I’m just so tired of watching green mods make the same mistakes. “It’s not my job to weigh in on debates or tell people what to think.” No, but it’s your job to reduce disruption in a community. If someone comes in going “being gay is a choice if you ask me,” they have about 30 seconds to clarify their position or they’re gone from my discord server and generally that won’t do it. We have a lot of LGBT folks who have NO desire to deal with those people in a the little corner of friends we’ve created. That person is not entitled to their time and attention. It is our job to look out for the best interests of all our users, yet we categorically see mods get bogged down by a handful of incredibly disruptive attention seekers/combative personalities that make it shitty for everyone else. It’s so predictable at this point.
We banned someone a few months ago from our discord who had some of the best insights about gaming I’ve ever seen. The dude was remarkable. But my god he was such a jerk! He kept being such an ass to people who disagreed with him. “That’s just a brain dead take.” “People who like that have no taste so frankly I don’t care what you or they think.” Just constant antagonism that halted all conversation and made people feel like crap. So we booted him! We asked him to stop, he didn’t, and his disruptions just became unwelcome. We didn’t play rules lawyer with him or debate things. We said stop, he didn’t, that was the end of it, and while I miss his insights the community is noticeably better without him.
Most mods aren’t clueless. They know bigotry is occurring in their communities. Yet they too often just won’t be proactive about it because the behavior doesn’t overtly violate the rules. Don’t let bad actors weaponize your own rules against you!
Another thing is that some people are loud specifically to drown out other’s voices.
That’s why true free speech can not be a free-for-all, you must put a dampener on those people and it doesn’t matter how closely they technically follow the rules if they do not follow the spirit and cause the quality and mood to degrade with their presence.
I’ve always thought that people should be able to hotly debate ideas all they want, but as soon as they leave the ideas out and begin disparaging people, good-bye.
Sure but some communities simply don’t want to be debating all the time and some people refuse to accept that lol like my LGBT friends constantly talk about how exhausting it is. Sometimes they just want to talk about a tv show.
They basically are tired of constantly justifying their existence, even if the questions are genuine/good faith.
“Off topic” is a legitimate reason to downvote a post or comment, even one made respectfully and in good faith.
I do sometimes wish more sites had adopted something like the system Slashdot used, with multiple categories of up or down votes (insightful, informative, off-topic, flamebait, etc.) which users could weight according to their own preferences. The simplistic “either up, down, or neutral” model is a rather blunt instrument.
That’s great but the talk in this thread isn’t about some communities, the demand is that mastodon.world should defederate more.
I find these opinions kind of antithetical to the whole fediverse idea, if you want a small gated community do your thing, but why should the biggest fediverse instance merrily defederate everything left and right
Most mods aren’t clueless. They know bigotry is occurring in their communities. Yet they too often just won’t be proactive about it because the behavior doesn’t overtly violate the rules. Don’t let bad actors weaponize your own rules against you!
This is why general rules (instead of specific ones) are better. One good one I’ve seen is “Don’t fetishize violence”.
So many people will say “guillotine” or “something should happen to them… in Minecraft” and think those comments don’t break rules.
It’s fine to talk about violence that has happened or may happen, but when you fetishize it it becomes a problem.
Different ideas:
“A violent thing happened or may happen” - ok
“A violent thing happened or may happen, wink wink” - not ok
I just think ultimately if you are on a community that I am operating, you are subject to my whims. It’s just a reality they have to accept. Call it power tripping, I don’t really care. I run the community the way I think it runs best, and if you don’t like it, you can make your own or go to another community. There are plenty of communities where people can call each other slurs and fight all day long. I don’t want it where I am.
I do my best to make things consistent and clear, I want people to know what the rules are. But I never let them be used against me. If I say “hey y’all cool it,” and you say “bite me,” I’m banning you. I don’t have time for that crap and the community is better without it.
you are subject to my whims. It’s just a reality they have to accept. Call it power tripping, I don’t really care.
I mean, that is “power tripping” and will drive posters and commenters away. Just because a poster is being dumb and unreasonable doesn’t mean you should be the same when you ban them.
I think lurkers and “audience members” prefer consistency and interesting content. As a moderator, I think you should refrain from trying to steer the conversation, to keep it organic.
I think mods should be like a gardener. You just prune around the edges and provide resources. What the plant (contributor base) grows should be natural. Don’t influence it too much or it will be boring.
I never said anything about steering the conversation. I’m talking about removing troublemakers. I would say that certainly counts as being a gardener.
Our discord is thriving and basically has no controversies ever. I would say it’s going just fine! Perhaps my community/Moderation style is not for you and I totally respect that. My communities are not for everybody. But I’m definitely not power tripping, it’s not like I enjoy kicking people out. I’m just not going to waste my time and I know my community is better for it, so the way is clear for me. If I take it too far people will leave, the community will fall apart, and I will learn my lesson.
Because some people see the way I operate as power tripping, because unfortunately some people think mods are basically there to just watch them cause havoc. My point is you can call it power trip in, but I don’t see it that way. I think you’re kind of picking a fight were there doesn’t need to be one here. Consider the context a bit.
I’m just so tired of watching green mods make the same mistakes. “It’s not my job to weigh in on debates or tell people what to think.” No, but it’s your job to reduce disruption in a community. If someone comes in going “being gay is a choice if you ask me,” they have about 30 seconds to clarify their position or they’re gone from my discord server and generally that won’t do it. We have a lot of LGBT folks who have NO desire to deal with those people in a the little corner of friends we’ve created. That person is not entitled to their time and attention. It is our job to look out for the best interests of all our users, yet we categorically see mods get bogged down by a handful of incredibly disruptive attention seekers/combative personalities that make it shitty for everyone else. It’s so predictable at this point.
We banned someone a few months ago from our discord who had some of the best insights about gaming I’ve ever seen. The dude was remarkable. But my god he was such a jerk! He kept being such an ass to people who disagreed with him. “That’s just a brain dead take.” “People who like that have no taste so frankly I don’t care what you or they think.” Just constant antagonism that halted all conversation and made people feel like crap. So we booted him! We asked him to stop, he didn’t, and his disruptions just became unwelcome. We didn’t play rules lawyer with him or debate things. We said stop, he didn’t, that was the end of it, and while I miss his insights the community is noticeably better without him.
Most mods aren’t clueless. They know bigotry is occurring in their communities. Yet they too often just won’t be proactive about it because the behavior doesn’t overtly violate the rules. Don’t let bad actors weaponize your own rules against you!
Another thing is that some people are loud specifically to drown out other’s voices.
That’s why true free speech can not be a free-for-all, you must put a dampener on those people and it doesn’t matter how closely they technically follow the rules if they do not follow the spirit and cause the quality and mood to degrade with their presence.
Absolutely!
I’ve always thought that people should be able to hotly debate ideas all they want, but as soon as they leave the ideas out and begin disparaging people, good-bye.
Sure but some communities simply don’t want to be debating all the time and some people refuse to accept that lol like my LGBT friends constantly talk about how exhausting it is. Sometimes they just want to talk about a tv show.
They basically are tired of constantly justifying their existence, even if the questions are genuine/good faith.
Absolutely. Not everyplace is an appropriate forum for every topic under the sun.
Yeah that’s kind of what I’m driving at. Some folks truly believe all debate must be allowed everywhere “as long as it’s nice.”
“Off topic” is a legitimate reason to downvote a post or comment, even one made respectfully and in good faith.
I do sometimes wish more sites had adopted something like the system Slashdot used, with multiple categories of up or down votes (insightful, informative, off-topic, flamebait, etc.) which users could weight according to their own preferences. The simplistic “either up, down, or neutral” model is a rather blunt instrument.
That’s great but the talk in this thread isn’t about some communities, the demand is that mastodon.world should defederate more.
I find these opinions kind of antithetical to the whole fediverse idea, if you want a small gated community do your thing, but why should the biggest fediverse instance merrily defederate everything left and right
deleted by creator
Some people are very good at saying the most despicable things in the nicest tone. It’s difficult
This is why general rules (instead of specific ones) are better. One good one I’ve seen is “Don’t fetishize violence”.
So many people will say “guillotine” or “something should happen to them… in Minecraft” and think those comments don’t break rules.
It’s fine to talk about violence that has happened or may happen, but when you fetishize it it becomes a problem.
Different ideas:
“A violent thing happened or may happen” - ok
“A violent thing happened or may happen, wink wink” - not ok
I just think ultimately if you are on a community that I am operating, you are subject to my whims. It’s just a reality they have to accept. Call it power tripping, I don’t really care. I run the community the way I think it runs best, and if you don’t like it, you can make your own or go to another community. There are plenty of communities where people can call each other slurs and fight all day long. I don’t want it where I am.
I do my best to make things consistent and clear, I want people to know what the rules are. But I never let them be used against me. If I say “hey y’all cool it,” and you say “bite me,” I’m banning you. I don’t have time for that crap and the community is better without it.
I mean, that is “power tripping” and will drive posters and commenters away. Just because a poster is being dumb and unreasonable doesn’t mean you should be the same when you ban them.
I think lurkers and “audience members” prefer consistency and interesting content. As a moderator, I think you should refrain from trying to steer the conversation, to keep it organic.
I think mods should be like a gardener. You just prune around the edges and provide resources. What the plant (contributor base) grows should be natural. Don’t influence it too much or it will be boring.
I never said anything about steering the conversation. I’m talking about removing troublemakers. I would say that certainly counts as being a gardener.
Our discord is thriving and basically has no controversies ever. I would say it’s going just fine! Perhaps my community/Moderation style is not for you and I totally respect that. My communities are not for everybody. But I’m definitely not power tripping, it’s not like I enjoy kicking people out. I’m just not going to waste my time and I know my community is better for it, so the way is clear for me. If I take it too far people will leave, the community will fall apart, and I will learn my lesson.
Well then, I don’t know why you said:
Because some people see the way I operate as power tripping, because unfortunately some people think mods are basically there to just watch them cause havoc. My point is you can call it power trip in, but I don’t see it that way. I think you’re kind of picking a fight were there doesn’t need to be one here. Consider the context a bit.