The plain and simple of it is that I’m not a good moderator. I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted a community where people could post conservative stuff without it getting overwhelmed by lefty stuff, and then you could have discussions/arguments in the comment section. Bring to light stories that wouldn’t normally be seen on lemmy. Since that didn’t exist on lemmy, I had to do it myself.
Right now, there’s a lot of toxicity, some straight up telling people to kill themselves. My whole moderation policy was basically “So long as it isn’t a straight up slur, you could comment it”.
You’d think it’d be simple, just ban those who do that. Well, what about those who defend baby murder? I know lefties genuinely believe it isn’t, but I do. How do you tell what is horrible shit, when lefties act like horror movie monsters?
What about those who I’m like 90% sure are arguing in bad faith? I want to encourage discussions and arguments, and if I’m wrong, what then?
Me doing keyword-based moderating was a bad idea, but I am at a loss of how to do better, without breaking what this sub was supposed to be about.
I need ideas.
How should I moderate this community?
Honestly, I think that if your objective is to have a community based on a particular belief, you cannot have honest discussions, as you already know what you would like to talk about and it seems like you are not ready to challenge your ideas.
Let’s take a look at one example from your post
Well, what about those who defend baby murder? I know lefties genuinely believe it isn’t, but I do
I’m assuming you are referring to abortion rights. That is a hard take to take as a universal truth, there are many many countries where that is a guaranteed right, and you are not even considering discussing your belief. How would a honest discussion be held about this topic if you are already calling baby murderers your contestants?
Props to you for wanting to be a better moderator, but a discussion topic requires the other part to be able to freely express their opinions even if you don’t like them. That would happen in a discussion community called “politics” or “United States politics”, but if your community is called “conservatives”, every discussion will be in the form of “conservatives are correct, leftists are murderers and terrorists” (and vice versa in a community called “leftists”, what I’m talking about is not limited to conservatives) and as you notice, this polarity and fanatism attracts the worst of both parts, ready to fight and be toxic.
Props to you to want to be a better moderator, but a discusdion topic requires the other part to be able to freely express their opinions even if you don’t like them. That would happen in a discussion community called “politics” or “United States politics”,
A large part of the problem is that communities that reasonably should be neutral are still skewed insanely left due to the platform largely leaning left. So you go to a community called “politics” and it’s nothing but leftists jacking each other off, and then get banned because you dared to criticize them for it.
So you go to a community called “politics” and it’s nothing but leftists jacking each other off, and then get banned because you dared to criticize them for it.
Those types of communities are generally leftist because the right cannot compete in a free market of ideas such as the internet. That, and conservatives have a habit of bigotry, hate, and personal attacks that get them banned.
Don’t expect to stick around in a community with good moderation if you tell people to kill themselves and such.
I can agree with that, but you don’t solve the problem by repulsing them and making a right-only community, this polarization will just create two echo chambers where members jack each other off.
That depends on who you call left. If people who call themselves centrists are left to you then that is a bias. I’d say the loudest voices on here are authoritarian liberals. And so a lot of discussion is biased to their favour.
Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve This is a great article that explains why every website has a draconian amount of rules and moderation, even if they start out claiming they’re about freedom of speech. It’s the same reason why countries that are free and democratic have lots of police and lawyers and judges and courts.
If you actually want debate and discussion, you essentially have it already. Sorry to point it out, but your ideology is not popular here. Fox News and Not The Bee articles will be downvoted, and comments in opposition to them will be upvoted. That is open debate and discussion. You can remove the comments that are overly aggressive, but the community will still be downvote central for anyone who actually supports what is being posted.
If you want a safe space for people who like Fox News and Not The Bee, then you can do the whitelist thing and only allow you and people who agree with you to post. Though I’d imagine the community would be incredibly small.
In the end, it’s your community! I won’t be offended no matter what you do, but if there is a whitelist or the rules are such that having an opinion is going to get my comments removed, I’d just block the community from my feed. No sense seeing posts I can’t interact with!
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Thankfully, I’m not an admin, and so I don’t need to worry about copyrighted memes or other legal issues.
I might end up going down that path anyway, but I’ll try my best not to.
Most of those 20 level of bullshit can be skipped, and it just reads as a bunch of cope, written by someone upset that they can’t just get everyone they don’t like banned.
Right now, there’s a lot of toxicity, some straight up telling people to kill themselves. My whole moderation policy was basically “So long as it isn’t a straight up slur, you could comment it”.
You’d think it’d be simple, just ban those who do that. Well, what about those who defend baby murder? I know lefties genuinely believe it isn’t, but I do. How do you tell what is horrible shit, when lefties act like horror movie monsters?
What’s the purpose of telling people to kill themselves versus discussing abortion? In the case of the latter, you might see me argue in favor of abortion because it preserves a woman’s autonomy by denying her abusive partner yet another means of control. But in making that argument, I’m trying to demonstrate why I support abortion over banning it. It contributes to the discussion.
Getting told to put a gun in my mouth won’t hurt my feelings, but it’s purely toxic. It adds absolutely no value to the discussion.
What about those who I’m like 90% sure are arguing in bad faith? I want to encourage discussions and arguments, and if I’m wrong, what then?
I’m 90% certain you’re talking about me and at least one other person that I know of. Frankly, I think we add to the argument half of discussions/arguments. I do not agree with conservative policies at all, but I’m still interested in how conservatives square the circle between reality and their beliefs. At best, with conservatives actually interested in arguing, we help them work out the weaknesses in their argument. I will readily admit a good point, even one I disagree with. At worst, it looks like we’re trolling because some conservative members don’t bother actually thinking through their beliefs and would rather resort to telling people to kill themselves.
I don’t have any concrete recommendations, for you, honestly. If it were me, I’d focus on generating discussions and arguments about conservative news. I don’t think it’s enough to say “Don’t do X, Y, Z”. They have their place certainly, but wanting to talk about news content doesn’t automatically follow. Maybe if posters had to like…quote something from the article, or add their opinion as a comment or whatever. Idk, but actively encouraging what you want out of the community is better than merely discouraging what you don’t want, imho.
I look forward to how you resolve the issue of upholding free speech while wanting to facilitate discussions and arguments.
It adds absolutely no value to the discussion.
Jue like you!
…who even are you?
Momo, he is adding to the discussion. Do you honestly not see that?
No, I don’t see why one of the perpetual leftist spammers crying that moderation doesn’t favor him enough despite him facing no punishment while everyone who calls his bullshit does is considered worthwhile contribution.
The others have already said most of what needs to be said. But one thing to note is that some bans need to be stronger. TJD got banned, what, 3 times at this point for using slurs? The people who do that sort of thing clearly don’t learn, nor care.
They’ll always just see it as hurting the people who deserve to get hurt, and continue to do so.
Short, temp bans just don’t cut it.
And the other thing is that at a fundamental level, conservatism is neck deep in individualism. As a result, the conservatives around here are quick to jump to “kys” type stuff. An ideology that has lack of empathy as one of its core foundations is going to contain people with no empathy. Progressives aren’t immune to this, but just look at the count of who’s been saying “kys” more.
A conservative community will always, innately, be like this.
I disagree with the whole “A conservative community will always, innately, be like this.”
I was on /r/conservative for a long time, and they didn’t have these problems. Or maybe they did, and the mods were just removing them before most saw them.
But maybe going forward, Ill be less lenient about it.
I was on /r/conservative for a long time, and they didn’t have these problems
That’s because /r/conservative effectively bans all political dissent. So there is no real friction, and therefore the ugliness of conservatism stays relatively hidden.
It’s incredibly easy to keep things the way you want when it is an echo chamber. But it is at the cost of ‘free speech’ so to speak. It’s either freedom or tyranny.
Dude what? You’ve got your semantics mapped completely wrong if you think individualism and empathy are mutually exclusive.
It is individualism that values people for who they are. Collectivism views a population as a body, and the removal of individuals as akin to the amputation of a few malfunctioning cells.
if you think individualism and empathy are mutually exclusive.
They’re not mutually exclusive, but they are strongly linked.
It is individualism that values people for who they are
No it doesn’t. Individualists are happy to leave families starving, on the streets, without medical treatment, and in poverty because they allegedly didn’t pull their bootstraps hard enough.
Collectivism views a population as a body, and the removal of individuals as akin to the amputation of a few malfunctioning cells.
Yeah, somebody has deeply mislead you on that.
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Conservatives donate blood and give to charities at a much higher rate.
Which doesn’t mean shit when conservatives vote to leave families starving, on the streets, without medical treatment, and in poverty. Charity is not a solution to fundamental problems with society. Charity is not a solution, because it never addresses anything other than the symptoms. At it’s best, charity is a bandaid solution. At it’s worst, it is scummy as fuck (blood donations).
Progressives vote to use their tax dollars, their own money, for social services. You’re comparing personal donations to personal donations when you instead need to be comparing personal donations and taxes to personal donations and taxes.
It’s no coincidence that red states are the most poverty stricken.
https://appliedsentience.com/2020/07/30/economics-are-red-or-blue-states-better/
You solalistists are only generous with other people’s money.
Socialized services are ultimately cheaper than privatized ones. We don’t need to be shelling out never ending money to the rich middlemen of private buisness to have basic social services.
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Your claim that conceratives don’t care is absolutely false. Conceratives sacrifice more of their money, you liberals simply don’t care to help people on your own, you only want to help people with other’s money.
This is basically just a copy-paste of what I’ve already addressed. So I won’t bother addressing this again.
Though I will add, it seems that the real reason for this is religious community, not political affiliation:
Take education public schools will spend $160,000 per student to educate them k-12. Private schools will do it for less than $100,000.
When I say “cheaper” I don’t just mean the literal cost. Servicing a mail address in the middle of nowhere is often not profitable enough. There are diseases that are not profitable to treat/cure. There are students that private institutions would treat as a lost cause.
But the cost of not having these services is huge. We need a functioning mail system, a healthcare system that heals people, and an education system that educates everyone.
But even ignoring the external, nebulous costs, the literal cost is most always cheaper.
The school one is an example that doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Those private institutions have to compete with the public ones, which means they can’t really fuck people over on the price too much. The other thing is that private schools don’t have enough of a market share to reach their end stage capitalism levels of price gouging. You’re comparing apples to oranges.
Habitat for humanity homes cost ~$100,000 per home. HUD homes are more expensive on average and buyers get much better terms on their loan.
Habitat for humanity is financially supported by the government, somewhere to the tune of $21,000,000,000 according to their website.
https://www.habitat.org/costofhome/impact?keyword=promo1--home
They also extensively work with local governments to bring costs down. Again you’re comparing apples to oranges.
you’re not interested in a discussion.
Believe it or not, I am here to speak honestly. My above response here was not a quick one to make. Trolls don’t put effort into responses.
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A conservative community will always, innately, be like this.
Then fucking leave and make it better for everyone else
I’m not the one telling people to kill themselves, making it worse.
I think any discussion of moderation on the internet should come with an acknowledgement that its a very difficult thing to take on. People are going to be mad at you no matter what decisions you make. Someone will say you are weak and ineffective while someone else is saying you are a pathological control freak. People will always find ways to circumvent any barriers to behaviors you want to discourage.
I think your best bet is to decide where the line is that doesn’t get crossed on your watch and be as consistent as you can about it. Be as relaxed or as strict as you want, but the main thing is to be consistent. Of course people will constantly find fault with your decisions and actions, but don’t let that sway you. They are perfectly free to make their own communities and their own rules. Good luck.
I think any discussion of moderation on the internet should come with an acknowledgement that its a very difficult thing to take on.
I disagree. From my experience moderating on reddit, it’s only difficult if you either a) simply have too large a community for the number of mods, or b) don’t have a single molecule of principle in your body and thus have no goal for moderation. The first is fairly easily remedied by finding people you trust to help. The latter is just a matter of growing a fucking spine. If you moderate on principle, you aren’t going to give a fuck if people disapprove.
I should have said any discussion of good moderation. Good moderation is difficult.
For the sake of brevity I didn’t expand on all the things that make good moderation difficult, but here is a misconception to address: difficulty arises if one has no principles, and the simple solution is to grow a fucking spine.
OP certainly has principles, so much so that he seems willing to make blanket moral judgements about people regardless of circumstances. Simply having principles is not enough, otherwise OP would not be asking for help.
Unless one is blessed with the wisdom of King Solomon, the only way it’s easy to “moderate on principle” is to rely on black and white either/or thinking, with no room for nuance or exception. If you say “The rule is the rule, there can be no interpretation other than the most literal meaning. No ifs ands or buts.” It does make things less difficult. But this is dumb. The reason we can’t rely on bots to moderate is because this system doesn’t work.
OP says “I’m not a good moderator,” and “I don’t know what I’m doing,” and I am saying cut yourself some slack. To be a good moderator you need to be thoughtful, not a bot. You need to be human. That’s not easy. Don’t trust anybody that says otherwise.
the only way it’s easy to “moderate on principle” is to rely on black and white either/or thinking, with no room for nuance or exception. If you say "The rule is the rule, there can be no interpretation other than the most literal meaning.
I disagree. Moderating based on principle require the exact opposite. A firm understanding of both what and why the rules are, such that you can enforce them based not just on some moronic “technically broke the rules based on their phrasing”, but rather based on the values contained in the rules.
Well, if you have never been troubled by any ambiguity in your life, bless you.
Thanks, Im going to need it.
If you don’t want people to brigade your community, make your own instance and defederate.
You can’t have a lemmy community and not expect people sorting by local to come in. I would fully support a ban of this community if it just blindly nabbed most people on the instance for their political beliefs.
I expect brigading, discussions and arguments are half the point of this sub.
But then you have to tolerate being yelled at by people who disagree with you and are in the majority.
No complaints from me, im a liberal who reached this place because I still like to sort by local. If you moderate away dissent, I just don’t think there are enough internet using neo-cons for it to be viable.
Thats pretty much the pattern of conservative discourse - it ends up trying to blend in to plain sight either through a secret clearance level on parlor or through groyped up dogwhistle language. It is because the ideas are deeply unpopular, and will always attract tons of criticism. This might be the place to finally face up to this and engage in a healthy discussion, but there is no version of that where conservatives aren’t outnumbered.
But then you have to tolerate being yelled at by people who disagree with you and are in the majority.
Yeah, it’s something that I’ve come to terms with. I don’t want to ban dissent, won’t ban dissent, and being yelled at by the majority is part of that, unfortunately.
Ban bad faith arguments.
I’m conservative and I support abortion. Most conservatives do in private. The recent votes have shown that to be true.
You can’t push your view of conservatism as the gospel. Conservatives are a diverse group with many different ideas but typically have an overarching goal.
Ban slurs. People screaming Nazi of fascism unless it’s truly either don’t add anything and distract from other connectives participating.
Ask yourself, is the person wanting to have a conversation and do they just want to shrill at people.
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How do you determine somebody is acting in bad faith here?
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That doesn’t answer my question. I asked a question and did not recieve an honest answer back. So if anything you’re the one acting in bad faith here.
You have no room to complain about bad faith comments.
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Your past actions have shown your intent is to stifle discussions.
What about my actions leads you to believe that?
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Please elaborate.
How about start by banning the handful of leftist trolls who are only here to start shit and refuse to have honest discussion at every turn?
Half the problem is my bad-faith-o-meter is broken. Part of me is thinking about getting a second moderator, just for the lefty comments.
Like 90% of it is two fucking people, who you rush to defend every time.
If two people is enough to overwhelm this sub, I can only imagine how bad it would be if this sub got any traction.
It would be a conservatice safe space in no time.
I mean it’s only overwhelming because the only mod constantly fucking comes to wank you off at every turn instead of just dealing with the problem
That is absolutely not how /u/Throwaway treats us. My dick is very much only touched by me and my fiance.
IMO.
Remove and warn people who promote things that are clearly anti-conservative. Eg. Defending abortion, socialism, communism, plotting to overthrow the government or election system, etc.
If they continue after warning, ban them.
There’s certainly a wide range of what is considered “conservative” - and plenty to discuss and debate. But that discussion and debate can’t really happen if all we’re doing is debating against clearly anti-conservative viewpoints
Remove and warn people who promote things that are clearly anti-conservative.
That’d just turn this place into a boring ass echo chamber.
plotting to overthrow the government or election system, etc.
Lately that has been a conservative thing, what with Jan 6 and all.
I find rehashing the same arguments over and over to be boring, especially when they come from very different worldviews.
I’d rather discuss finer points of conservativism without people yelling about us not caring about the poor or women or other such nonsense. Because we all know that it’s nonsense.
I’d rather discuss finer points of conservativism without people yelling about us not caring about the poor or women or other such nonsense. Because we all know that it’s nonsense.
This I agree with, even though the policies conservatives support invariably harm the people they purport to support.
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And your problem is not asking “what is the basis of your argument?”
I mean, everybody seems to think that discussions are just a series of unsubstantiated assertions, but, imho, most discussions, especially with those with which you disagree, should mostly be clarifying questions and answers.
In other words, baseless attacks are only baseless because you don’t know the base. That is a ripe circumstance for a discussion.
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My first comment explicitly said to provide incentives for the kind of participation Throwaway wants. If that’s not relevant or related, then idk what is.
I also defending “bad faith” arguments as at least contributing to the argument half of discussion/argument that Throwaway said he wanted.
My response to you suggested that users of the community should be able to identify when they don’t understand something and simply ask about what they don’t understand. That also facilitates the discussion/arguments about conservative content that Throwaway wants.
I feel like you didn’t even read my comments, or you’re just blinded by your perception that I argue in bad faith to bother understanding anything I say at all.
Prove me wrong.
I’d rather discuss finer points of conservativism without people yelling about us not caring about the poor or women
There is a problem there. The “finer points of conservatism” includes things like defunding social programs. There is no way to destroy the social safety net and not get called out for hating the poor.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, not without an echo chamber.
This is what I’m talking about.
As if our current government programs are the only way to care for the poor.
As if our current government programs are the only way to care for the poor.
Charity is not enough.
Agreed.
Government assistance is also not enough.
Then maybe we make rules based on the structure of arguments.
I think we need to get further into what is meant by a political community.
Are we really intending to set out to create an echo chamber?
Maybe the people who are anti-conservative should be allowed, so long as they are discussing conservative ideas.
Right now, the entire fediverse is a leftist echo chamber. The only way to not have this community also be a leftist echo chamber would be to not allow anti-conservative rhetoric
You’re describing the creation of an echo chamber.
If you hate echo chambers so much, don’t go making a new one.
The only way to not have this community also be a leftist echo chamber is to add our own voices to it so it doesn’t only have one view.
Perhaps this community should be called “conservatives allowed” and the way we keep it from being an echo chamber is we don’t ban people for expressing certain political beliefs.
The difference between this place and places that become a leftist echo chamber would then be: you can say conservative things and not get banned. This prevents the set of voices from becoming skewed, as it does in places where conservatives get banned for being conservative.
Perhaps this community should be called “conservatives allowed”
Another guy did that on lemmy.world a few months ago. That sub didn’t last more than a few weeks because he kept breaking instances rules over bigotry.
This prevents the set of voices from becoming skewed, as it does in places where conservatives get banned for being conservative.
Thats actually a common misconception. Aside from subs like c/leftism and such, nobody gets banned from the generic c/politics type ones for being conservative. Instead they get banned for breaking rules and bigotry/hate/aggressiveness.
The users TJD, MonoTimeToDie and Jimbolauski are good examples of this. TJD in particular has been calling users slurs left and right. One conservative user by a name I don’t remember had a bit of a breakdown telling literally everyone to kill themselves in a thread they made to complain about liberals. It isn’t a coincidence.
Edit; See bellow, MonoTimeToDie proving my exact point by calling me a rat.
Aside from subs like c/leftism and such, nobody gets banned from the generic c/politics type ones for being conservative.
Again this same fallacy. I see this everywhere: people making assertions of the form “X does not occur”.
You’re wrong. I have been banned for being conservative from many communities not labeled as leftist.
Generally speaking if you’re about to make a statement of the form “X does not occur” just stop. There’s no way to know a thing like that, without having been everywhere and seen everything. Have some mental discipline. Recognize the limits of your own knowledge.
I’m using the colloquial sense of the word “nobody”, therefore I was not stating it was an absolute. Have some mental discipline and ask for clarification before assuming something about what somebody is stating.
Lmao cry harder, rat
Thank you for proving my point.
I’ve floated an idea before, having “conservative only” posts. Not all of them, but allowing posters to tag their posts and I’d moderate accordingly. But that goes against what I’m trying to do here.
Maybe in the future I’ll revisit it, but for now, I’m going to leave it.
But that goes against what I’m trying to do here.
It’s also what makes Reddit’s r/conservative effectively an echo chamber.
Honestly a big part of why this community/set of communities is interesting is because I’ve never seen the start of a conservative internet community before. I know the end result (r/conservative echo chamber), and I have no doubt that if this place becomes more poplar it will end up becoming a proper echo chamber as well.
But how yall get to that point is interesting.
