Hello everyone! If you have not yet seen it, @ernest has handed over moderation to @Drusas @Entropywins @ Frog-Brawler (the tag system consistently messes up the link to FB’s username lol) and myself here in !politics.
First order of business is for you all to weigh in on the community guidelines that you would like to see here. As the mod team, we will weigh all suggestions and then add them to the side bar as magazine/community rules. I’m going to give about 48 hours for users to see this thread and add a comment or discuss.
Please know that the goal is not to create an echo chamber here in !politics, but we want to ensure that there is not an encroachment of rage bait and toxicity. It brings down the quality of the magazine and it discourages community engagement.
For the time being, the mod tools are pretty sparse, so I want to manage expectations about the scope of moderation we’re able to do right now. For now, our touch will be light. Expect increased functionality as time progresses, though. We have 3 weeks of reports on file, so please know we see them. Give us some time to establish how to handle those before you start to see any movement.
Maybe my threshold for shit is higher than normal, but my hope is that comments won’t be removed but will be allowed to be downvoted into oblivion. At least when it comes to what could be considered a “political opinion.” Of course there is a subjective line somewhere where a statement crosses from “political” to just “hate.” But if a post is political, my hope would be that it gets to stand and be upvoted or downvoted, no matter how shit it might be.
A bad hot take is different than trolling activity. What I’ve seen the most of is an ineffective version of the Motte and Bailey fallacy. What I’ve seen is summarized as:
Troll: Very strong rage bait content/comment
Community user: Reasonably pissed response that this position is horseshit
Troll: Calls for civility even though they originally were like, proposing to genocide trans people, which is inhumane
This isn’t a situation to foster. Let this kind of scum in and then they bring friends. Like roaches.
Sure. There is a subjective line where they cross from “political position that is almost certainly bad and wrong” to “bait”. Feel free to remove the bait, leave the bad takes.
What probably matters most is that the rules you establish needs to clearly state that there is a subjective line and that the user’s have to accept that fact. There is no clear rule you can write and be objective.
Yeah, I don’t think the goal can ever be pure, emotionless neutrality from a mod team.
The line may be subjective, but I want it to be transparent. Some rules may be arbitrary, but applied consistently and are sourced from the community who wants to live with them.
I pretty strongly disagree with that one for this reason.
When it comes to fascists, white supremacists, and their ilk, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.
I’m seeing pretty broad support for not even tolerating even an inch from this camp, so I’m sure this will come out in the moderation rules.