Hey all,
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.
Great read, thank you so much for sharing these, as they help build confidence for users about whether this right instance for them. Personally, beehaw.org has quickly become one of my favorite online spaces to inhabit for a long time (as you can determine by my average of 10 comments per day since joining). I love how directly your philosophy of the distributed governance of the Fediverse aligns with my own, and it feels like there hasn’t been anywhere else I’ve explored in the Fediverse where I’ve seen this kind of deep shared understanding about that the Fediverse is not a pooled cluster of compute resources, but instead a loosely associated grouping of self-governing online gathering places.
Keep being great. I have high confidence in this instance
I definitely echo this! Thinking through site philosophy and moderation policy and communicating both clearly while being honest about where the nuance lies takes work, but it is also the secret sauce that makes the community special.
I think the frequency and detail in these announcement posts is really important for establishing the culture of this space as it grows, too. It’s very transparent, and helps keep everyone reminded of what we should be doing.
I definitely put more thought into my comments here then I have in other spaces, trying to be intentional about Beeing Kind.
For example, I told someone off in another thread much more politely in much more detail than I ever would in other spaces, where pithy witty comments were the only ones that got attention.
the Fediverse is not a pooled cluster of compute resources, but instead a loosely associated grouping of self-governing online gathering places.
What about those of us who desire to be part of a collective consciousness Borg-like hivemind that exists in symbiosis with our computer AI overlords?
A major problem I encountered on another site was pedantry.
Often, people would make a nuisance of themselves by being deliberately obtuse and fixating on minor details, while not explicitly breaking the site’s rules. Though not overtly hateful or bigoted, pedantic comments could be remarkably exhausting and annoying. It could seem like someone was trolling, or trying to bait you into an argument, while skirting the rules to stay out of trouble themselves.
How do you moderate posts like that? Should they be reported?
Being a jerk is definitely not nice behavior. Most pedantic people are prone to escalation - they’ll misinterpret what you say, assume ill intent, and fire back insults in your direction. This kind of stuff is simply not tolerated. On a more nuanced level, if they’re baiting you or even just trying to prove their point and ignore yours, there’s a level of bad faith going on. If they truly wanted to have a conversation or understand your viewpoint, it’s usually very clear.
Of course, this can get tricky when discussing real world issues with real world consequences but even then, think to a measured debate or discussion on a tricky subject and how the people involved treat each other- humanity and respect is easy to recognize. Think of the nicest person you know, and how they’d talk about the same subject. We can’t hold everyone to that standard, but we can try to hold ourselves to that standard and disengage when we find ourselves failing it.
Be sure to report any and everything you see that gives you pause which hasn’t been actioned or where a moderator hasn’t stepped in. The more eyes we can get on a conversation the better we can tune into whether it’s how we’re personally viewing it versus how others do.
Feel free to report anything you might find questionable or in bad faith. We keep our rules simple and very broad to avoid this exact pedantry and give mods more leeway to interpret situations as needed. If something is riding the line and is reported we may or may not remove it, but we WILL read into it and make a judgement call. Most likely someone would step in and try to steer the discussion into a more productive line.
Thank you! Overly specific rules can encourage people who are trying to break the spirit of the rule, but want to stay untouchable because they aren’t violating the letter. A bit of leeway and room for interpretation are exactly what these situations call for. Thanks again!
Yeah this is a problem everywhere especially on that other site. The more specific you make a rule the harder people rule lawyer it; well the rule says this, but I didn’t do that
Open ended rules like ours for be nice can be subjective however. One person might think telling someone how bad they look is being nice so they can change the look. The person being told they thinks the other is an asshole. But in the spirit of the rule, just be nice. Unfortunately it is a balancing act.
If it was just occasional, then yeah, that would be the best way to handle the situation. Unfortunately, it became so widespread that I’d see it in virtually every popular thread. That’s why I asked for advice. Pedantry severely drags down the quality of conversations.
Most of the time, it was pretty obvious that these people didn’t actually care about the trivial point they were arguing over; they were just trolls who were good with language. I don’t want any kind of troll to feel welcome on Beehaw.
That behavior is often called sealioning and is a very well-worn tool in the cryptofacist’s toolbox. See also The Card Says Moops.
Oh that sealioning comic is a must-see
“Add value and don’t be a dick” goes far as mantra.
Question:
“It’s ok to punch a Nazi” or “It’s ok to execute a pedo” content acceptable? and tangentially related Publishing “Mugshots of criminals” fetishism posts, in the moderation philosophy here?
My personal ethos of moderation is to recognize in written policy that we have these biases to have “they/them” which can backdoor exceptions content moderation standards. The backdoor is that if someone is sufficiently and clearly “bad” for the majority of the community then it becomes ok to wish harm on or dehumanize someone. In my opinion shouldn’t entertain these sorts of post because of the harm/damage done if the mob is wrong, or harm to ourselves by indulging in this sort of pornography of moral certainty. Because as long as a broader culture finds certain categories of people are ok to dehumanize, then there’s no (real) objective check upon what is acceptable based on the desire of that majority, even in a community like beehaw.org.
A tangible legal example which I think provides an example of my personal philosophy is how Human dignity is enshrined in the first article of the German Basic Law – which is the German Constitution. Article 1 reads:
Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.
The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.
The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive and the judiciary as directly applicable law.
My two cents here is that if a social media policy is to succeed, it needs something akin to this in it’s “constitution”, because to not have it opens too much moral relativism by bad-faith actors unrestrained and unconcerned by cultural norms to test and push the limits of what they can get away with by dehumanizing their enemies off-platform. ( IE: imagine Pizzagate, and it’s ultimate effect on Beehaw if it’s premise was accepted by the broader community. )
I saw a very popular post on Beehaw yesterday that clearly fit this pattern, and it seems like content designed to test the relative limits of the moderation policy of philosophy of places like Beehaw.>___–
Ideally, we don’t want people dehumanizing others, ever. Realistically, if someone is intolerant to you, we’re not going to tone police you for responding in kind. There’s nuance in there we touched on a little with this post, but it’s hard to itemize every possible human behavior.
If you see anything on Beehaw that makes you think twice about whether it should be up, please report it.
I read this as modspeak for “ideally, those posts wouldn’t be up, but because it’s usually intolerant people we’ll file the calls for violence towards these groups as just minority frustration that shouldn’t be tone policed.” Am I correct in my interpretation?
There’s annoying insults and there’s normalizing violence and dehumanization of the Other. I’m going to be disgusted with myself if I ever dehumanize even the worst person out of frustration. Have to remember that no, they’ve not monsters, they’ve made a series of bad choices that any of us could have chosen to make, we could all be “monsters” if we choose wrong enough. They’re not some odd other species of being that we could never ever fall into being.
Kick them off the platform, figure out how to make acts of bigotry illegal, but I don’t believe in violence unless it’s protecting yourself or others. And what I see looks much less like a preemptive strike to protect yourself/others and more like “whee, acceptable target, it’s punching time baby!”
I’m not sure I completely follow what you’re saying or asking, could you reword if you still have questions for me?
Considering that one of those is about executing someone with an internationally recognized mental illness that is out of their control. For a thought crime.
Probably not.
Objectively, no “sympathizing” happening here, factual discussion can’t happen when one party assumes the other is arguing in bad faith and uses that as a premeditated weapon to push the argument in their direction.
You make a good example as to why such content should be discouraged. Because most people will be ignorant of the real-world details, and instead follow the crowd on social media opinions and misinformation. Thus, leading to nonsensical statement such as that, where the thing they think they are talking about is entirely different than the actual thing they are talking about.
It’s this friendly environment that keeps me on this server. Keep up the good work.
