constructive, the situation would have gone differently. But obviously I have a sence of nuance (after 36 yrs on this planet, even my autistic head does let in outside influence). So I don't just crash into someone I think has done wrong but my understanding of this right or wrong is very strong and a bit thickheaded. I mediate myself to not make people miserable.
What this also means is that if I tell someone my honest opinion, they often can't see how I got to that conclusion and I have no idea that they don't, so I'm shocked when they call me names (psychopath, narcissist, cruel and others) while I ask them to just explain to me why they see it different. Then (recently more on lemmy) they pile onto me like a gang of rabid dogs when I'm the only food available.
And it wouldn't be as ironic if the overwhelming conclusion after hours of back and forth and me explaining/asking and them beating me up wouldn't always be "Ok, so you're actually correct and it was a misunderstanding, tough luck I guess." (as said by the people doing the beating, btw.) This accidentally coincides with an old friend from elementary school joking about me getting beaten up all the time for "inventing words" which he much later learned were just very obscure and he learned at the age of 30.
Appreciate the offer, but I'm sorry to say that I'm in no position to take on any sort of commitment like that.
That being said, are you aware of beehaw? If not, you might want to check out their instance and their documentation. From what I've been able to glean, they're pretty dedicated to creating a more humane social media space, with generally more active moderation than anywhere else on lemmy (they, as you might know, blocked lemmy.world, and are rather unhappy at the lack of moderation tooling in lemmy the platform).
Otherwise, if you do find yourself setting something up, let me know. I'll likely check it out and be involved however I can!
Thank you very much for the information and kind words. I will absolutely check them out. I‘ll also try to hit you up if I decide to make a community dedicated to the cause.
Last thing: The reason I‘m so adamant about this is that I feel like we are having this massive problem with people being bullied all around the globe (by their bosses, coworkers, schoolmates, parents, you name it).
When they complain, most people answer with „suck it up“ or „your own fault“ or „bad but can’t do anything“ which leads to suicides, school shootings, cults, political extremists.
All because people are not feeling heard and stuff is not properly explained to them. Instead they are ridiculed, pathologized and beaten into submission by the „normal“ (just larger in numbers) crowd.
And I feel like those of us who have already split from real life because they can’t take it anymore are now bullied even more online.
Sorry for the rant. I just needed to say this. Thanks for reading. Have a good one.
You too!