I made this post saying that we should bend community rules sometime, but it get downvoted, so I think most Lemmy users disagree. I’m kinda confused - should I remove posts and ban users if they break rules even slightly?
For example, this post on !internetisbeautiful@lemm.ee doesn’t actually fit the community rules, but I didn’t delete it because it was made in good faith.
The way I moderate, is to be unashamedly selfish, with a sprinkling of impartiality.
Basically, I do whatever I would want “the mods” to do if I were a user. Obviously, there are other users, but since the point of me bothering with the whole thing is to facilitate the kind of activity I personally enjoy, considerations for people who want my communities to be something different, is simply not a priority.
Unless I joined a mod team that existed already, I decide.
If someone complains or has a suggestion, I do make an effort to actually consider what they are saying, but then I still decide what will or won’t happen. I’m doing the work in order to have communities I actually like, not the adoration of a bunch of thankful users. If you compromise on the former for the latter, why even put in the effort? Either way, there will be a set of people who like what you do, and a set of people don’t. So why please other people at the expense of pleasing yourself?
Unless you actually open things up to be voted on, the goal is to be a benevolent dictator. You can’t please everyone, but that doesn’t mean you have to make yourself one of the unhappy ones. You may be a mod, but we’re ALL users. That means what you want to do, even as a mod, matters too.
I think you just accidentally articulated the theory of virtue ethics. How do you know what you should do? Do what you think a good person would do. 😆
As someone who’s been on forums of every stripe since the goddamn 80s, I can say with a great deal of experience that all good internet communities have just one single rule: “Don’t make us ban you.”
Anything else just invites edgy trolls and rules-lawyering.
Now don’t get me wrong, guidelines are good and necessary. Give people an idea of the kinds of thing you do and don’t want to see, and the way you will generally act in turn, because managing expectations is important.
But the moment you make hard-and-fast rules that you’re obliged to follow, people will make a point of bending you over them with edge cases and not cuddling afterwards, just because they can. They think denial-of-service attacks are just as hilarious against human systems as they are against software ones, if not moreso - or they do it to assert control as part of one personality disorder or another.
If you play their game, you will lose.
You need to have an admin-discretion clause, and not feel bad about invoking it whenever it’s the right thing to do.
Of course, this can lead to tyrannical asshole mods - if you have a mod team, you need to keep a close eye on it to prevent shitty personalities taking over in that domain. As the person that the buck stops with, if you can’t trust yourself with it, then the place is going to hell anyway.
Well said. This is the only person I’ve ever personally banned and it’s because they went out of their way to start multiple fights over silly shit.
Crazy to see I commented on that thread too. Lemmy is a small world
Yeah like tbh the original comment thread wasn’t worth banning them. Kinda silly but whatever. Literally everything after that was worth a ban though. They picked a molehill and just… fought to the last breath on it.
I’m checking the Curated Tumblr thread and modlog. Holy fuck, what a shitty user - clearly behaving passive-aggressively. I’ve seen more oldschool forums being ruined by those than by the ones hurling insults.
Yeah when I got that report and responded all I could think was “this thread is basically incomprehensible. Why are these people arguing poetry vs theoretical physics? It’s like arguing whether or not TMNT is enjoyable based on it not being an accurate depiction of turtle biology???” There is a time and a place to get this heated about the fundamental concepts that define the universe we inhabit but a lemmy post about a Tumblr post that’s written like an overly dramatic fanfiction just ain’t it. The last time I got into an argument that dumb (somewhat coincidentally also on tumblr) was literally over half my life ago!
Source: I was a mod on /r/soccer for a while.
You won’t win this “battle”, no matter what you do. Being a mod is a thankless job, and you’ll piss people off regardless of which side you take. The only thing you can do is be fair and balanced. List your rules out, enforce mostly to the rules, but add common sense, and regularly check in with the community to get feedback.
