I’ve seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone’s pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they’re wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they’re transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It’s because Blahaj doesn’t have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada’s psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada’s interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn’t write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn’t be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn’t understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn’t misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
On another note: Since op mentioned about the understanding of the rules. Let’s assume you didn’t know anything at all about what any of this means. The guidelines and all. You can still kinda see what the guidelines are hinting at for expected users behavior.
You can easily Google (or an alternative) for specific terms and phrases in the guidelines that are before you on your screen for more context.
Most users in the comments of this post seem to understand these guidelines, or not have an issue with them as they currently are presented. Yet, if you are personally struggling to grasp the meaning of the guidelines, use your internet, research, learn, grow. That is how you can learn the way of the guidelines. If you do have any further questions regarding the clarity of the guidelines i’l entertain them, but make sure you respect the guidelines of the instance. I’m not mod or anything, but here to help someone who’s struggling and is asking for support.
I mean, i’m friggin’ asd with terminal foot in mouth disease and haven’t even run into a potential warning. The “rules” are basically don’t be a dickhole.