This account is being kept for the posterity, but it won’t see further activity past February.

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  • 13 Posts
  • 664 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: April 9th, 2021

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  • Sorry for the wall of text.

    I honestly do not think that your judgment was accurate in this situation, and I think that you jumped the gun; the poster sounds genuinely clueless. However I’m fully aware that I don’t have full access to all the info necessary to conclude shite here.

    Large bans don’t decrease your workload, they increase it.

    Trolls and bad faith agents might wait for a short ban to expire, but they won’t wait for a large ban - they’ll evade it with an alt account and call it a day, and now you’re playing whack-a-mole with them. With a permaban at least you’re telling them to fuck off, even if they won’t listen.

    For more sensible users, the large ban is unfair, and conveys “we still want you here… but we’re too lazy to deal with you thing right now, so shoo”. Other users are not blind, they will notice that the mods overreact to rule infractions and they will avoid reporting things, except for petty reasons. Now you’re bound to fine-comb threads manually to enforce the rules because nobody is reporting shite.

    Either way, you’re doing more work than you would otherwise.

    A better approach here would be to contain content prone to trigger rule-breaking comments. Megathreads work like a charm for that; they allow you to fine-comb a single thread instead of the whole community. It also helps to bring up the content diversity of the community.

    Another thing. I do agree with you that automatically tying that chant to Antisemitism is itself Antisemitic; however you’re taking for granted that all users are on the same page when it comes to that, and both of us know that the media is spamming them with misinformation that conflates Israel with Jewish people. In those situations it’s better to issue an official statement, explaining what will be considered Antisemitism for the sake of rule enforcement. (It helps to inform other users too.)


  • Let’s roll with your interpretation that the slogan is solely Antizionist. That would make the poster misinformed and incorrect; in this situation, the right thing to do is to talk with the poster, informing them, while checking their profile for potential Antisemitic activity. This also works great when the user is not rational (i.e. a bad faith agent) because it gives you better grounds for a ban.

    Another issue that I see is ban length. A short ban is great as a warning, or to tell the user to cool their head; while permaban is great when you want to convey “we the mod team do not you here, fuck off”. A two months ban is the worst of both worlds.


  • Based on the original post of this thread, this comment, the modlog, and an “innocent until proved guilty” approach, I have no reason to distrust the OP.

    As such, what I’m going to say might be wrong, and I’m ready to apologise if it is; but I do not think that it is wrong.

    What the fuck, !worldnews@lemmy.ml mod team? If OP is being accurate, at least one of you is bloody irrational, to the point that the mod is unable to understand the difference between “here’s why this discourse is bad” and support to said bad discourse.

    I get that it’s hard to recruit new mods in Lemmy, but remember - a bad mod is worse than no mod. In other words, IMO you guys should seriously consider to review each others’ mod actions and perhaps expurging a mod or two.

    OP: your mileage will vary when it comes to Lemmy moderation. Some communities are moderated by sensible people; some, well… you know. Sadly there’s not much that you can do against this, except perhaps avoiding those comms. (inb4 Reddit is not an option in this regard; here, shitty mods are like stepping on shit, but there it’s like drowning in it.)

    I also think that mod actions need more transparency. I’m thankful to the developers for the modlog, but I do not think that it is enough. IMO the content being removed should be still visible, when not illegal, with a big (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST/COMMENT) in it.

    Also, the current modlog should at least clarify which team was responsible for a mod action - the comm mods, the comm’s instance admins, or the user’s instance admins. And there should be a way for mods to report users upstream to the instance’s admins.


  • That doesn’t surprise me.

    Linux users are biased towards higher technical expertise, and they have a different mindset - most of the software that we use is the result of collaborative projects, and we’re often encouraged to help the devs out. And while the collaborative situation might not be true for game development, the mindset leaks out.




  • The groups listed as example (notice the “etc.”) are up to the admins, I’m suggesting mostly how to word it. It’s easy to include/exclude one if they so desire.

    That said, I do think that “religious affiliation or lack of” should be included. It might boil down to opinions + a bunch of epistemic statements, but it’s consistently a source of persecution.

    If your wording is adopted, it’d be nice to see the difference between attacking who someone is and an opinion someone holds made clear.

    Personally I believe that this is usually easy - you look at the target of the claim. For example:

    • “[religion] is full of bullshit” - probably attacking the opinions or epistemic claims, thus probably fine
    • “[religion] is full of arseholes” - unless contextualised otherwise, probably attacking the individuals there, thus probably not fine

    This is also up to the admins here though, not me.

    Also needs to reference (dis)ability IMO.

    I understand where you’re coming from with this, but note that complains about ableism, in social media, are often shielding abled people against criticism, not disabled people from prejudice. Stuff like:

    • [Alice] Bob! You’re being a moron. Don’t do this.
    • [Bob] Alice dis is ableism!


  • I’m not subscribed to lemmy.world but I got a proposal on a way to handle this. Here it is:

    5.0.1: Before and when using the website, remember you will be interacting with actual, real people and communities. You cannot use Lemmy.World to attack other groups of people, regardless of their sex, sexuality and gender, ethnicity and race, country of origin and residence, religious affiliation or lack of, etc. Every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, violation of privacy or threats of violence.

    I believe that this should be enough to clarify to those most people that no, bigotry is not allowed in your instance.








  • Complexity in general is undesirable. But sometimes it’s a necessary evil. And sometimes trying to be too simple will have the opposite effect, adding complexity instead of reducing it.

    I might be wrong but I believe that it’s the case here. One of the lemmy.world admins already confirmed ITT that 5.0.1 will be enforced in a way to cover discrimination; this is great but the letter of the rule should be, IMHO, clearer on this. Perhaps a small tweak like

    5.0.1: Before and when using the website, remember you will be interacting with real people and communities, and every one of our users has a right to browse and interact with the website and all of its contents free of treatment such as harassment, bullying, violation of privacy or threats of violence. You are not allowed to use this website to attack other groups of people, based on characteristics such as their sex, sexuality and gender, ethnicity and race, country of origin and residence, religious affiliation or lack of, or other groups that they might belong to.

    would be already enough to shut the fuck up of both the alt right and witch hunters.

    Just my two cents, mind you. (Note that I’ve kept “attack” - as you said in another comment [and I agree], it’s clearer than “discriminate”.)


  • It doesn’t need to be as intricate as US law (which I not sure why that’s “baseline” for anything).

    IMHO it would be better if it was as intricate as Roman law. Because while the wording might be intricate, all you need to know if something is allowed, disallowed, or required is to simply look at the law.

    In the mean time, “esoteric” law systems like common law expect you to look at the precedents. That works in real life due to huge bureaucratic apparatus and recording old cases, but for a simple internet forum you won’t get it.

    EDIT: my point is that trying to make something “too simple” will bite you back later on, with even more complexity.