Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I'd learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it's run.

This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.

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[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

even experts don’t have the full picture, may have outdated knowledge, and a respectful “non-expert” can sometimes add a bit that might help both learn something.

You're not wrong, but we don't have the tools to screen out bad actors and to moderate appropriate, professional discussions on complicated, nuanced topics with experts to help address what's signal and what's noise. This is simply not the venue for that.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have at least a non-exhaustive list of some of the subjects to avoid, for those who might learn something from it? Or should people acquire that education on their own, before participating?

I want to point out two things here:

We have taken an explicit stance against itemized rules to try and prevent rules lawyering behavior - an explicit list invites people to go "but it's not on the list!"
Yes, you should educate yourself by at least googling the subject first. If you see a lot of heated discussions, it's probably something that makes other people upset. If it's something that requires a lot of education to understand, it's also probably not a discussion destined for this space.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

we don't have the tools to screen out bad actors and to moderate appropriate, professional discussions on complicated, nuanced topics with experts to help address what's signal and what's noise

I don't think you need experts in a given field to recognize whether a discussion is being conducted in a respectful and constructive way or not. The participants themselves are likely to tell you that through the report function.

Suggestion: For tools, would it be possible to set a discussion to be collapsed/hidden/flagged when in doubt? (like what Reddit does through downvotes, but via mod action) Then just let the participants continue if they wish, without disturbing the rest of the community.

you should educate yourself by at least googling the subject first

That requires identifying that I lack some education in it, and while I'm all for it, after so many years there are likely many subjects that I think I have enough education to present a point of view about, even if I might be wrong. Googling each and every possible subject "just in case" before commenting, isn't practical.

If you see a lot of heated discussions, it's probably something that makes other people upset.

Heated discussions get used politically all the time, and in this age of AI chatbots, professional troll farms, mis- and counter-informative spam, and such, they can even be faked precisely to get them out of rational discussions.

I don't think "heat" is a good indicator of whether a subject should be avoided or not; pretty much all the subjects for every community in here, are used in heated discussions somewhere else.

If it's something that requires a lot of education to understand, it's also probably not a discussion destined for this space.

Wouldn't that leave only the most mundane, bland and minimum common consensus subjects? But if everyone knows everything already, with the same point of view, what's there left to talk about?

an explicit list invites people to go "but it's not on the list!"

Suggestion: I think stating that it's a "non-exhaustive list of examples" would take care of that. Right now there is one example (phrenology), all I suggest is adding more examples.

(and anyway, Reddit's explicit list didn't stop them from banning me for talking about something only tangentially related to one of the points... ultimately, instance admins have all the power, even to edit user comments, Reddit did it)

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don’t think you need experts in a given field to recognize whether a discussion is being conducted in a respectful and constructive way or not.

That's okay that you don't think so, but we as a team absolutely do. It's part of the reason we've not created communities such as "mental health", "legal", and other places which are at risk of uninformed opinions causing serious and actual harm.

would it be possible to set a discussion to be collapsed/hidden/flagged when in doubt?

This functionality does not exist. Even if it did exist, I would not want it used for this purpose.

That requires identifying that I lack some education in it

It sure does! There's an educational burden for you if you want to speak about subjects which have real world effects on others but not on you. If you don't do that research before asking questions, that's your fault and not ours - it's not difficult to ask yourself the question of whether something might negatively effect others or to at least do a cursory search on google, go to the library and find some reading, or otherwise receive some base level of education before discussion a charged question on the platform. You have a responsibility to your fellow humans to be educated in this manner before broaching a topic in a public space.

there are likely many subjects that I think I have enough education to present a point of view about, even if I might be wrong

In the scope of the document linked, we're going to take into consideration the viewpoints of others. People who are sufferers of sexual abuse won't particularly like you going on amateurishly about whether you think there are real risks, however, so if you try to start a conversation about this you might find your content removed and if this becomes a repeat problem you may end up temporarily and eventually permanently banned.

I don’t think “heat” is a good indicator of whether a subject should be avoided or not; pretty much all the subjects for every community in here, are used in heated discussions somewhere else.

I don't agree with this statement at all. If a discussion ultimately questions someone else's humanity, it's not a great subject to discuss when those people are present. Or if you do, and do so without considering the opinions and thoughts of this group or at the very least become educated on this issue, you should expect consequences to your speech - such as being insulted, having your comment removed, or being removed from your platform entirely.

all I suggest is adding more examples.

I don't have the time or energy to build a list of all content in the world aimed at dehumanizing others. If you do, more power to you, I'd encourage you to make and maintain said list with my blessing.

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

we've not created communities such as "mental health", "legal"

You may not have created specific communities, but both mental health advice and legal commentary are being offered in the communities already created. Does this mean those contents should be avoided and/or reported? I hope not... they're actually interesting.

There's an educational burden for you if you want to speak about subjects which have real world effects on others but not on you.

That gets us back to my initial question: if I speak about a subject that has direct effects on me, but only tangentially references effects on others but not on me... what's the stance on that?

go to the library and find some reading

Fun fact: my "sexualization of minors" ban on Reddit came from citing a book... so this doesn't seem like a safe recommendation... 😐

People [...] won't particularly like [...] amateurishly [...] you might find your content removed and if this becomes a repeat problem you may end up temporarily and eventually permanently banned.

I got that, don't make people uncomfortable. I'm even fine with backing off when made aware of it, even if I actually have more than amateurish knowledge about a subject. Heck, I'm even fine with my expert knowledge getting removed (did that on Reddit myself already).

What I wouldn't like, is to get banned because someone felt uncomfortable and I wasn't made aware, or someone thought that someone might have felt uncomfortable by proxy, without a chance to fix it.

If a discussion ultimately questions someone else's humanity, it's not a great subject to discuss when those people are present.

I agree with that.

My objection was that there are people "out there" who will use any subject to dehumanize others, even when the subjects themselves are not inherently dehumanizing and can otherwise be discussed with respect. Should we let third parties guide which subjects should be banned, just because someone might have seen them use it in a dehumanizing way?

There is also the matter of which people "are present", since the contents here are public and even federated, so technically "everyone is present".

I don't have the time or energy to build a list of all content in the world aimed at dehumanizing others. If you do, more power to you, I'd encourage you to make and maintain said list with my blessing.

Yeah... it's not an attractive task. I was thinking that since mods are going to see the content anyway, you could run it as a kind of FAQ, just add items to a list when you see them appear on the instance. Kind of "I'll know it when I see it, and now everyone else will too".

I wonder if a list could be extracted from the modlog... I'll look into that.

[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best I can say to you at this point is that if you've received pushback in the past it's probably not meant for this site. I can't itemize everything for you. I understand you're neurodivergent and need a bit more clarity on what's acceptable and what's not but I don't have the time to build that list for you. Maybe just avoid any subject you have questions about or haven't seen others discussing to be safe

[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Make that neurodivergent, disabled, and abused for enough time to have received pushback on all subjects. At this point I feel like the only safe course of action is to shut up and disappear, since I'm definitely not going to go to "free speech" places to get more of the same. Anyway, sorry for dragging this out, and guess we'll just see how it goes.