This is a Federated Lemmy instance that focuses on West Virginia and other topics of interest. Members are allowed and encouraged to create and grow communities.

Montani Semper Liberi

Please be good to each other.

Getting Started

Explore the communities already loaded into this instance. If you don’t see what you like, try searching for a community in the Lemmy Community Browser. Once you find something that interests you, copy/paste the community link into the Search page, wait for it to pull in, and then subscribe.

Instance Rules

Unless otherwise stated, these rules apply to both local accounts and those interacting from federated instances.

#0 Don't Be a Buzzkill

We run reports and can detect mass downvoters, both local and federated, and we do ban them. If everything here displeases you, then maybe go be miserable somewhere else.

People enjoy different things, and this instance is subscribed to a variety of topics. If you don’t like something, move on, block the user/community, or subscribe to things you DO like - don’t browse “all” just to jump in the comments to shit all over others.

#1 Be Civil

You should absolutely not consider this community a “bastion of free speech” in any way, shape or form. Please read our Free Speech Policy for further details.

Be here because you want to be here. This is not a refuge for people who have been banned from other social sites. If you’re here because you’ve been banned elsewhere, you’ll definitely get banned here too - probably faster.

There is a zero tolerance policy in place for hate speech, bigotry, racism, sexism, homo/trans-phobia, and any other uncivil behavior.

Usernames/display names containing racist or any other inappropriate slurs will not be approved, and any interacting from remote instances will be banned without warning.

Definitions of Free Speech:

Free speech: Done in good faith. “I can speak my mind without fear of being arrested”
“Freeze peach”: Done in bad faith. “I can say the worst things imaginable without consequences because ‘free speech, y’all’”

We try our best to respect the right to free expression (within the bounds of civility), but “freeze peach” will not be tolerated.

#2 Bot Policy

After running Lemmy for a few months and observing the various bots that have sprung up and how chatty and annoying they are, the DubVee bot policy has been updated. In short, no bots are allowed unless explicitly approved in advance by a site administrator.

Approved bots must flag themselves as a bot and must have their operator’s contact info in their bio. Any/all unauthorized bots or bots that do not identify themselves and their operator will receive a permanent ban; no exceptions. Bots interacting from remote instances will be banned as well if they are annoying.

If you encounter an annoying bot, please report it for evaluation.

#3 ChatGPT and AI-Generated Content

I do not care what you asked ChatGPT or asked an “AI” to generate for you, and I will not waste resources on my systems hosting it. AI generated drivel will be removed with prejudice and repeat offenders banned.

#4 NSFW and Controversial Content

In short: Try to keep posts and comments rated R at most, preferably PG-13 or lower.

I don’t give a fuck about language; just don’t be an asshole. It’s also encouraged to be creative with your profanity if you choose to swear. If in doubt, look to the Scots for inspiration.

Pornography is strictly prohibited. Any content posted that is deemed pornographic will be removed and the account banned.

#5 No Advertising/Self-Promotion

Accounts are prohibited from advertising products or services. There’s a big difference between posting about a cool project you’ve been working on/found and shilling for a product/company that will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.

#6 Mis-/Disinformation Policy

Posts should not deliberately contain or spread disinformation / misinformation. Posts / comments determined to fit that criteria will be removed. This includes any and all posts from sources MBFC deems low credibility regardless of community, blogs presented as news, or any other non-news source presented as a news article.

2024/01/31 Update: All links to news articles must be to the original source. Link shorteners, archive links, etc are prohibited. If you wish to provide such a link, it must be added as an addendum to the post in the body. The post’s URL must be to the original source. This will be enforced for both posts to local communities as well as posts from federated ones.

2024/07/06 Update: Remote news communities that do not enforce submission credibility minimums, or those which allow non-credible sources, will be removed upon discovery. Similarly, news/politics communities that encourage archive links instead of canonical URLs will also be removed/hidden.

There will be absolutely no exceptions. to this rule.

#7 Agendas, Astroturfing, and Brigading

We do not allow users to push agendas outside of dedicated communities; that’s not what we’re here for. This is a little difficult to codify, but basically if you want to push a stance on something, keep it to a community dedicated to that topic. Local users are free to create and grow a community for this purpose as long as it adheres to the DubVee instance rules.

For example, if you don’t like cars, keep your anti-car sentiment to appropriate communities such as /c/fuckcars rather than dredging up every anti-car post you can find and spreading those across news and other communities. Similarly, don’t jump into the comments of unrelated communities to push your anti-car stance.

This rule sounds more draconian than it is, but the purpose of it is to discourage brigading and keep communities civil.

Accounts should not engage in astroturfing or sock-puppeting.

#8 Absolutely No Extremism

I don’t care which end of the spectrum you’re on. Any post/comment calling for or glorifying violence, especially political violence, will be removed. Offenders will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but bans will be the norm and swift for violating this rule.

Alternate Frontends

The default UI for DubVee is called Tesseract but we offer the following alternative frontends if it’s not your cup of tea:

https://lemmy.dubvee.org: The official Lemmy-UI which I’ve grown to hate.
https://old.dubvee.org: An old-Reddit style UI
https://dev.dubvee.org: Development branch of Tesseract. May be wonky/unstable at times.