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
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?
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.
It’s great to hear from the mod team. I understand Beehaw as being a place that values respect, trust and discussion in good faith. I’d sum it up as “good vibes”. I made note of a comment somewhere on here that I gauged as primarily intending to rile up OP (effectively “what is the point of this post”). Not a horrendous comment by any means, but I’d classify it as being “not nice”.
Using Beehaw instead of other instances comes at the cost of missing out on places like lemmy.world, although they can certainly be used in parallel. In my view, the gain of being here is respectful conversation. I accept that some emotional volatility is to be expected when politics or the like are being discussed. Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
Are users ever given a gentle nudge to “be(e) a little bit nicer next time”?
I think the next post I want to do is specifically on the subject of moderation actions, escalation (nudge > direct request > content removal > community ban > instance ban) and how we make the decision for both the appropriate response for the infraction as well as what users can and should do when interacting with moderators asking them to change behavior.
The short and simple answer is vibes. If we step in and ask you to be nice and you swing back at us, we’re unlikely to be nice in response. If you aren’t the one escalating and you’re responding in kind or trying to deescalate then you have nothing to worry about. Being on our instance as opposed to other instances also means we’re gonna assume more good faith, since you’ve decided to abide by our rules and chose this place for a reason.
I just joined, so I can’t really speak too much about all of this from a point of experience on beehaw itself. It does seem like a lot of though has been put in this document which I do very much appreciate. In fact, it is one of the things that drove me to sign up for beehaw out of many other instances.
I do have plenty of experience moderating on “that other platform people are plenty mad at these days”. And I would like to share a few things for your consideration, if that is alright? To be clear, nothing in my comment below is intended as judgment on your current approach and philosophy. These are mostly (tangibly) related things I wrote down or bookmarked over the years that might be useful or relevant for your consideration.
As far as hate speech goes, there are indeed roughly the two approaches you outlined. Although I do think it often falls in between. I’d like to caution against the most egregious types of hate speech. I very much don’t think you’d leave those up, but I do like to share this story from a bartender [nsfw warning due to Spanish civil war poster with dead child] about this sort of thing.
On Community-Based Moderation I do want to caution for something called the “the fluff principle”
“The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it.” Source: Article by Paul Graham
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
- An article - takes a few minutes to judge.
- An image - takes a few seconds to judge.
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them so they gather votes faster.
This unfortunately also applies to various types of unsavory/bigoted speech. In fact, I believe I remember reading that beehaw did de-federate from some other instances due to problems coming from them. So it seems you are aware of the principle, if only due to experience.
tl;dr Some waffling about moderation and me generally appreciating that thought is being put into it on this platform :)
Trigger warning - please be aware of this before following the link to the first article
I read the first article about the bartender and it shows, with no warning, a historical poster that seemingly has a photo of a dead child on it. I cannot unsee that. I would never seek that sort of thing out.
I thought I was just going to read a story about a bartender. Now I feel extremely distressed on a day when my anxiety was already through the roof and I need to start work.
Please, please put content warnings up for that sort of horrifying imagery.
Oh sorry :( It had been a while since I checked out the page and forgot the poster is part of the entire thing.
Not meaning disrespect, but how on earth could you sit through history lessons in school? Plenty of themes involved imagary of that kind. Like the running and screaming kid just hit by napalm or agent orange.
We never saw anything like that in school (I’m in the UK), or were shown dead bodies/people dying/anything like that. The closest we came was travelling to places like the Somme and a lot about the world war.
TW, unpleasant content
spoiler
I remember watching a video at a concentration camp that showed people reduced to near-skeletons because of the horrors they were subjected to, starvation and so forth. I even educated myself in my own time on the horrors of nuclear war as a teen, the horrific injuries and deaths experienced by the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc etc, but it still had a huge negative impact on my ability to function (see below) even though I was looking voluntarily.
And honestly? I **didn’t ** cope well. I have autism, ADHD and OCD (the former two I’ve only been diagnosed with in my 30s), which makes it very hard to filter out, compartmentalise or be ‘thick skinned’ about anything, despite working most of my life on it. I had a really, really hard time. It made my OCD go through the roof, I lived in constant fear and anxiety, and suffered with intrusive thoughts and images of the things I’d seen.
Unfortunately, not everyone is able to process that kind of imagery or story without it having a massive detrimental impact on their life.
In this case, I thought I was going to read a story about a bartender dealing with a patron he didn’t want in the bar, on an instance that I thought was safe from shocking content like that. Having a picture like that slapped in my face was, as I said, incredibly upsetting, and I had to spend time processing and dealing with the emotions it brought up (see disabilities above).
All I’m asking for it a content warning is all, so people can either choose not to look, or at least mentally prepare themselves. :) I hope that helps answer your question a bit, and I’m sorry if it’s rambly!
Edited to add: I didn’t mention it in my original reply because I didn’t want to be speaking on behalf of others, but there are probably a lot of people out there for whom stumbling across that sort of image would be way more traumatic for a variety of reasons. So my concern wasn’t just for me, if that makes sense?
I’m really excited and happy to be a mod here. It feels supportive, friendly, and useful. I enjoy the transparency and the community aspect that all Beeples share. I am looking forward to the next steps in our adventures!
“Add value and don’t be a dick” goes far as mantra.
