There has been a lot of discussion about what we should or should not allow in our community. This is not a thread to tell you about a decision, this is a thread to ask your opinion about what is acceptable, and collate this in one place.
We want this to be a friendly and welcoming community to all who are friendly and welcoming. This means a necessary amount of tolerance for those with other points of view. It also means that by definition we can’t have people here that are intolerant of others.
Anyone who has been here for a while knows I am loathe to create a list of what is and isn’t allowed, because I feel that most of it is obvious, and the stuff that isn’t obvious is not simple enough to create a list. But I’ll list some things that I feel aren’t necessary to list, because others think it is necessary. This is not a complete list.
In our friendly community, we obviously don’t allow:
- Things that are illegal for us to host
- Doxing
- Hate speech or other attacks on others
- Spamming
- Trolling
Now the question is: what’s ok in our community, and how should we respond? I’m gonna number them for ease of following.
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Is it ok to attack public figures? e.g. is it ok to say “Christopher Luxon is an idiot”? “David Seymour is a fascist prick”? “Gareth Morgan should fuck off and die”?
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Does it count as doxing if the information is public? How public?
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Are derogatory terms or hateful comments for people known for hate ok? Or do these attitudes contribute to an unfriendly atmosphere? i.e. is it ok to say “Kyle chapman is a fucking nazi”?
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If what appeared as a genuine discussion turned out to be sealioning or similar, what kind of mod action should happen? Ban the user, leave the posts? Temporary or permanent ban? Ban the user and remove the posts?
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Similar to 4, are we ok that anything in the obviously list above is removed on sight? Should a trolling post be locked, or completely removed?
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Is there anything not mentioned yet that you feel should not be allowed, should be encouraged, or that would help turn this community into the kind of place you want to visit?
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And finally, there have been a lot of voices on this point. Although I’ve made it clear this isn’t what I want, I feel it’s not for me to force on people: Do you think we need an explicit list of rules that state the above?
Over the last week I have heard a lot of concern over the approach that I have been taking to date: We’re all adults here (mostly), and we are a small enough group that we can talk though disagreements as long as people approach them in good faith. In my view this is working, the only negative attitudes I have seen are from people not liking this approach.
However, I have heard from many people with more experience at building communities, and they have raised a lot of concern about this approach. Therefore I am willing to hear what the community is looking for in a Lemmy instance, and willing to change the approach if that’s what people want.
I’m listening, so give me your feedback.
I think David P has said most of what I would have already said.
I think if you want a truly inclusive community, you need to ban not only racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia (etc.) but advocacy for those things. i.e. what is banned goes beyond hate speech directed at marginalised groups, and includes debate over whether people spouting that kind of hate speech “have some ideas that could be considered” (or whatever).
To put it another way, there shouldn’t be any debate over whether certain groups (e.g. transgender people) have a right to exist, or whether certain groups (e.g. particular ethnicities) should be treated as human beings. People posting online know they can’t get away with saying hateful stuff directly, so instead they call for “debate” under the heading of “free speech”.
Without banning that kind of thing, people from those marginalised groups may not feel welcome here. Even if there is some kind of debate about it, and most people here are telling them they’re wrong, even just the fact that it’s being debated makes it unlikely people from those groups would want to hang around.
I know policing this kind of thing gets very murky at times as to what should/shouldn’t be allowed, and there is a balance with genuine free speech, but I think it is worth thinking about.
These are good points. Having a good mod(s) is going to be a big part of it, because even the most straightforward rules are still open to interpretation.
For example, you will get dipshits arguing that inclusive bathroom policies are a threat to women and/or children. They believe (or say they believe) that they’re advocating for the protection of marginalised and at-risk groups. It comes down to the mod to interpret that as bigotry.
I think it also helps to understand that the people asking for “free speech” and “debate” are sometimes folk that have been raised or constantly exposed to certain beliefs that inform their current beliefs and when they ask for “debate” what they’re subconsciously asking for is to understand a difference in belief systems.
I am not saying certain beliefs are valid, just that beliefs are beliefs and we are all products of our upbringing and society that we live in. Some people believe awful things, not because they’re awful people, but it’s just that they’ve never encountered a different way of thinking or looking at things.
Anyway, my point is that it’s not always helpful to instantly dismiss people as aholes just because they debate something. Sometimes that’s people just trying to make sense of things they don’t currently understand. I like to take it as an opportunity to help people see a different perspective to what they’ve grown up with.
The alternative is to instaban people where they’ll go find a likeminded echochamber and they never have opportunity to have their beliefs challenged, never have opportunity to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and learn a different way to think. That’s how people become radicalised and dangerous.
(Not talking about people debating in bad faith and sealioning of course.)
Yeah, I think there’s a difference between deciding what is/isn’t allowed, and what should be done when someone posts something that’s not allowed. The less black & white something is, the more lenience someone should probably get.
If someone says “maybe we should debate whether the Nazis were right to create concentration camps”, that’s pretty black and white to me, and there’s no point even trying to reason with them.
If someone says “maybe we should talk about some of the issues raised by the parliamentary protesters”, that could even be OK, depending on context.