So after a run in with a moderator yesterday I’ve had some thoughts I felt I wanted to share.
I won’t name them here, you are welcome to look at my comment history and make up your own mind.
In this instance a user posted some misinformation. I don’t think they intended to, they merely perpetuated a myth, they clearly simply knew no better.
I tried to respond diplomatically, they doubled down, other users piled on, the downvotes are plenty and then I responded with an article citing evidence supporting my assertions.
I also stated that the burden of proof lies with the claimant and asked for some context on why they seemed dead set on the lie they were aping back, asking if they subscribe to other myth based beliefs, religions, etc. That post was unceremoniously deleted with no notice to me and no reasons given… until the user pointed out in another post that they are the sole mod of the community and warned me that they were “not afraid to ban” me should I “cross the line” in a very *‘I’m the sheriff of this here town’ *tone. Which gave me a chuckle.
That’s my side of the story, it’s all there if you want to draw your own conclusions. It really doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in a ‘someone is wrong on the internet’ spat but I did spot a chink in the fediverse through this incident.
The real point here is that this kind of behaviour is one of things that made Reddit fucking awful and I’d hate to see it flourish here in the fediverse.
I don’t have the solutions just some suggestions that I’d be keen to hear others opinions on:
- No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.
- Mod elections should be annual and no mod should enjoy that status for life.
- There should be a mechanism for inducing a ‘no confidence’ mode election at any time otherwise the communities are likely to splinter into “real_” communities just as they did on Reddit which no community in the fediverse can currently afford.
What say you my brothers and sisters and everything in between? Is there a way to safeguard against cronyism, corruption and other frailties of the human ego?
No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.
Yeah, no.
Don’t turn this into a popularity contest. One that can be bought and cheesed.
Who has time for oversight on that? Why not voter id too.
Is this first past the post or proportional representation?
Term limits, right? Does that include a hand over? How much of their term will be spent getting up to speed?
Where is the incentive to someone starting their own community if it is going to be taken from them when they’ve put in hard work for no money. Should they not be rewarded for their labour?
Will the inherent democratisation of communities alter the content posted on them? Should we place bans in meta-political posts that support only the incumbent mod?
What if they choose not to leave? Insurrection? Send in the troops?
My friend, I say this genuinely, you are trying to police the internet. Don’t. It’s a folly.
You have the power to walk away. You have the power to start your own community.
Do it and run it better.
And back to the democracy thing… Democracy is a wonderful thing in the governance of human civilization… It’s not a fix for every situation you encounter that you don’t like. It often means instead of having one asshole to deal with you’ll get a carousel of different assholes on a regular basis.
Just thought, fuck it. Why no add a second elected chamber where each other community can elect a representative to have oversight on everything the mod does?
Let’s democracy the hell out of this.
I mean, that’s sort of what admins already are, right? Just not democratically elected
All good points. Besides which consensus is that my ideas in the OP are naive at best, which I accept.
One comment I would like to make is that ownership of a community is an oxymoron. Obviously. But I totally get your points and thank you for your thoughtful post.
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Hey, the idea might have been a bit dodgy, but you are made of better stuff.
Credit to you.
asking if they subscribe to other myth based beliefs, religions, etc
What you actually said:
Out of interest are you religious or subject to some other form of mythical belief system? I ask because clearly you lack motivation for the truth, preferring hearsay and urban legend that I must assume supports a wider world view. by @Hackerman_uwu
My thought: this kind of behaviour is one of things that made Reddit fucking awful and I’d hate to see it flourish here in the fediverse.
Yeah wtf, the OP is just an asshole Thanks for catching that, and kudos for the “power drunk mod” for not bending
I dunno man, does this have anything to do other than with your own fragile ego?
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Exactly. Shitty mods have been a thing since newsgroups, AOL chatrooms and good old internet forums. Probably BBSes too.
If you consider the basic concept, they’ve been a thing since we started grouping together as communities. There have always been people who power trip. The internet just made them less effectual.
Fair.
Mod elections should be annual and no mod should enjoy that status for life.
We are talking about an unpaid position. For me, the best thing about the downfall of reddit is it made blindingly clear that the content is ephemeral, shitposting is not all that important and that online forums are communities in name only.
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Does it count as “leaving Reddit” if the Lemmy equiv only has two posts in the last month, and one of them is about “Vulcan Sex Workers”?
So, it’s basically 4chans all the way down.
Certainly if they can be owned then communities are not communities but rather commodities. So yes, in name only, which is sad.
You are aware that the ModLog is visible and we can see you’re a liar. Right?
Please link to evidence of lying I have been absolutely transparent.
Mod logs can and are purged. So I see you left that out
I left it out because it doesn’t happen. Your blatant alt that’s evading a ban can fuck off now
I would say to this that you are very much welcome to create an instance with these principles. It’s the decision of the instance owner how to run their instance, and this includes what rules apply to mod elections or do not apply to mod elections.
you sound like someone who enjoys having arguments, when you have arguments with people sometimes they don’t want to talk to you anymore. It’s the cost of your personality.
Attacking someone’s position as mythical, religious, is combative… and wont be welcome in every community. Even if your right, being combative isn’t going to help convince people your right.
if you want to have constructive debate with people, try to respect their positions, and the experiences that got them into the positions they are in now, even if you disagree with the position. If nothing else, being polite to people will make third parties who read the discussion later more receptive to your ideas.
As far as your meta-moderation ideas go, lemmy is federated, you can always create a new community and moderate it to your liking if you find the current communities inadequate. The ultimate referendum in any society is being able to replace and abandon old corrupt systems.
Yeah, OP was going off on a wild tangent about LSD in a sub about shit talking Teslas…
And the mod explicitly said “this has nothing to do with this sub” and OP kept insulting the mod and asked to be banned.
The mod finally deleted a single comment from OP, and OP is really really upset about it.
I honestly don’t know why the mod didn’t just ban OP, he was literally asking for it
That is my takeaway too. Think I’ll just block OP preemptively because this kind of self important drama is ludicrous.
Moderation is sometimes about finding the smallest touch that keeps the conversation going forward. People have bad days, etc.
And a day or two ban to cool off fixes that, and communicates that the behavior is unacceptable.
Clearly OP didn’t learn any lessons if a day later they’re making this post.
These are not the facts. The facts are still there for all to see. Why lie?
My post of the topic of LSD was a response to the OP not a wild tangent. They brought it up.
This comment seems to be the first reply. I don’t get a “just for argument sake” or a combative vibe from it, nor does it mention mythology or religion. A later comment does call the source for anecdotal (and provably false) information “idiots,” which is unnecessary and likely grounds for mod action or warning.
I don’t really read anything wrong with the mod saying to keep it clean, though the thinly-veiled threat of, “I’m a mod here and I’m not afraid to ban you,” is poorly worded at best.
I completely agree with you about politeness. At the end of the day, I think that, judging methods alone, OP was out of line with his comments about the mods friends, but correct to point out bunk facts.
If I was OP, I’d probably edit my comments to remove the name-calling, but as a Lemmy user, I want these discussions to take place to provide fact-checking for hearsay and debunked science. Politely, whenever possible.
I’ll try to be more polite in future. Moving goalposts, cherry picking and doubling down on proven falsehoods is frustrating though so I’ll admit that I lose my patience at times.
I didn’t read anything except OPs post here, where they self characterize their interaction using mythology and religion.
Thanks for digging into it!
I enjoy the truth. Which you are correct - can be uncomfortable at times.
It’s just the internet. Lemmy has features built in to reduce mod abuse like a public modlog anyone can view without logging in. IMO the reddit format was never good for discussing heated topics.
Fwiw: other than insults and a mod’s implied threat… The conversation looked like it had potential and that both of you were making relevanct, fact-based points.
Issue was that there was a low key combativeness throughout and I’m not sure why that was necessary. I see that a lot online, but I think I see it more here than anywhere else.
I’ve wondered if it’s just easy to feel like a big fish in this medium sized pond and then embarrass ourselves when we meet a fish of approximately equal size.
Having said all the above. I slip into combative too. Almost always have regrets later, but it’s super easy to do.
I appreciate your thoughts but I’ll refrain from commenting further on the silly spat. It’s not important to this topic and in retrospect I should have left it off my OP and just posted the ideas I’d had.
Thank you for you thoughtful post.
Everything up until your actual suggestion is not on-topic for this community, IMO. This feels like a post that was created mainly to vent about the run-in you mentioned.
Your suggestions will run into the same issues as democracy in the real world, and then some. For one, you’d need to ensure that each human person only gets to cast a vote once, and not multiple times through alt accounts.
Additionally, not everyone might be interested in the mod election campaigns that such a system will undoubtedly incur, but for the purpose of upholding democracy they’d have to be.
Apologies. I was concerned it was not on topic. Where should it be posted please? And follow up question: if I’d left the example out completely and just shared my ideas on how mods should be managed without context then I think we could remove the feeing of someone (me) venting?
Meta for the respective instance, or their version of it.
Thanks, appreciated.
The market will decide whether mods are in the wrong or not. If you feel like you have been wronged by power tripping mods then feel free to start your own instance and own community and people will join if the situation is that bad.
Having an election for mods is redundant when federated networks are democratic by their nature and how their users use them. Having an “election” is potentially less democratic because it’s an arbitrary vote rather than letting people vote with where they decide to hold their accounts and the subscriptions.
I like your take.
I don’t feel I’ve been wronged btw. I feet that human nature is as it does. I was looking for a lesson, a way to improve things out of it.
The real point here is that this kind of behaviour is one of things that made Reddit fucking awful and I’d hate to see it flourish here in the fediverse.
Too late, I’m afraid, it already does.
No moderation without representation. IOW: mods should be democratically elected.
Mod elections should be annual and no mod should enjoy that status for life.
There should be a mechanism for inducing a ‘no confidence’ mode election at any time otherwise the communities are likely to splinter into “real_” communities just as they did on Reddit which no community in the fediverse can currently afford.
How do you enforce this? You would need the admin’s cooperation. What if the instance admin is also the mod? If someone starts a community, is it fair to take it away from them, if you don’t agree with their moderation?
There really isn’t any way to prevent all this, it would have to be built into the platform itself and it’s too late to do that now. Furthermore, there are very few communities large enough for people to even want to vote for mods.
Yes, looking over the responses I agree with the consensus that my ideas are naive at best. Thanks for your thoughtful post.
that sounds like high turnaround in your mod department, youre going to have problems finding quality personnel… regularly
No.
