So, since we’re starting to get some actual traction, even being posted about on the hard R. I figured we should probably have a little post explaining the instance and it’s goals.

What Burggit aims to be

Burggit aims to be a platform for Free Thought and Expression. Our goal is to have a place where people can freely and respectfully express their ideas/opinions without fear of being censored because they decided to use the wrong terms/wordings.

We will also not immediately suspend a user for their first infraction, though we will definitely warn them and won’t be afraid to take action of it continues.

What Burggit is not

We are not another Kiwifarms, Gab or Voat!

While we’re fine with people posting offensive speech and imagery, we won’t allow them to use their right to “Free Speech” as a weapon against the overall health of the platform. Threatening, Berating, Dogpiling, Doxxing and otherwise being complete and total assholes to other users will not be tolerated.

Having a different, unpopular opinion on a sensitive topic is fine, but there’s absolutely no reason why anyone would not be able to express those opinions respectfully. And if you can’t express those opinions without being shitty to other users directly, that’s not something we’re going to be putting up with.

If we believe that a user of ours is causing problems for our instance or other instances, we will not hesitate to deal with them.

But what does it mean to be shitty?

For clarification I’ll add some examples of behavior which would be deemed not okay.

Please note, this is not an exhaustive list.

  • Calling out death to a group or individual
  • Targeting another individual/user regardless of reason (Discussing something in a way which could be percieved as rude doesn’t count, some people argue passionately and that’s okay.)
  • Going out of your way to cause trouble with other friendly instances
  • Attacking someone’s character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself. Also known as Ad hominem’s
  • Nazrin@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    1 year ago

    Burggit is not what you think we are! We are a Touhou community pretending to be a loli community.

  • doritospineapple@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    We are not another Kiwifarms, Gab or Voat!

    Yes, please, remember this!

    Every platform accepting loli also had an ongoing case of ‘freeze peach’ syndrome, and eventually got drowned by far right lunatics.

    • Burger@burggit.moeM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s definitely not going to happen here. I find those types to be really insufferable. Culture war nonsense from either side is annoying as it is, for that matter.

    • Rouxibeau@burggit.moe
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      As someone who’s avoided platform surfing until now, what’s the deal with those 3. Trumpets? Nazis? MAPs?

      • MrBubbles96@burggit.moe
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Near as I can dig up, it’s a bastardization of the words “free speech”. From what I can tell–and I could be very wrong–essentially, it mocks those that point out someone (or themselves) have the right to free speech–more specifically, it’s used to mock people that use it as a sheild when asked to stop saying racist, sexiest, homophobic…you know what, let’s shorten it to basically being a bag of dicks, at other people or groups (of course, it’s also used to mock those who have controversial options but aren’t being assholes about it, I’m sure…).

        Again, could be wrong here and if I am and somebody wants to correct me, go for it!

        • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          You seemed to have explained it pretty well, at least to my understanding of how the term is used. 👍

    • Mircea Kitsune@burggit.moe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Which is just jaw dropping considering far-right lunatics and their patriarchy are most obsessed with seeing “threats to children” in every stupid thing, yelling that porn is satanic and fiction featuring underage character should see artists executed. Of course the leftist “liberals” have taken to copying hardcore conservatives in a lot of things, without even seeing or admitting the resemblance to their long lost brothers with which they’re allegedly at total ideological war. What a time to be alive.

  • Mircea Kitsune@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    You are exactly what every platform on the internet should be… and as a newly registered user, I’m very glad you’re here! Platforms fall in one of two extremes: Either insanely authoritarian and banning you for the slightest offense or difference of opinion, or total anarchy as everyone insults everyone else at every corner… while somehow still being authoritarian in banning you over content even in the later case. It’s rare to find one that moderates enough to guarantee common sense behavior, but not so much as to become the gatekeepers of people’s thoughts and feeling turning some into privileged model citizens and others into enemies that must be wiped out of existence.

    I suggest you organize and prepare: The morality brigade and its sex police are already screaming at this server demanding it be blocked by the rest of the fediverse, since of course a minimal sign of modernism and normalcy like not banning fictional art for violating Western Sharia Law is too much for the “normal” internet user. Saw it on Reddit and gave it some correction… ordinary fools like that won’t be an issue, the problem is when they also take over governments change laws and attempt to arrest server admins over their insanity. Running multiple servers / mirrors across different countries is a good idea in cases like this, granted the team can afford it.

    Not sure if I’ll be primarily using this instance or Reddthat: The later seems more official and also has common sense rules, then again the official looking ones tend to be the most problematic. Definitely subscribed to a few communities on here, fortunately the two seem to federate fine… albeit I can only see some communities from here over there, any idea why? I’ve been primarily using Baraag as my Mastodon… I take it the two should also be federating without issue.

    • Burger@burggit.moeM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for the kind words, we really appreciate that. I can assure you that there’s no danger to us as far as hosting goes. We pay for the server with Monero and use an off-shore hosting company that tells those slimy authoritarians to fuck off. We’re on good terms with the company owner and they even have an account here.

      For federation, Reddthat might be blocking specific communities at an instance level. And federation between Mastodon/Pleroma -> Lemmy is still kinda iffy as far as being in a workable state. We’re already defederated by a lot of instances, but it seems to have minimal impact to our user participation here.

  • Grim@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Couple thoughts:

    • It might be smart for the admins to make a community specifically to ask the admins questions, or a thread somewhere. I think people might have questions or suggestions.
    • Could there please be a site-wide rule about communities not using NSFW/NSFL images for their community icons? Ngl, it’s kind of gross to be scrolling through the community list and see a close-up of a butthole. It defeats the purpose of marking things NSFW and having pics blurred to be considerate to other users.
  • livixPmfOQRj@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Can we have some clarification on what’s allowed in regards to “hate speech”?

    On one hand:

    “Burggit aims to be a platform for Free Thought and Expression. Our goal is to have a place where people can freely and respectfully express their ideas/opinions without fear of being censored because they decided to use the wrong terms/wordings.”

    “While we’re fine with people posting offensive speech and imagery, we won’t allow them to use their right to “Free Speech” as a weapon against the overall health of the platform. Threatening, Berating, Dogpiling, Doxxing and otherwise being complete and total assholes to other users will not be tolerated.”

    And in the rules:

    “Minimal Restrictions on Content/Speech.”

    “Do not out right harass other users. Opposing opinions and potentially offensive speech is fine, but don’t go out of your way to endlessly berate someone. This includes users of other instances.”

    But on the other hand:

    “Anything is allowed here as long as it’s not anything illegal in The Netherlands”

    “No illegal content under Netherlands law”

    Looking it up, the hate speech laws are:

    "The Dutch penal code prohibits both insulting a group (article 137c) and inciting hatred, discrimination or violence (article 137d). The definition of the offences as outlined in the penal code is as follows:

    Article 137c: “He who publicly, orally, in writing or graphically, intentionally expresses himself insultingly regarding a group of people because of their race, their religion or their life philosophy, their heterosexual or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental disability, shall be punished by imprisonment of no more than a year or a monetary penalty of the third category.”

    Article 137d: “He who publicly, orally, in writing or graphically, incites hatred against, discrimination of or violent action against person or belongings of people because of their race, their religion or their life philosophy, their gender, their heterosexual or homosexual orientation or their physical, psychological or mental disability, shall be punished by imprisonment of no more than a year or a monetary penalty of the third category.”"

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#Netherlands

    Sorry I don’t mean to rock the boat by getting all technical. My personal belief is that no speech should be restricted or regulated Except calls to harm someone physically, and/or calls to prevent someone from doing what they need to survive. (I.e. Telling a crowd to surround someone’s home, preventing them from working and buying food, etc.)

    What’s your consensus for terms like t–p, n----r, f----t etc?

    I don’t use these terms (except t–p because come on.) But I’m wondering what’s allowed here.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      The “Anything is allowed here as long as it’s not anything illegal in The Netherlands” is honestly just to cover us for things such as IRL bestiality porn and other content without explicitly having a like 10-page ruleset of what is and isn’t allowed. We do not have to comply with the speech restrictions of The Netherlands, so “Hate Speech” is not enforced here. Individual communities might make their own rules about it and can enforce them as they wish, but it’s not enforced site-wide.

      Words such as “Trap, Nigger, Faggot” etc… would all be fine. The primary thing we do not tolerate is specifically harassing groups/individuals. For example, you could say “what a faggot” in response to a post and in a general context. But actively throwing slurs at another user with the malicious intent to bully, harass, dogpile or otherwise be an asshole. That might cause some problems. Especially if you continued to do it after the user expressed discomfort, or tapped out of the conversation.

      It’s fine to express a controversial or widely disliked opinion or say controversial things. However, all opinions should be able to be expressed respectfully, if you can’t express an opinion without being a complete asshole and actively causing problems for other users, that’s where we draw the line. And to be even more clear, when I say “actively causing problems for other users”, I don’t mean saying a word which is seen as offensive and someone acting like you literally just shot their dog. I mean actively going out of your way to target and berate people.

      For users who see this as a problem, Lemmy has a block feature and if you object to the speech of certain users, we encourage you to block them on your end.

      In the end, this is a very complex issue, so I can’t cover every situation that might come up, and I’d also like to leave some leeway for interpretation.

      This ofcourse all goes out the window when interacting with communities on other instances. When interacting with communities of other instances we ask you follow the rules of those instances and communities, we’d rather avoid making any more enemies than we have to.

      I hope this could answer most of your questions, though. In the end, just try to stay respectful and kind to other users.

  • Elyusi, Kei@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Neat place. I’m a fan of basically just sticking with the golden rule for general moderation policy. It does leave a lot of discretion to moderators which inevitably means someone is eventually going to get uneven treatment since we’re all just human. But even in places with nicely codified sets of rules, I’ve seen some high profile cases where the moderatorship (or rather, some “ardent” subset of the team) bends over backwards to justify their position irrespective of the rules. Enough to make me question what the point is, for most use cases anyway.

    Having said that, I personally rarely run up against moderation since I mostly just lurk. I’ll try to do slightly less of that latter bit here. 👋

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes, we are only human; however, we will try to the best of our ability to stay objective whenever any actual issues end up arising. I think the fact that we don’t punish based on the first infraction definitely helps with overall communication and transparency.

      Welcome to Burggit! We’re happy to have you here and would definitely appreciate your contributions, especially at this early stage. Regardless, we hope you enjoy your stay!

      • Elyusi, Kei@burggit.moe
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think the fact that we don’t punish based on the first infraction definitely helps with overall communication and transparency.

        Much agreed. I’ve been on the other side of the moderator-moderatee divide before, and my main “contribution” was pushing for a more lenient infraction ladder during a rules rewrite. In retrospect though, I’m not sure I’m happy about having done what I feel is the right thing compared to having effectively pushed extra work on some very good acquaintances. At the end of the day, repeat offenders tend to climb the ladder all the way up to a ban regardless of its length, even if I’d like to think otherwise.

        Still, I hope things work out well here; I definitely agree with the approach, at the very least in principle.

    • Burger@burggit.moeM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I made an attempt with the LemmySauceNao bot but I just couldn’t get it to login to save my life. It’s written in C# so it probably doesn’t like Linux I’m guessing. It builds in dotnet core. It gives me a “Not Found” error when trying to access the /api/v3/login endpoint. On the Server’s end it treats it as if the user doesn’t exist in the logs so some text input is getting dropped somewhere.

      I feel like if I got it working it’d be a pain to keep it working with newer Lemmy versions, so I dropped it. If someone else wants to maintain a solution, they’re welcome to it. But preferably it’d be something that doesn’t use crappy Microsoft shit.

      • Burger@burggit.moeM
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’ll add that I’m willing to host it, but as long as the burden for maintaining it doesn’t fall on me. If a Lemmy update breaks it, I don’t want to have to be the one to debug it. I just want to defer to the maintainer and have them debug it on their end and release a fix for which I will pull. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is running this site.

  • why@burggit.moe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Unless this place gets a lot more active a look at the top local posts of all time will mean this place will become exactly what people will think it is.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I honestly love what the community is sofar and think it’s a very comfy atmosphere, personally.

        • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’d literally never consider banning you for something like this, you have the right to feel uncomfortable and say you feel uncomfortable. I’m not going to ban you just because you disagree with me.

          • Burger@burggit.moeM
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            This isn’t Reddit. We don’t ban people just because we disagree with them. If you want that, then just go to Beehaw.

    • Disa@burggit.moeOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Welcome, we hope you enjoy your stay! We’re still growing, so even we don’t quite know how this will pan out. But we aim for this to be a fairly open community for the open discussion/sharing of ideas. All ideas.